Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
155. Flourish Blueprint Explained - Design a life where every rand has a role
Money plans usually break where emotions begin. We take you inside the Flourish Blueprint, a behaviour-first approach that starts with who you are, then builds systems that hold under stress, and only after that chooses the products and portfolios to carry your goals. Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch share hard-won lessons from years of planning: why clients panic when markets dip, how generous people can set boundaries without losing heart, and what it takes to design a plan that funds every version of you — present, near-future, and retired.
We walk through the seven steps, from mapping the Wheel of Life to reveal true priorities, to applying the Wheel of Wealth to spending, saving, giving and protection. You’ll hear how a coach-style relationship spots blind spots — the “weak backhand” — and turns them into strengths with practical habits. We make the case for automation as your strongest ally, routing rands to emergency buffers, retirement, and goal funds before lifestyle spending even starts. Then we dig into providers and wrappers, why regulated platforms and tax-efficient vehicles matter, and how poor wrapper choices can cost you in taxes and estate complexity.
Finally, we connect time horizons to asset allocation in simple, usable terms. Long-term goals need equity exposure across local and global markets; short-term needs stay in cash-like assets to avoid painful timing risk. Most advisers start here and lose clients at the first scare; we start with behaviour so the allocation sticks. By the end, you’ll have a clear picture of how to calm fear, set sustainable giving boundaries, and build a plan that compounds quietly while you live your life.
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Hello everybody, welcome to Know Your Money. I'm Bronwyn Wayner.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm Craig Finch, and we are from Growth Financial Planning. We hope you enjoy our podcast. Hello everybody, in Growth Financial Planning, Bronwyn has developed a program which she takes her clients through. It's called the Flourish Blueprint. She ran a uh live session a few months ago and she also ran an online session a few months ago called Flourish. Very interesting on how you develop this program, Bronwyn. It's been amazing to watch over the last year and a bit. Would you like to tell our viewers a little bit more about it? And we'll unpack it in the next few episodes because there's a incredible amount of content which is very valuable.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. Thank you so much, Craig. Yeah, I thought it would be quite nice to just have some episodes to explain the journey that clients would go through when they do sign up for this type of planning. I feel that financial planning, there's two kinds of ways. You go to a financial planner and they just sort of implement something, you tell them your budget, and they just kind of make everything fit into what your budget is. Then there's a new way of doing financial planning where you kind of go and get a financial planning guide. So it will be a needs analysis, the client's financial planner spends a few meetings with you and tells you all the different things that you should have. So from all of that and the many years of doing financial planning in both of those ways, when I started out, it was like that. The client says to me, I have a thousand rand, I try and make everything fit into that thousand rand and go with that. It didn't actually feel like planning, it felt more like selling. Then when I moved to growth financial planning, it was like a whole new world opened up to me. And also doing my CFP, so certified financial planning, you see the level and the detail that you need to go into and the way that you have to ask those questions. I also did the behavioral coaching program with Rob MacDonald, which changed a lot of how I do things, and it showed me that one of the most important aspects of a client's financial plan is actually their behavior. Because I'm sure you also have some of those cra those clients, Craig, that when something happens and an emotion is triggered within that client, their behavior wants to change. They want to reduce costs and pay off their bond, or they want to stop their RRA. Can you relate to that?
SPEAKER_00:Well, especially if the market moves and there's panic.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Market calm down, I better get out of this, get into cash and all those. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And it's a valid thing that a person goes through, but I believe our role as financial planners is to take a client through a journey, and at the end of that journey, they feel empowered to make the right decisions, to be able to hold it if they need to, because we've worked on regulating their emotions, understanding why they get triggered when the markets move, what is that underlying thing. So I thought maybe today I can just explain there's um the seven steps that I would take a client through. So the first is to understand the wheel of wealth. Um, I will go into a lot of detail of what the wheel of wealth is in another episode. But the wheel of wealth is used with the wheel of life. So the wheel of life is an amazing tool that helps you look at all the different aspects of your life and how to work on it. You've used that for how many years?
SPEAKER_00:More than 20.
SPEAKER_01:And I know that there are other financial planners that want to be like you. They want to have that holiday and money. I mean, your biggest thing is time and money. Do you think if you didn't have the wheel of life, that would be your reality?
SPEAKER_00:Definitely not. And you know, we we met Mike Williams a while back, and he's been my coach right the way through, and that's been the foundation of our every Friday session, complete drum it into a head drum. It takes a lot of work to understand the in-depth of it. I'm I'm fascinated to hear about the wheel of wealth later episodes.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. And also just think what you said, there's also the key to this process. You are doing that and you are sticking to the wheel of wealth because you have a coach. You have that person in the corner. Yes, you are living your life. If you think of a tennis player, they're the ones playing the match, but the coach is the one sitting on the sideline, noticing what that person needs to work on, where their strengths lie, what their weaknesses are, and they can go back and say, Listen, Craig, your backhand is not so great, but your forehand's amazing. Let's focus on that and try to start playing to your strengths instead of your weaknesses. Your the financial planner is supposed to highlight that for you. Your weakness is that you spend. Okay, how do we help you spend more intentional so that you have some leftover to save? And that's what this process would do, and that's what the Wheel of Um Wealth basically does. It goes, okay, how are you tracking on all these things? How do you do with spending? How do you do with giving? How do you do with that? And we see, and from there we go to the next step, which is um work on your psychology of money and understand your internal financial parts. So we'll work on that psychology. Why do you always give? What does it mean to you to give? I don't think it's a bad thing, but it's got to be set with boundaries, for example. Like children, they are supposed to have some sweets and chocolates, but not all day. Otherwise, you'll they'll be bouncing off the walls. So, yes, giving is important. All these elements of finances, if you're doing all of them, you feel calmer. So we'll go through that, and then in the journey, we just kind of discover like what does it mean to you to give? So I have a client who grew up really, really poor, and everybody always gave to them. So everybody always financially supported them. So when she got older, when other people gave, it made her feel loved. So now she gives and feels loved. So, how do we teach her to also feel love when she saves for something for herself? And that's a journey we would go through. And internal financial parts, I'll also break that down in another episode. And step three is preparing for all versions of you. Because often people plan. I have a client now who is planning for the future version of him, so he is putting in a trust, he's you know starting things with the lawyers, and because he's so focused on that further version of him, he's impacting the version of him now because he's using all of his emergency fund, he's cashing out some of his investments to fund that one version of him. And it's not to say that's bad, but what we do need to realize is that many versions of us coexist and can coexist. So, how do we balance that? And going through a process like this would help you discover that a bit further. Have you experienced that in in any way with your clients where they just focus on one version of them or worry about one version of them?
SPEAKER_00:Many times, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So the next step is automation. So when you automate your debit orders and become conscious of your things, you it automatically sort of happens. So if you don't automate it, you're never gonna do it. If you get your money in there and say, I'm gonna put my holiday fund aside, and then you're supposed to manually transfer that holiday fund, it is not going to happen. Yeah. So we'd go through the journey of like what automations do you need to set up? How do we look at that? Step five is if you're doing this journey, you are with a provider, as in a financial planner, that's right. Um, but I think the providers are really important. Are you with Alan Gray? Are you with one of the other ones? A Bitcoin thing. Where are you? Is it regulated? Are you putting your money somewhere safe? So it would be discovering that, and then also making sure that the wrappers that you are using are correct. Because often people put all their money in their bank accounts and they don't realize the tax implications really.
SPEAKER_00:It happens a lot.
SPEAKER_01:And what other implications would a client experience if they left all their money in a bank account and not using other things?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and then there's estate issues when transferring to their if they pass away in the estate, the returns seem good, but they're going to be chopped with a tax. So yeah, there's yeah, there's many ways of the wrappers are very, very important.
SPEAKER_01:And retirement annuities, all of that. So it's just I think empowering a client to understand.
SPEAKER_00:Why they've got it, yes, correct.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. And then also so that they're empowered to keep making choices going forward. Uh step six is I think quite important. So allocating your funds to the correct time horizon. So, what I mean by that is if you're trying to save for retirement, putting it in your bank account is not going to help.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because it's a long-term investment. Maybe you can describe that a little bit about fund allocation and time horizon and why those two things are so important.
SPEAKER_00:Well, the longer you have, we go back to compound interest and the snowball coming down the mountain, the longer time you have, you need to be in the stock market locally and internationally, because that's all in you can take a hundred years and even longer than that. That class of equity, stock market, shares, whatever everybody calls it, must be invested in the stock market because that is done better than any other asset class. It beats property, it beats cash, beats bonds. So the longer the time horizon, the more you have in the stock market. The shorter the time horizon, the more you have in cash. Because you can't afford ups and downs. Where the stock market goes up and down, and you might have a rocky ride, but the rocky ride might give you a far, it will give you a far better outcome over time. So the longer the time horizon, the more riskier, and it's not riskier because it's if you stay in for the time, it's not riskier, it's the right way place to be, because that stock market has done better than cash, just in simple terms.
SPEAKER_01:You see, and what I often think is that advisors generally start here. So they start by telling the client about the asset allocation and the time horizon. But if they didn't start where we are starting, with what is your fear about the markets? No, well, my grandparents lost absolutely everything in the market. No matter how much you say to their clients about asset allocation and the importance of being in the stock market, absolutely nothing will change because that person is carrying those fears and worries and conditionings that we all have. So that's why I think this process is so valuable because you truly understand the client before you explain those things. Um, and lastly, is asset allocation is key to expanding and growing your wealth. So, exactly what you said. That's where most of us start because as financial planners, we completely understand that where you are putting your money ultimately is so important. The retired version of you needs you to put your money into the market. And if you don't feel comfortable to do that because of all these underlying things, that version of you is going to be impacted. So that is in a nutshell the process that a client would go through in the flourish blueprint.
SPEAKER_00:That's brilliant, Brian. Thanks for unpacking it for us. And I look forward to the other stages of it.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_00:Bye everybody. Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast, would like to subscribe, please visit our website www.growthfp.co.za. 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.