Wild Money for Financial Advisors
Here’s a wild concept: Beauty is a vital part of the Wild Money financial planning process. Not only does it make the journey more enjoyable, but beauty and visual imagery can serve as powerful ingredients of behavior change.
Each chapter of Wild Money asks clients to create or find an image that describes where they are right now. This process allows the client to access their own unique inner landscape— a place that often doesn’t have words at first. This process removes judgmental language (I’m good or bad with money, etc) and invites curiosity and exploration.
For those who have never thought of their relationship with money in this way I start by inviting them to think of an object that represents their relationship with money. Financial advisors may be surprised by the expressive and revealing images that clients come up with:
“My relationship with money? It’s like a freight train. It runs my life, always gaining speed and I feel like I’ll never be able to get off, or be in control.”
“For me money is a huge, black boulder. It sits between my husband and I. We can’t see each other because the boulder is too big.”
“The image I have of money is that it’s like a piece of bloody meat in the ocean, and I’m surrounded by sharks. Every time I have money, the predators come out and I don’t know who I can trust.”
Once the client has described the image in her mind, an advisor should use the same descriptive language used by the client to reflect her image back to her, without adding analysis or judgment. Simple reflection is incredibly powerful, and often leads to important insights.
While there are many directions this conversation may take, one way to further explore is to ask the client to change one thing in the image that would result in feeling more empowered, safe or at peace. The clients quoted above said this
“I would put myself in the picture, as the conductor of the train, so I’m in control.”
“I would shrink the boulder to the size of a small rock so my husband and I can see each other.
“I would take the meat out of the water so I won’t attract sharks any more.”
Through this process, we help clients to see there is hope, resulting in more liberated feelings around their finances. The Wild Money process deepens your relationship with your client and helps them to discover their own personal elixir, the medicine that only they can create for themselves when it comes to healing and strengthening their relationship with money.
To learn more about Wild Money, you can:
Click here to purchase the books
Click here to vote for a session on Wild Money at the FPA Annual Conference in September (FPA members, log into FPA Connect, find Luna’s session -”Where Creativity and Money Meet: A New Approach to Client Engagement” – and then “like” it to cast your vote)
Click here to read The Story of an Unlikely Financial Expert about my own journey in the financial industry.
