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"The facts, ma'am, just the facts!" said our "Dragnet" hero of yesteryear, Sgt. Joe Friday. He used to show up in our living rooms every week. But like a lot of other heroes from days gone by, Joe Friday's black-and-white approach tp working with people doesn't fit anymore. He's off the air. People realize that life is about more than "just the facts."
As financial planners, we, too, risk being "off the air" in the new millennium if we continue to solely concentrate on the technical part of the planning process. As members of the World War II generation (which Tom Brokaw calls "the Great Generation") continue to pass away, the demand for planning with a broader scope increases. The WWII survivors often found it too painful to deal in anything more than the facts. To this day, we hear accounts of soldiers who have never spoken of their wartime experiences even though thoughts and nightmares revisit them every week of their lives. Joe Friday was exactly what they needed-just the facts.
Yet the term "financial planning" begs these questions: How can we separate our finances from our lives? How can we separate our finances from our values? How can we separate our finances from who we are?
In contrast to the WWII generation, today's typical baby boomer is more in touch-or wants to be-with who they are. They want to tell their life story. They are just waiting for someone to take the time to listen-to listen, to help clarify what really matters to them beyond the acquisition of "stuff." As Harold Kushner perceptively wrote, "Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will at least be a little bit different for our having passed through it."
In Need of a Shift in Perspective
As one generation passes away, we need to allow some of our old beliefs and techniques to die as well. Psychologists long have known that people make decisions based on emotion and then justify the decision with other reasons born of...