Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
90. Rethinking Financial Success by Embracing Curiosity 4 of 7
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Unlock the secrets to transforming your financial journey through the power of curiosity! Ever wondered how being curious can lead to better financial advice and a more fulfilling life? Join us on this episode of Know Your Money, where Bronwyn, Warren, and returning guest Rob Mac Donald unpack the profound impact of curiosity on financial planning. We promise you'll gain new insights into how curiosity can foster a deeper understanding between financial planners and their clients, ultimately leading to personalized and effective financial strategies.
Rob also shares an inspiring story about a friend who redefined his life by embracing curiosity, learning new skills, and moving across the globe. This powerful narrative challenges traditional notions of financial stability and success, encouraging listeners to think beyond conventional paths. Whether you're a financial planner or someone looking to make more informed decisions about your financial future, this episode offers valuable lessons on how being curious can open up a world of opportunities. Tune in and discover how embracing curiosity can revolutionize your financial well-being!
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www.growthfp.co.za
Welcome to Know your Money, where we will explore our relationship with money and how the psychology of it impacts our financial decisions, as everyone thinks about money differently. In our podcast, we'll be presenting a variety of financial topics in an easy to understand way, which we hope will assist you with managing your money. Hello everybody, welcome to Know your Money. Warren Craig, how are you today?
Speaker 2:Very well, Bronwyn Craig, how are you?
Speaker 3:Very well today. Thanks, warren, never a chore, yeah, always a pleasure. Always a pleasure, never a chore.
Speaker 1:We have Rob back today. Hi guys, yeah, always a pleasure.
Speaker 4:Always a pleasure, never a chore. We have Rob back today, hi guys. Yeah, great to be back. Sure, rob, these Mondays are coming quick and fast. Yeah, no, no wonderful, it's become the start of the week, up and down on that airplane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is becoming a habit, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but no, it's great, Really it's good to unpacking your book.
Speaker 3:Where are we up to now?
Speaker 4:Yeah, we are well, we've got to curiosity, curiosity.
Speaker 1:I'm curious, tell us more.
Speaker 2:And no cats were harmed in this episode.
Speaker 4:Absolutely not. No, I mean, I think curiosity is again one that you know. One might think what has that got to do with money? And that's a good question to ask, because that's a curious question.
Speaker 4:But I think in some ways it's obvious that curiosity from a financial planner's perspective is very important, because the more curious a financial planner is about their client, the more they're going to get to know their client, and the more they get to know their client, probably the better advice they're going to give. But I think where I'm really going with this idea of curiosity is that I think a key role of a financial planner is to help clients be curious about their own lives and to actually reflect, and so, in a sense, the financial planner holds up the mirror for the client to look in and actually see that that's really what's going on here not necessarily what I thought was going on and so I think the more that financial planners can help clients be curious about themselves and their lives, the better life a person will live and the better advice they'll get from the financial planner.
Speaker 1:Agreed, yeah planner Agreed, yeah, and I think, like you know, when we talk about your situation and your wife buying, maybe finding that curiosity around that, is that truly something that is important, or would not buying something that makes sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, just in life, the more curious you are, the more you inevitably ask questions, the more you will learn and the more you will grow. So if you're talking about financial advice or what you guys do, the more curious I am about what my options are with my future, how I can grow financially. It's only going to better the decisions I'll be able to make, surely.
Speaker 3:But maybe you can think out the box as well we were discussing this a while back because you don't have to say live in a house that's bonded, drive a car that you owe lots of money on and be sort of forced to do what everybody else does live in a house that's bonded, drive a car that you owe lots of money on and be sort of forced to do what everybody else does. I think what COVID's taught us is that you can work anywhere. You can make choices about where you work, and you may not want to be on the high felt or down on the coast. You might want to be in the Karoo and you might work online for some international company.
Speaker 1:Even so, you don't have to have the traditions when you can have it all.
Speaker 2:Sorry to interrupt. I've got a good example, a story almost, of a friend of mine who went and did that. He was working for a capital company, anchor Capital here, and he didn't really enjoy what he was doing. He was an investment something or other, I don't know, but he worked in investment and he decided one day that it wasn't his passion and that he'd followed the cookie cutter path and gone to university, got a BCom, gone and got a job and it wasn't for him and he made drastic changes in his life. He learned off YouTube how to code, do computer coding, and moved to uh, south, uh, south asia, um, and he is happier than he's back in south africa now. But he went there to lower his expenses so that he could continue to learn while not having to worry about money. And he's back here now. He works for an international company in the UK, works from home and his life is completely different, and it was only his willingness to question what he was doing that changed all of that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I think the challenge we face is that many of us don't, of our own accord, question what we do.
Speaker 4:You know we don't, we just keep going, we get stuck in the pattern and the habit. Yeah, and I think that that's one of the huge powers of financial planning and working with a financial planner is that they can actually help us interrogate our own lives, and they do that by making us become curious about ourselves, you know. So, if we go back to that example of having a nice house, you know, I know for myself, I continually have to interrogate myself because, you know, we live in a good house and I'm not a great gardener, I'm not a great maintenance guy, and I've got to continually sort of question why do I live in this house when maybe I could live in a smaller, more compact home? That would free me up to do other stuff? You know that I might enjoy more, and I think that's your point, bronwyn. What do you really enjoy? What you know? And some people haven't even thought about that, because they just got caught up in life.
Speaker 1:In the rat race and having the house and having the car and putting, like you were saying, putting yourself in debt. Do you really want that or is it society that's making you have that? And I think, as a role for us, to help those clients ask those questions, to truly figure out what is important to you and, like we've said before, uh, you know, by getting your hair done every week might be important to one person and not to another, but is that important yours or is it just a pattern or habit that you're in from something else and just getting to the root of the emotion behind it? I think is also important, like, are you doing that truly for yourself?
Speaker 2:because it Rob's book, the Seven Pillars of Financial Health we have shared a link in the bio with the web address as well as a discount code you can use. The book retails for R375 excluding delivery, and with this promo code you will pay R370, which includes delivery. Alternatively, you can find the book at exclusive books or other bookstores. We would like to thank you for listening and please remember to like, subscribe and share the podcast so that we can bring on more exciting guests like Rob to help you with knowing yourself and knowing your money.
Speaker 3:I worked with a lady that was passionate about sailing her and her husband and they had kids and they thought well, they can't sail anymore because they've got children, they have to take them to school and now that's the end of their sailing career. Anyway, they sat down, re-looked at everything and found out that they could homeschool these children on this boat. And they bought this massive yacht and they sailed it, not around the whole world, but they sailed it, certainly in the Caribbean and up in Europe and that. And they spent four years on this yacht and they used to go to places as well you know, I'm sure, france and that kind of stuff and they used to work a bit there, but they schooled their children. So what was holding them back and I think, all of us back is that you need a child to go to school and get an education, et cetera. But they did it on the homeschooling way and while they were still young enough to sail, they sailed and enjoyed their passion and that's someone truly living what they want having it all.
Speaker 3:Thought about how they could do it and how it could work for everybody.
Speaker 2:There's a sitting US congressman. I can't remember his name, but he started a tech company, did very well and sold it and then decided he didn't really know what he was going to do with it and he always wanted to build his own home. So he convinced his wife even though he wasn't a builder, had no experience that he was going to build the house and he did. And then he did courses on plumbing plumbing and he plumbed the house and electrics and he did the electricity for the house and then became a congressman and continues to work on his own home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you can do anything you want, as long as you question it, I do agree with that and, yeah, I think, the financial advisor helping you be curious about what truly actually matters to you and where things stem from, as to why you're potentially doing certain things.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, and it's not easy. I mean, there's a guy named Kay Hay who was a hedge fund manager in the US and by the age of 35, he had made it, you know. So he had more than enough money and been successful. And he sort of got to this point in something that he had dreamed about doing, got to this point and then actually didn't feel so satisfied and didn't feel so good and started to reflect. And his reflection on it was that we all want financial security in some form, whatever that looks like, and you know, you look at the surveys of clients around the world.
Speaker 4:Basically, financial security is sort of almost the number one thing that people want and we all have different definitions of that. But what K Hayes says is financial securities. We all seem to want that, but we all also want to have a good life, and he talks about the fact that sitting between financial security and a good life is what he calls a messy middle. And the messy middle is the part where I think you guys play such a key role for clients is helping us unpack that messy middle. And it's not easy, because not everybody is as clear thinking as your friend Warren, who was able to say I'm not enjoying investing. You know, because some people have the curse of competence. They're good at stuff but they haven't really thought about what I really want to be doing.
Speaker 2:I like that, the curse of competence.
Speaker 4:I'll trademark that.
Speaker 2:Oh, you've come up with some great ones. That's a good one.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but no but, you know, it is a problem, you know you do have people who have this, what I call the curse of competence, where they are good at a whole lot of stuff and because they are, they haven't really had the need to think about what I really want, which sounds like your friend did do that, he did, he did and he was so happy yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and so that's why I think curiosity is so important in the financial planning process and in the relationship with the financial planner, because it's so easy for clients to come in and you know you just take them at face value and so, okay, you've got, you know X number of assets and this is your income. Okay, brilliant, we can save that amount and off we go and we think that we've on track.
Speaker 4:And I remember hearing a story at a financial planner told me about one of their clients. The person was a retired client and he had more than enough money, you know, for his retirement and for passing on to his children. And when the financial planner met with him they said you know, so how's retirement going? You must really be happy. And he said, no, actually my life's miserable. Why? And he said, well, I'm a glorified Uber driver, you know, because my daughter works, her husband works and I'm picking up the kids at school, taking them here, and all I want to be doing is I want to be playing golf, you know.
Speaker 4:And to cut a long story short, they then sort of worked out well, actually, um, what you could be doing is sorry. She said and how's your daughter? She obviously loves her job because she's wanting to work. No, no, she hates her job, you know. And so after a process, they realized that actually what they could do is he could pay his daughter not to work. So get an early inheritance, pay the daughter not to work so she can do the school pick up and she can play golf.
Speaker 4:And he can go and play golf. But what could have happened in that scenario was, you know, he had many millions of rands that he wanted advice on how to invest. That's why he came to the meeting and they could have just spoken about the money, but they didn't. You know, she explored. She was curious about how's retirement he must be. You explored. She was curious about how's retirement you must be enjoying it.
Speaker 3:And he was hating it and it wasn't because he didn't have enough money.
Speaker 4:He was hating it because of the choices he had made. There's an example of being curious rather than saying, okay, well, let's put your millions into this portfolio and you'll get 7% per year and all's good. So I think curiosity is key, and that's true.
Speaker 1:And not just waiting for retirement to live your life. How can you live it before that too, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 4:You can have it all. Have you Roman Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I think I've won you over a little bit there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you have won me over, yeah, yeah, because I think one of the things that I always say is important in a conversation that you guys have with a client is what I call a conversation for perception or a conversation about perception, because perception is reality, and so when we first had this conversation, my perception was you can't have it all. And if we are curious about what do you actually mean by that and can we unpack it more, that can shift my perspective, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Has it.
Speaker 4:Yes, it has To a certain extent.
Speaker 1:Awesome stuff. I love it. Thanks everybody.
Speaker 4:Rob, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thanks everybody, thank you guys.
Speaker 4:Bye, cheers, bye.
Speaker 3:Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast would like to subscribe. Please visit our website wwwgrowthfpcoza. The information we have provided in this podcast is our personal opinion. For more detailed information, please discuss your financial situation with a financial planner.