One of the practical reasons individuals seek financial advice is that they desire some measure of certainty about the future. Of course, the future is unknowable but that is unsatisfying.  There is nothing wrong with wanting some idea about the future, but clients often resist anything that isn't precise. Our job is to work with clients towards a reasonable understanding of what is knowable and what is unknown; what is controllable and what is not.

The sheer barrage of data of every variety today provides the illusion of control and certainty. In fact, the opposite is true. We want to believe that with certain inputs we can engineer certain outputs. We should resist those notions since the number of uncontrollable variables dwarfs those that we actually can direct. For the main, we control what we save and what we spend. All the rest - taxes; how investment returns are ordered; underlying inflation and many other factors - are not within our control. We can, however have input into some factors and that is where un-conflicted financial advice adds value. 

While we can't control the markets, we can set ourselves up for a greater likelihood of success by focusing on low-cost investments that provide good diversification. That alone puts us ahead of most others. Combine this with our disciplined, goals-driven approach, and you have substantially increased the chances of success. The fact that we deliver un-conflicted advice allows us to be totally honest with our clients about both the obstacles and possible solutions to their financial concerns. In that way we are in essence providing some level of certainty about the future, even if it is not precise. The above video explains how our Wealth Rx® financial planning process results in better financial outcomes. We encourage you to view the video and reflect on these three questions: What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to fix? What do you want to avoid?