Growing gardens of
Knowledge begins with seeds of
Curiosity

I spend a lot of time thinking about happiness: what it might be, and how different lines of thinking or actions can move people closer to it, or farther from it.

Happiness is the central focus of financial planning. What on earth is the point of accumulating wealth if not happiness?

Aristotle talked about how if someone is rich, a person may ask “but are they happy?” You may have fancy possessions, wear the best clothes, have the biggest house, yet someone always asks, “are you happy?”

Someone might be prodigiously athletic, or brilliantly smart, or famous, or pious in their faith, or all of the above, and someone always asks, “but are they happy?”

On the other hand, if someone is happy, Aristotle points out, no one asks “but are they rich? Do they wear the best clothes? Do they have the biggest house? Are they healthy? Are they smart?” Happiness requires no qualifications.

Whatever it is, happiness is the goal of having goals.

But… what is happiness exactly? I don’t know if language is an appropriate tool for answering that question.

Happiness seems to be a feeling (for which I have no words) that shows up when conditions are right. One such condition, I believe, is the sense of purpose and fulfillment that arises when a person learns how something works, what it is for, and how to use it.

Why wouldn’t there be a positive emotional reaction to the learning process? For most of humanity’s time on the planet, our survival has depended on it. Also, like breathing, tasting, smelling, and feeling, learning is something that humans do for their whole lives. Learning something at age 70 is fundamentally no different than learning something at age 2.

If knowledge is like a garden, curiosity is a seed, and the learning process is the water, soil, and fertilizer. Learning is a system that metabolizes curiosity to produce knowledge. The purpose of devoting the time and energy to this whole process is to experience happiness.

What on earth does this possibly have to do with finance?

I’ve learned over the years that financial planning is a perfect substrate for growing knowledge gardens.

In the way learning has helped humans survive and thrive in an at-times harsh and violent landscape, there is a component of necessity to learning how the financial system works.

There is a seemingly never-ending array of financial ecosystems. You can think of your financial situation – your income, your expenses, your tax bracket, your investments – as a forest, or a coral reef. Depending on where you are in that environment, there will be certain problems to solve and opportunities to solve them. Learning one thing often requires learning about three others.

As income and expenses change over time, so do the problems and opportunities unique to that evolving financial environment.

The more you know, the more you know how much you don’t know.

The same way a garden withers without a gardener devoting time and attention to getting better at gardening, there is a never a point in a person’s life when they can simply stop paying attention to their finances without exposing themselves to costly mistakes.

There is always a better way to do things, new approaches to old problems, and old approaches to new problems. There is never a shortage of stuff to learn about.

For this reason, education might be the first and most important step in a financial plan. Understanding where someone has come from, where they are, and how to get to where they want to go requires a mutual learning process.

The point of that process is to find an area where a client’s knowledge of themselves can intersect with a planner’s knowledge of how different tools may apply to the client’s goals. The more tools the planner understands, and the better the planner understands the client, the more value he or she can potentially offer.

If you would like to learn more about the tools you are already using, and gain a broader understanding of instruments and strategies that are available to you now, we would love to learn more about you.