High achievers often plan for companies and others but not for themselves. Executive coaching has also focussed more on career planning. And, personal financial planning value propositions have also been focussing more on financial aspects. Mainly for this reason financial planning profession has been subjected to ongoing criticism in the recent past and the quest to deliver a value-add at a reasonable price is ongoing. The conventional approach to financial planning unlikely to deliver value-add to justify a reasonable fee that will compensate the ongoing regulatory burden.

High achievers often need more balanced approach to planning their affairs by taking into account overall well-being. Hence in this blog we focus on well-being in terms of Total Wealth.

While Lifestyle Financial Planning (LFP) has been marketed as a total solution it still focuses on financial aspects of “wealth”. It does not bring out the “total needs” of an individual and then plan for the financial aspect accordingly. It is well-being planning based on Total Wealth Planning that ultimately drives wealth and career success.

Let’s look at the extreme. Take, for example, a person who has worked all his life in trying conditions at the cost of family and/or health. Or a person who had inherited billions of dollars ending up in mental hospitals. Examples are many.

As one of the successful financial planners confided “My high net worth clients do not need pure financial planning really, because they have enough to retire on for this generation and, in some cases, for the next as well. What they really need is what you call Total Wealth Planning. I have to be more than a financial planner to satisfy these clients.”

The Wealth Management sales propositions are often flawed due to the lack of understanding of the client. The clients do not or cannot articulate the non-financial side of their needs. But the non-financial side is also wealth. At times, they do matter more than the financial needs. The same applies to risk. Non-financial risks eg. risk of divorce, risk of mental and physical health problems etc. are difficult to articulate but they can affect the wealth including financial wealth.

Total Wealth approach puts these in a neat quadrant and calls it Total Wealth Quadrant (TWQ). A range of metrics to measure the “balance” of different drivers of Total Wealth is developed to delve deep into clients’ Total Wealth. Only when you press the “non-financial buttons” people come up with the total picture. Two different scores are calculated using the computer-based calculator.

Life’s goals like career, money, assets etc. are important but Total Wealth is more important.