Well friends we have officially reached the end of Back to School: Investing Basics, our first of many monthly financial education series.

Writing this content was a meaningful experience for me because it gave me an opportunity to reflect on my own life, pre-finance career; how little I knew about money management, and all the things I wish I had been taught about the world of investing.

If you’ve been following along this month I hope you’ve learned something new that will help you to be a more informed manager of your own money. If you’re feeling insecure about your level of financial education let me assure you that you are not alone. A lot of my days are spent educating my clients on the basics of money management because despite what you may think, a lot of this stuff is not common knowledge. There’s nothing to be insecure about! Honestly if I had to choose one piece of advice to end this series with it would be to stop thinking you know less about money than the rest of the world. It’s not true and that mindset is doing nothing but holding you back. Try to worry less, and please don’t be afraid to ask more questions. Have a question for me? Click HERE

To wrap up this month I’d like to share a conversation I had with my colleague and dear friend Angel Georgijev, where we chatted about how we help our clients overcome money management insecurities.

Angel is a Certified Financial Planner® based in London, Ontario and she has been in the business for 22 years. She has won many industry awards and was recently named one of Wealth Professional’s 5-Star Leading Women Wealth. She is smart, driven and successful, but more importantly she is super down to earth and has never lost sight of her commitment to help her clients build strong money management foundations. During our conversation we reflected on the reasons why people are so prone to feel insecure about their level of financial knowledge, how the financial services industry has perpetuated these insecurities and how to tell if your financial advisor or planner truly has your back. You can read some of the highlights from our conversation below, or click here to watch the recorded version.

Kylie: Why do you think that it’s so important to do budgeting work with your clients?

Angel: I think I learned throughout my work with clients, it became evident that irrespective of how much money a client has or how much they earn, you know, a lot of zeros doesn’t abstain people from having money and budgeting problems.

Kylie: A lot of zeros, meaning like they have like a high salary

Angel: You got it. People typically will spend up to their income, so the challenge becomes if you had potentially less desirable habits when you’re income was lower, those simply just get magnified as you earn more money. So it became evident to me that cash flow really is the key to success in finance.

Kylie: Yeah, I I agree so much. And I think you touch on something so important, which is it doesn’t matter how much money you make, the question is, are you living within your means? No matter how much money a client is making I still want to know what their living costs are. I find that clients who earn less than a certain level of income are very open to these conversations and they welcome that help, whereas once they reach a higher level of income they’re like, this is boring. This doesn’t interest me or apply to me, and you know why are we talking about budgeting? I’m past that. How do you deal with that?

Angel: Ah, great question. Because typically you’re right, those clients can come in and go this is beneath me. They don’t actually say that, but that’s kind of the vibe they’re giving you, and I come back say listen, I want to take a look at what your typical monthly expenditures are because there might be a better way of doing this and maybe cleaning things up to potentially simplify your life. It really just gives us a more clear picture of where they are at, in order to us to help identify if there are little tweaks and changes we can implement just to make life easier.

Kylie: How much of financial planning do you think is allocation of resources and how much of it is habit building?

Angel: Yeah, I do think there is a huge tendency to assume everything with money and finance is technical. I think a lot of people assume it’s money in, this is my return, this is my result, boom I’m done nothing else to consider, which is incredibly limiting and incredibly incorrect in the real world. It’s not that simple. We are all unique our behaviors are unique, our feelings about money and the emotional attachment we have to money, finances, planning, you know, is it anxiety inducing? Do you dread talking about it? Do you get excited talking about it? All of these things are huge factors, and I think the biggest gift we can give ourselves quite frankly, is acknowledging who we are to start with.

Kylie: Your money story and your past has a lot to do with what your present, right? And some of that is – it can be trauma, it can be your upbringing, it can be a neurodivergence like autism or ADHD that you’re trying to like shore up dopamine shortages there are so many reasons a person can struggle with money management.

Angel: Yeah, but recognize that those are your natural tendencies and let’s work within those parameters. I think in the early stages of my career I was really gung. Go and felt like we could do everything, solve all the problems in one day; and for some people, that’s incredibly overwhelming. It’s too much change, too fast, too quick. So I find doing it bite size pieces is a lot more palatable for clients. The really important part to me, is giving them insight into what that path is going to look like. We’re going to start here and as we develop, let’s make it a goal that in the next year we’re going to start doing this. Then let’s do this after; so that they understand what is coming and what to expect.

Kylie: I love talking about financial goals because I find that in our industry, too often we send our clients these questionnaires -I shouldn’t say we because neither of us do this – but some advisors send their clients these intake questionnaires and one of the questions is – long form answer – what are your goals? And the client is expected to try and like extract all this information that has been swirling around in their brains for their whole lives. In my opinion, what’s wrong with that is that answering that question is at least 50% of the job that we’re getting hired to do.

Angel: As advisors were naturally tuned to try to quantify things and to use those analytics and use those data points. I find we love the term goals however, I think it’s just too broad a term. There should be a process of walking them through that and helping to slowly clarify them (their goals) over time and saying, listen, you don’t need to have all the answers today. I think giving people space and grace to realize they don’t have to know the answers is you know, you watch people’s shoulders come down, and they start to breathe a little better.

Kylie: That’s exactly it. We are clearing a path so that these things start to overtime, become more visible

Angel: You got it.

Kylie: There are a lot of people who want and would love to work with a financial advisor or planner and they don’t because there seems to be this public mis – I don’t know if I want to call it a misconception because I think that this is very much born from systemic flaws in our industry, but there are a lot of people out there who are insecure to even come to a first meeting because they feel for whatever reason that their level of financial knowledge is not at the point where it needs to be, which seems backwards because that’s the point of coming to us – to get help moving forward financially and take yourself to the next level; and to become more informed and educated about the world of money and money management.

Angel: I think our industry is really missing the boat on the value of education and the value of some basic knowledge that most of us did not receive. I think it was kind of assumed that our parents were going to give it to us (financial literacy). So many people don’t have those money management basics and I find most clients don’t want to admit they don’t know things because they are worried and intimidated that when they sit in front of someone like you or I, that it is presumed they already do know and if they admit that they don’t know, then that’s going to make them less than. Part of our responsibility is to go back to some basics and make sure we have these basics covered. This is something I love to do. It’s about creating a building block along the way, and saying I’m going to meet you where you’re at and work our way forward from there. I’m happy to tell you everything I know, but that’s not going to happen in one day. We’re going to start here, and we’re going to build as we go. At the end of the day my biggest priority is that you feel as though you know enough to be comfortable in your (financial) decision and confident that you made an informed decision. I think that’s incredibly helpful and empowering to clients.

Kylie: We all have clients that will come in and say things like “I’ve done a lot of reading on AI ETF’s or dividend stocks for example, but they’re not connecting that investment to a particular goal that they have. They’re not saying I want to achieve this objective and I think that this investment is the best choice to get me there. They’re just looking at market trends and they’re like, OK, which one of these things is going to make me the most money?

Angel: Yeah they Google. Listen Google is great. It’s a powerful tool, but if you think about it, Google simply reaffirms what you tell it. If I type in “is the earth flat? “ I am going to get a barrage of things that tell me the Earth is flat. It is reaffirming the statement you’ve made into it. So if you type “are AI generated dividend funds the best?” you are going to find a bunch of sites that go “they sure are!”

Kylie: Yeah, you’re going to find every person on the Internet who feels that way and has stated it publicly, even if it’s wrong.

Angel: You got it. I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of Googling our (health) symptoms and the unfortunate truth is, it seems to not matter what symptom you put in there, we’re dying of whatever that symptom is, including a paper cut. Context is a beautiful a necessary thing. At the end of the day, it’s your money, your life. There are literally thousands of products available. Google is not going to narrow that down for you. What is though, is getting to know who you are, what you need, and what you want to accomplish,

Kylie: Ok so that is a great point. We’re trying to reassure people that you don’t have to walk into a meeting knowing at all, you just have to have an idea of who you are and what you want, but that is little bit dreamy pie in the sky because the problem is not every financial planner or advisor is a good advisor, and I think the part that scares people the most is walking into a meeting and not being able to tell whether the person who is sitting across from the table is going to give them good advice or not, right? How can you tell when the advisor or planner that you’re speaking to has your best interest at heart? And how can you tell when you’re being maybe just getting a sales pitch?

Angel: I think part of it part of is that gut feeling. I always say to any new client who comes my way, you know every client has to like me just a little and they kind of laugh but if you don’t even like me a little bit, then you will never trust me and there will be things that you didn’t share with me simply because you didn’t feel comfortable. And so, if I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t know what stresses you out, what keeps you up at night, what makes you happy, if there’s an expectation you have that you haven’t shared with me, then that’s an expectation we’re not going to meet either today or down the road, because I didn’t know it existed. You need to enjoy working with the person to a certain extent – you don’t have to be best friends – but you have to like that person a little bit because money is a very intimate topic and if you’re not working with someone you’re comfortable with that’s a recipe for disaster. Also, you can look at what credentials the advisor has; what experience they have, ask them what types of clients they typically work with. Are you that kind of person? Do you fit into that mold? Try to find somebody that’s going to meet you at your age and stage and help propel you forward. Also do they hold the right licenses? What designations do they have?

Kylie: There are so many designations and so many of them are crap.

Angel: You are correct. Yeah. And that’s an industry fault. Like what is a financial planner? As you know in our industry, we’re working with title reform to hopefully make this clearer for clients.

Kylie: Yeah and I mean like there are so many red flags, right? Like you should be able to go into a meeting with an advisor and that advisor or planner should be meeting you at your level. If you’re like, I don’t really know what I want, but I just want to feel like I’m, you know, making good financial decisions or whatever it is, the advisor should be asking what does that mean to you instead being like “Oh do I have the investment for you, or the insurance policy for you? Like if the conversation is always being funneled back to a product, run.

Angel: You got it going to product first. Yeah, run. Absolutely. Also don’t be scared to ask them how they make money. It is part of the conversation, the hiring process, and you should ask.

Kylie: One hundred percent. Ok Angel I am not going to take up anymore of your time. Thank you for sharing your time and your insights with us. Do you have any parting thoughts or words on the subject of investor confidence?

Angel: I think the best advice you can give to anyone is just take a step forward. It might be scary, but lean into it. I think I think people will be pleasantly surprised that the experience is not so bad.