The problem with killing Bambi
Just wanted to share a little bit about the danger in challenging popular thinking when calling things out to clients that I know doesn't make sense despite that some want to believe the consensus of the day.
At Warringal fs we call it "being your unreasonable friend"
As financial advisers we read a lot of research and information articles every week. It's a big part of what we do.
So when clients phone us we don't just want to be able to give them more information, we want to be able to individualise our responses to their queries.
As an advisory team we receive numerous questions from clients, from the ages of 25 to 65, about everything from cashflow, to mortgages, to investments, to super, to planning for retirement, to what the economy's doing and more.
I often get questions asking about what some "financial expert" has said and asked for my view and what I would do.
Whilst I have no specific issue with these types of questions often they're almost wanting me to go against the grain, wanting me to criticise.
As someone who is in a profession that isn't necessarily in the best light right now and where people want to make assumptions, and somebody like me who wears a tie rather than sits on a fence at a farm, I'm very aware that sometimes my opinion can be seen as yet another "talking head" trying to position an idea that people don't want to hear.
Here's the thing, though. What I believe in, is telling people the truth.
That doesn't necessarily always make me friends and that's OK I have plenty...
Often it also places me not in the nicest light, but when we're talking about money, the truth is what people need to know. They need to understand that sometimes there's not a silver bullet.
Sometimes their problems that they've created are difficult and need difficult solutions to solve and when I'm going up against this kind of advice, it's really hard, because people don't always want to hear the truth. Sometimes they want to hear the things that make them feel better.
There's a thing we know about in our industry called "confirmation bias". I'm very aware of it, because when I look at peoples' needs, dreams, aspirations and their portfolios, and I don't want to conform and just tell them what they think they want to do . I want to tell them what they need to do.
So when I oppose people, I'm going against that desire to believe what they believe.
Here's my point, just because someone's written a book about something, and you read it, that doesn't mean that book is written for you. It doesn't mean the advice is suitable for you. It means that there's a general framework there which you're designed to follow, some of which is right and some of which could be disastrous.
My suggestion is, if you have a question and someone comes back to you with something you don't want to hear, read more into it. Take an interest in this stuff, and I'm glad that people like Scott Pape have encouraged people to do that. However, simple rules are just the beginning of a journey, and sometimes looking beyond that is the important bit.
Anyway, I wanted to share this because it's very important to me that, in this world where we have 160 character media cycles, people are always looking for simplification, but sometimes, in complex situations, simplification is hard to achieve and often not easy at all.
It's those times you need to reach out to somebody, somebody who you know has done this before, and be prepared for them to come back and tell you things you don't want to hear. Contact us and speak with me, Chris, or any one of our accredited financial planners - we'd be happy to help