This is neither about making more or less
money. It’s not about the right investment strategy, insurance products or even
estate plan. Rather, it is about the way that you relate with these key
elements of financial planning.
Financial wholeness is focused on
understanding who you and your spouse are as people, and what financial plans
are appropriate for both of you. If you are a small-business person, nurse,
corporate or government employee, your definition of financial security and
then life objectives will be defined differently.
Personal financial planning is only coming
into prominence over the last 40+ years. As people have entered into mass
affluence and lost the sense of security that came from an agrarian society of
the early 1900’s, or pension based retirements of the mid to late 1900’s, a
shift in thinking about how to give meaning to live and manage the resources to
accomplish that meaning is underway. As we live in this new millennium, what it
means to create financial security is evolving, and certainly there is not one
definition that will work for every individual.
While financial planning is focused on what
to do with your money, financial wholeness has little to do with the actual
money that you have. Rather, it’s a concept that speaks to our relationship
with money and the way that we approach using money in our lives. All of us live with conflicting and often
unexplored beliefs and thoughts about money, which drive the way that we use
money in our lives. Some of these beliefs and thoughts are helpful, while
others can have disastrous implications for the way that we live our lives and
engage in relationships with our significant others.
So then financial wholeness becomes about
finding congruency between what we say we believe and think about money and
what we actually do with it. To get to financial wholeness, we start with
openness to personal exploration and a willingness to look at ourselves in ways
we have not yet considered.
Over the next year I will release twenty four
blog posts that will take you deeper into understanding what financial
wholeness can mean for you and your family.
The Next Post Will Be – What Is Your
Financial Story?
Written By: Ed Coambs
Edited By: Joey Glass
