Key Takeaways
- A significant percentage of millennial and Gen X investors lie about their spending or saving habits.
- However, millennial investors rank honesty as the most important quality in their financial advisors.
- Without honesty, you can’t expect progress.
“All progress begins with telling the truth.” That’s a quote from Dan Sullivan, of The Strategic Coach® Program. This rings true in so many areas in life, and that includes our financial lives.
Now, this is important because, according to a recent Investopedia article, about 30% of millennials lie about their saving and spending habits. For Gen Xers, that percentage came in around 20%.
Interestingly, the article goes on to say that millennials rank honesty as the top quality they look for in a financial advisor, with 89% of them saying it was important. The second and third most important qualities? Trustworthiness and having their best interests in mind, both at 86%. And all of these qualities ranked higher than investment performance!
This poses a dichotomy, doesn’t it? Investors want honesty, but may not always be honest themselves. The reasons for this tend to be rooted in shame and embarrassment. It’s understandable – admitting to overspending and not saving isn’t the easiest thing to do.
However, if you’re not being honest with your advisor, you can’t achieve that financial progress. If the advisor is being given incorrect information, it makes it difficult for them to help. Unsurprisingly, advisors often find themselves in the role of a therapist or psychologist, because getting people to be forthcoming when they weren’t previously, requires behavioral change.
Shame and embarrassment occur all the time in life, and they’re just emotions we have to deal with. Really sitting down and telling yourself the truth, and taking the plunge of being honest, will make a significant difference. The sooner you start, the sooner you make progress. The sooner you take the complexity of your life and simplify it, the sooner you’ll see progress.
We all want to see progress, otherwise why bother going to an advisor? Why do it if you’re just going to go in the wrong direction? You’d just be fooling yourself and wasting time and energy. Instead, embrace honesty, let the chips fall where they may, and progress to where you want to go. Until next time, enjoy.