3433-vol. 6 issue 2-3.pmd - iarfc

Volume 6, Issue 2 & 3 21
stream, and an income, and an income stream into an
affordable lifestyle. As one advisor put it: ‘Two million
dollars looks to my clients like a lot of money, until I tell
them that it translates into about $6,500 a month.’
Relying on that large looking lump sum, many clients are
spending down their portfolios too quickly in the early
retirement years.
Meanwhile, others are having the opposite problem. . .
(some advisors) . . . put significant time and energy into
helping some retirees break their best accumulation
stage habits. ‘I find myself pushing my clients more and
more to use and enjoy their money, rather than just to
save it for later.’ . . . ‘One of the saddest conversations
I’ve ever had with a client was a man whose wife is dying
of cancer. As tears rolled down his cheeks, he told me:
‘she is talking about all the things she wanted to do and
never did, and I’ve heard about these things before. In
some ways . . . I think the lost dreams he never got a
chance to help her achieve bother him more than her
death.
This is a new frontier, the idea that success in retirement
will be measured not only in financial terms, but also in
terms of regret management, of crossing off items on the
list of things that people want to do before they die.”
Veres (2006/2007) further quotes, Eric Bruck saying,
Practice Management
“Future regrets will have to be identified long before the
date of retirement. Clients will be well served by advisors
who don’t simply do goal setting but probe deeper to try
to identify the passions a client may have set aside until
now, but which could well make the remainder of a long
life worth living. Allocation of resources to targeted,
expressed passions is serving the highest purpose of a
client’s wealth.”
Finally, note Lewis Carroll’s admonition in Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you
there.” Financial Life Planning offers a completely opposite approach.
Advisors must know where their clients want to go to help them get there.
Furthermore, clients are often not sure where they want to go, and it changes