Ep 015: Why Life Planning Is Simply Financial Planning Done Right with George Kinder
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 11 April 2017
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You’ve undoubtedly heard of “life planning” within the financial planning world, but we’ve got the originator himself with us today on Financial Advisor Success.
In this episode, George Kinder talks about his early career and the inception of life planning. He shares the three questions he asks of new clients to get to know them, and the short- and long-term goals he often has clients identify. For George, life planning is the first step of any good financial plan - get to know your client well, and then figure out how you can help them become who they’re meant to be.
George also shares how life planning became so popular in the first place and how he transitioned away from and sold his financial planning firm to teach life planning full time. He also talks about the other passions in his life, and why finding and holding onto freedom is the main motivating factor for all of his work.
Get the full show notes and transcript for this episode at: https://www.kitces.com/15
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with financial planner, speaker and consultant Michael Kitsas, to hear stories of how leading financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the |
| 0:22.1 | next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:29.2 | Welcome to the 15th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is |
| 0:35.0 | George Kinder. George is known as the father of the life planning movement, a way of delivering financial |
| 0:40.1 | planning that focuses on delving into a client's real goals, the ones that go beyond the money |
| 0:44.9 | and help them to experience real personal freedom. |
| 0:47.7 | And George talks about the life planning process that he created, about how to help |
| 0:51.7 | clients figure out for themselves what that real freedom means to them |
| 0:54.8 | and turned it into a program that he's now trained for more than 3,000 financial planners |
| 0:59.7 | across 30 countries on six continents. What's fascinating about George, though, is that he actually |
| 1:05.2 | started out as a math major in Harvard and then became a CPA, earning the bronze medal on the |
| 1:10.1 | CPA exam for the third highest score in his entire state. In CPA, earning the bronze medal on the CPA exam for the third |
| 1:11.3 | highest score in his entire state. In fact, it was only after forming a niche advisory practice |
| 1:17.1 | delivering advanced tax strategies for self-employed psychologists and therapists and going |
| 1:22.8 | to some of their CE sessions to network that George began an exploration of the intersections between |
| 1:29.2 | financial planning and psychology that led him to ultimately found the life planning movement |
| 1:33.9 | and create his famous three questions of life planning. In this podcast, we explore both the |
| 1:39.3 | history of life planning itself and George's three questions, how financial planners can get |
| 1:44.1 | better engage |
| 1:44.8 | their clients, the five pursuits that most clients articulate in life planning process, which |
| 1:49.6 | rarely have anything to do with traditional financial planning goals like retirement, |
| 1:54.4 | and where life planning fits into the world of financial planning today. |
... |
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