Our updated website is now live! And with that I have some news to share: We now offer financial coaching, where we will be taking a closer look at the behavioural side of finance and how to help keep emotions from derailing long-term financial success. Whether it’s designing a plan for your retirement goals, budgeting, implementing immediate debt control or understanding your relationship with money, we want to be there to guide you.
Over the past 22 years as a financial planner, I have come to realise the importance of the psychology of money and our behaviour towards it. I have always been fascinated with how much our childhood understanding and relationship with money, the environment we grew up in, our parents’ relationship with money and what we perceive as happiness through wealth, all have an impact on our future money decisions.
Morgan Housel wrote that “doing well with money has little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave. And behaviour is hard to teach, even to really smart people. A genius who loses control of their emotions can be a financial disaster. The opposite is also true. Ordinary people with no financial education can be wealthy if they have a handful of behavioural skills that have nothing to do with formal measures of intelligence.”
We think about and are taught about money in ways that are too much like physics (with rules and laws) and not enough like psychology (with emotions and nuance). Money is everywhere, it affects all of us, and confuses most of us. Everyone thinks about it a little differently. It offers lessons on things that apply to many areas of life, like risk, confidence, and happiness.
Few topics offer a more powerful magnifying glass that helps explain why people behave the way they do than money. It is one of the greatest shows on Earth.
We need to relook at the way we approach money. Big goals take big commitment. Doing something new or scary is always better (and more likely to happen) with a partner or a guide. That is where our financial coaching comes in. Financial coaching is a specialised type of coaching that helps clients develop financial literacy and money management skills.
The more you earn, the more you spend, the bigger the house, the car, the fancier the restaurants, the more elaborate the holidays, the higher the debt ratio. We are bombarded by “the good life” on every single media platform. We believe all those luxuries will make us happy.
Using your money to buy time and options has a lifestyle benefit few luxury goods can compete with. More than your salary. More than the size of your house. More than the prestige of your job. Control over doing what you want, when you want to, with the people you want to, is the broadest lifestyle variable that will create true happiness.
Be nicer and less flashy. No one is impressed with your possessions as much as you are. You might think you want a fancy car or a nice watch. But what you probably want is respect and admiration. And you’re more likely to gain those things through kindness and humility than horsepower and chrome.
We would love to be a mentor to help grow your skills, make better decisions, gain new perspectives, or provide you with the tools that can help with goal-setting and intentional living. Whatever you want to achieve through our financial coaching sessions, we would love to guide you on your journey to financial freedom.
Stay Savvy,
Jacques
MOMBERG CONSULTING 