David J. Murphy

“A fool and his money are soon parted.”

The origin of this quote is disputed, but it is commonly attributed to an English poet and playwright named Thomas Tusser. Tusser lived from 1524 to 1580. The proverb describes people who are foolish enough to spend money too quickly on unimportant things.

An even more ancient proverb states it similarly: “Precious treasure and oil are in a wise man’s dwelling, but a foolish man devours it.”¹

In the English language we have numerous adjectives to describe how people handle their money: Prudent, profligate, squanderer, indulgent, thrifty, frugal, penurious, parsimonious, stingy, careless, wasteful, cheap or high roller.

Behind all these epithets, there lies a specific kind of relationship that people have with money.

Point: People can be known for many things including how they relate to money.

What Is Your Client’s Relationship With Money?
Every client who you work with as an Independent Financial Professional (IFP) has a complex relationship when it comes to money. They approach spending, saving, investing, and giving based largely on two factors: First, the nurturing and training they received during childhood about money and how to use it; and second, the way they stored or catalogued this information in their mind. People who grew up going to church perhaps developed the habit of tithing. If the client was raised by parents who valued education, they may prioritize college savings.

Think of a horizontal line representing a spectrum. On the one hand, the client may have grown up financially comfortable, even privileged. On the other hand, the client may have grown up in poverty. Many clients were raised in the vast middle. These experiences play out in the way clients behave, what they value, and how they relate with their money.

Clients are sometimes insecure or irresponsible with money based on feelings of scarcity or entitlement. These are each an indication of insecurity. Conspicuous consumption is as much a sign of insecurity as complete risk avoidance and stinginess.

Discovering the Client’s Relationship with Money
An experienced IFP understands that the secret to meeting the client’s needs can only happen after gaining a deep understanding of the client’s priorities, principles, prejudices, and passions. These, in turn, are uncovered through strategic questioning.

How, then, does an IFP discover the client’s relationship with money?

By asking these, and similar, questions:

• Where do your feelings and beliefs about money come from?
• Looking back on your adult years, is your history replete with personal examples of making good financial decisions, and if not, why?
• What kinds of situations cause you to be hesitant before taking action in issues regarding money?
• Are you generally impulsive with money, or do you have the discipline to say “no?”
• When did you grasp the importance of saving money?
• What caused you to form a conservative or aggressive approach to investing?
• When you contemplate leaving money for your children, do you trust them to make good decisions with the money they will inherit from you?
• Does money make you feel anxious, confident, envious, or insecure?
• Do you feel pangs of envy when others appear to have more than you?

Point: Asking clients important questions forces them to take time to think about their relationship with money and how their values were formed. The key to strengthening your client’s relationship with money is understanding what’s driving their financial beliefs and behaviors.

Dealing with Clients and Their Life Partners
Arguments about money early in a relationship have been found to be a primary predictor of whether their relationship will last. Married couples and life partners represent two distinct and extremely independent streams of money experience and training. Clients enter into these lifelong (hopefully) relationships without totally understanding the vast differences in each person’s respective values and opinions.

As an IFP you must act as facilitator of the process of discovery. To do this effectively, use a simple three-part model: Wealth Acquisition, Spending Habits, and Wealth Management.

Wealth Acquisition
Wealth Acquisition discovery is less about how your client and the client’s partner acquire their wealth, but rather, how much money is necessary for them each to feel secure. Consider a married couple, Steve and Barbara. Steve grew up in a well-to-do family and never even had to work while in secondary school or college. In his mind, the acquisition of money is an irrelevant pursuit.

Meanwhile, Barbara was the oldest of three kids and began working when only fifteen years old because her father passed away and she had to help support the family. Even after she and Steve have acquired significant wealth, and have considerable means, Barbara can still fall prey to the idea that “you can never have enough.” Barbara is not so much a greedy person as she is in need of accumulating money in sufficient quantity to make her feel secure as she and Steve provide for themselves and others in their care.

Spending Habits
Some clients seem to be people who make it their personal mission to get rid of money as soon as it comes in. Other clients appear to believe that money will be taken away from them, which leads to an anxious attachment to money, and they may even begin hiding money.
As a young man I bought The Human Comedy, a monster series of some 90 novels and novellas by Honoré de Balzac. I admire Balzac for how he illuminates the virtues and vices of human beings in compelling stories.

One of my favorite novels in his series is entitled, Eugénie Grandet (published in 1833).

The story is saturated with people struggling in their relationship with money. One character commits suicide because of his impending bankruptcy. The action of the novel concerns a woman whose name serves as the title. She is the daughter of a wealthy but tightfisted, miserly man who lives a simple life in the provincial town of Saumur in Western France. Felix Grandet desires to arrange the most financially advantageous marriage for his daughter. Unfortunately, Eugénie’s naiveté and inexperience lead her to fall in love with an unworthy man, her penniless cousin. She eventually pays his debts so that he can marry another woman.

“Miserliness is the vice of stagnant souls.”² Thus, Balzac defines Felix Grandet.

As an IFP you have likely encountered people for whom parting with money is like having a finger removed. Parsimony does not lend itself to adventure. Hence, the word “stagnate.”

Also in the same novel, Balzac wrote, “To know how to wait is the great secret of success.”³ Just as you work with people who crimp and clip coupons because of a fear of spending too much, you meet people whose eyes are on the future, and who are intentionally saving as much as possible to achieve a goal, to reach a dream. These clients are willing to forego immediate satisfaction in order to fulfill a much larger objective.

Balzac draws on this theme in many of his novels. Here again in Eugénie Grandet he wrote, “All human power is a compound of time and patience.”⁴

As you work with clients, it will be helpful to see them in terms of their place in the spectrum between self-indulgence and patient endurance. Their exact position likely became clear the first time you discussed your fees.

Wealth Management
Clients sometimes present a challenge to the IFP trying to help them achieve financial success. The client who is a compulsive spender is often a poor money manager. The client who is completely disorganized with money may procrastinate when paying bills. He or she may be totally unaware of the true condition of his or her finances.

Money management covers a wide range of financial behaviors, from how clients pay their bills to how they manage their investments.

Again from Eugénie Grandet: “Money is the mind’s stall, where it fattens itself up first, before coming out into the market.”

Point: Each client and client partner represents a tendency, a proclivity, often unconscious, to be either ultra conservative or unreasonably immature in how money flows in and out of their accounts and hands.

Changing Perspectives, Not Personalities
As an IFP, you are not a change agent in underlying personality types. You must work with the client as you encounter him or her. There truly is no personality profile that is better than any other in terms of achieving financial success. It is less personality than it is habits. The only reason anyone changes habits is because they become faced with a new perspective.

Examples:

• The annual physical reveals a dramatic increase in Lipid Panel Blood results. Total Cholesterol rose above 240, LDL soared above 100, and HDL dropped below 40. The assumption that all was well is replaced with the perspective that health is not something to take for granted. Obviously, eating habits and exercise habits must change.
• A friend passes away without life insurance. Seeing the surviving family members scramble to meet monthly expenses, it becomes apparent that more personal life insurance is required to provide for dependents.
• Present value calculations can be highly beneficial in changing perspectives. Say the goal is to have $1,000,000 in liquid assets in 20 years. To calculate the present value of $1,000,000 20 years from now, the required formula is PV = FV / (1 + r)^n; where PV is the present value, FV is the future value ($1,000,000), r is the discount rate (interest rate), and n is the number of years (20). Assuming a discount rate of five percent, the present value is $148,644. If current liquid assets add up to only $50,000, the pace of wealth accumulation must increase dramatically.

IFP Toolkit
In order to change perspectives, you first gather data in order to gain a complete picture of the client’s assets, liabilities, income, and expenses. You help the client clearly grasp current net worth, assets, liabilities, and liquid or working capital. To measure the pace at which wealth will likely be accumulated, you take the temperature of the client’s risk tolerance and risk capacity. Then you go to work. Your toolkit includes questions, like these:

• What is your best- and worst-case retirement scenario?
• Are you facing the scary possibility of outliving your money?
• Are you prepared to handle the financial realities associated with disability, long-term care, or death?
• How do you intend to help your children with the cost of higher education?
• How do you intend to pay off your existing debt and avoid taking on new debt in the future?
• What tips and strategies are you willing to use in order to create budgets that will help you meet your goals in the short and the long term?

Point: Clients need to become aware of what their current beliefs about money are as well as the results that those beliefs create in their lives. As an IFP your number one job is to place clients firmly in reality and change their perspective from what they think is true to what is actually true. Your best tools are questions.

Summary
As an IFP you need to keep in mind that each client you meet has a complex relationship when it comes to money. You need to determine how they were influenced during childhood by money and how to use it, and how they have wrestled with financial realities throughout adulthood.

You must uncover where each person sits on the spectrum from Scarcity to Security, to Entitlement. To begin changing the client’s perspectives you need to discover the client’s relationship with money, and then ask really good questions.

While you are not in the personality-changing business, you are in the perspective-changing business. You already know the deep satisfaction you feel when a client tells you how much freedom they are now experiencing, how light real debt-reduction truly feels, and how having a roadmap gives them confidence they never knew before.

Balzac predicted that your own satisfaction would come from the positive impact you have on your clients. He wrote:

“Someday you will find out that there is far more happiness in another’s happiness than in your own.”⁵

Footnotes:

1. Proverbs 21:20, ESV Study Bible. 2008. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
2. Eugenie Grandet (The Human Comedy), Honoré de Balzac (Author), Marion Ayton Crawford (Introduction), Penguin Classics; 16th edition (April 30, 1955).
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

One of my favorite authors is Annie Dillard. In a book called The Writing Life, she wrote:

“The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot’s turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm’s blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence.”

I am not a writer, but I can relate to what she describes just in terms of life in general. There are days that feel like I am riding behind a stunt pilot turning barrel rolls. I sometimes wake up looking for the priorities that should define my activity. In that sense I am like the inchworm rearing up and blindly searching. Thankfully, very few days have felt like alligator wrestling.

When I was a child, someone gave me a spinning top as a gift. I spent many enjoyable moments looking at it spinning beside me on my desk. According to Wikipedia, “A spinning top, or simply a top, is a toy with a squat body and a sharp point at the bottom, designed to be spun on its vertical axis, balancing on the tip due to the gyroscopic effect.”¹

“Gyroscopic what?” Whenever the top slowed down, it wobbled, and eventually fell over. The primary force working against it was gravity. Gravity, however, operates as a force primarily on the vertical plane. It pulls down, not over. Gravity acted down through the top’s center.

A spinning top’s stability in an upright position depends on the centripetal force exceeding the pull of gravity. I was the one who gave the top its centripetal force by spinning it with my fingers. The greater the force my fingers exerted, the longer it would spin.

Point: The two things we can count on in this spinning life:

• Things slow down
• Things fall down

A Plan to Spot
The average walking speed of a healthy adult is three to four miles per hour (MPH), depending on age, fitness level, terrain, and other factors. Assume I am in better shape than most (questionable) and could walk four MPH. If I walked directly east, I would actually be going backward at a rate of 803 MPH. Why? Because in Cincinnati, OH, where I sit right now, I am at 39.1031° N latitude. At this latitude the earth is spinning around its axis at 807.3644 MPH. I may feel like I am making progress relative to what is around me, but that masks the truth.

Similarly, someone who has money set aside in a savings account earning 3.0 percent, when inflation is 2.5 percent and the applicable Federal tax rate is 18 percent, is actually standing still.

To gauge any kind of financial progress accurately, one needs to have a broad perspective and reliable measuring tools.

As an Independent Financial Professional (IFP), you may be unaware of the importance that a financial plan offers for giving your clients such much needed perspective.

Question: Have you ever seen a ballerina spin on her toes?

Maybe you have seen that her head and body are spinning seemingly separately. When a ballerina spins, she executes a dancing technique called “spotting.” “Spotting is performed by rotating the body and head at different rates. While the body rotates smoothly at a relatively constant speed, the head periodically rotates much faster and then stops, so as to fix the dancer’s gaze on a single location (the spotting point, or simply the spot).”²

For clients, life is a daily invitation to spin. Work, family, home, entertainment, volunteering, and hobbies make the pace of simple day-to-day life a blurred result from the feeling of spinning.

Point: What all clients really need in order to maintain their financial well-being and money-sense while spinning through life is a fixed point to look at and keep in focus. A financial plan to your client is the economic equivalent of a ballerina’s “spotting point.”

Not Monuments, but Footprints
Have you ever had a client who sought, and worked hard to develop, a financial plan, only to then place it in a cabinet or desk drawer never to be seen again? To clients like this, a financial plan is a monument.

In the Old Testament Book of Psalms, there is a portion called the Songs of Ascent. These 15 Psalms (120-134) were likely sung by Jewish people making the pilgrimage “up” to Jerusalem. (That city is topographically at a higher elevation than most inhabited places in Palestine; therefore, walking from any direction toward the city is actually a trip uphill.)

American author William Faulkner once described these 15 Psalms of Ascent this way:

“They are not monuments, but footprints. A monument only says, ‘At least I got this far,’ while a footprint says, ‘This is where I was when I moved again.’”³

Point: As an IFP concerned that your clients keep themselves always moving forward and “up,” you need to disabuse them of the notion that their financial plan is, in any way, a monument. Rather, a financial plan is a spotting point, a means of measuring both the direction and velocity of their financial footsteps.

Control and Security
My wife and I found a friend and an inspiration in our Tennessee pastor named Scott Sparks. Sadly, this wonderful man passed away in February, 2018. His surviving wife bravely recorded her journey of grief in Social Media posts, one each succeeding Saturday morning. One morning she wrote this:“I don’t know why I associate control with security.”⁴

Honestly, one of the most important things you do as an IFP is to dispel your clients the notion that they can control their financial lives to the extent that they will necessarily be secure.

People with solid financial plans faced the devastation of Monday, October 19, 1987, known as “Black Monday.” On that date, the DJIA fell 508 points (22.6 percent).

Similarly, all the planning in the world could not have foreseen, nor entirely prepared, clients from the Great Recession of 2008-9.

Raging inflation and high interest rates are beyond your clients’ control and can threaten their financial security. With your wise counsel, they can however control the damage and plan the next steps.

Point: A financial plan does not protect against financial crises, but rather, prepares the paths leading away from, and out of, the devastation. The control in a financial plan is all about the response.

Where?
“Probably the most well-known of the paintings of Gaugin, the French impressionist painter, is hanging in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. On the upper left corner of the canvas he wrote in French: ‘Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?’”⁵

As an IFP you are a tour guide and a travel advisor. You help clients move from and to. While the three questions Gaugin left in his painting are essentially metaphysical and philosophical, they are equally important in financial terms.

A financial plan needs to be regularly updated. The client’s footprints are recorded. The plan provides a spotting point to see just how far away from center the client’s finances have moved.

Clients on the way to financial freedom and independence often forget where they came from. It is your role as IFP to help them celebrate their achievements, keep them humble and grounded, and remember that although they have risen above subsistence living, other people have not.

Equally true, clients lose track of where they are heading. You are responsible for reminding them of the goals behind the financial disciplines they are practicing. With your help, clients maintain their best habits. They keep their eyes on the prize.

Lastly, clients get confused as to who and what is important to them, what they want to leave as a legacy, and what good they can accomplish through the assets they have accumulated. How they use their money says a lot about who they are.

Summary
We live in a world where things slow down, and then fall down.

I hold IFPs in high esteem. They are sometimes unsung heroes. Behind many successful people is an IFP who kept the financial plan as a spotting point, refused to let the clients view the plan as a monument, and measured both the direction and velocity of the client’s footsteps.

Because of you, your clients remember where they have come from and where they are going. With your help, they become better human beings and make a greater contribution to the world by the way they steward what they have.

Penny Sparks wrote something very profound:

“God is not careless or random with my days. He will equip me for anything if I let Him. I have as much of a God as I have faith to receive.”⁶

As an IFP, think of yourself as the someone who can help clients avoid acting randomly with what they have been given to steward, as a clarion voice that helps them prepare for the future, and the cheerleader helping them stretch what they believe to be possible.

Footnotes:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_top.
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotting_(dance_technique).
3. William Faulkner, quoted in Sam di Bonaventura’s program notes to Elie Siegmeister’s Symphony no. 5, Baltimore Symphony Concert, May 5, 1977.
4. “My Saturday Morning Posts,” Penny Sparks, WestBow Press (September 11, 2019), ISBN-10: 1973670909.
5. “Name above All Names,” Page 160, Copyright © 2013 by Alistair Begg and Sinclair B. Ferguson, Published by Crossway,1300 Crescent Street, Wheaton, Illinois 60187, Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-3775-2.
6. “My Saturday Morning Posts,” Penny Sparks, WestBow Press (September 11, 2019), ISBN-10: 1973670909.

Right before my wife and I went on vacation a friend of mine sent me a book to read. I love reading. The genre that appeals most to me is nonfiction, especially history, biography, nature, letters, faith, and philosophy. Therefore, when Dominion by Tom Holland arrived in the mail, I was delighted.

The New York Times described the work as “A galloping tour of Christianity’s influence across the last 2,000 years.”

Holland is not an apologist for Christianity. He ascribes nothing in human history to God at all. As a historian, he dismisses the influence of anything supernatural. All this to say, when he attributes revolutionary impact in world history to Christianity, he is doing so as an objective historian.

One subject in particular truly captured my attention: Charity.

Charity Follows Belief
In ancient times, the poor, infirm, imprisoned, widowed, orphaned, destitute, and disabled found themselves cast out and neglected.

“Lepers and slaves were not the most defenseless of God’s children. Across the Roman world, wailing at the sides of roads or on rubbish tips, babies abandoned by their parents were a common sight. Others might be dropped down drains, there to perish in the hundreds.”¹ Deformed infants were condemned for the good of the state. “Girls in particular were liable to be winnowed ruthlessly. Those who were rescued from the wayside would invariably be raised as slaves. Brothels were full of women who, as infants, had been abandoned by their parents.”²

Except for a few tribes and the Jews, everyone else took the exposure of unwanted children for granted. “Until, that was, the emergence of a Christian people.”³

Why? What made the difference? “A concern for the downtrodden could not merely be summoned into existence out of nothing.”⁴ No, there were four philosophical nuances to Christian thought that turned the world upside down:

1. All people are made in the image of God. Everyone deserves respect.
2. All are alike in their sinful, fallen natures. Everyone makes mistakes.
3. All can come to the same salvation, without partiality. Second chances ought to extend to everyone.
4. There is no longer free nor slave, rich nor poor, male nor female, Greek nor Jew. We are all equal.

Holland describes the actions that followed this set of beliefs: “Every week, in churches across the Roman world, collections for orphans and widows, for the imprisoned, and the shipwrecked, and the sick had been raised.”⁵ The early followers of Christ reached common agreement that above any differences they might have, all would “remember the poor.”

Point: The notion of living open-handedly and being generously mindful of the needs of those less fortunate arises from what we value and believe.

Real Worth of Wealth
In Independent Financial Services Distribution, we serve people who occupy the many layers of the wealth spectrum. We encounter people who are prudent and wise in how they steward all that they own. Others, sadly, are owned by their belongings. Others, focused on accumulating solely for themselves, are intentionally inattentive to the poverty and suffering afflicting people everywhere. As Holland describes it, “The surest blindness is caused by worldly goods.”⁷

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French civil servant from an aristocratic family, wrote Democracy in America following a nine-month visit to the United States in 1831-32. He made observations that could arise from someone visiting America even today. Consider:

“As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?”

Capitalism, individuality, and the American Dream all contribute to our desire to make a living and create an estate. Along the way Americans invent, act as entrepreneurs, and seek innovations constantly.

In pursuing the mighty dollar, and in our efforts to amass wealth, there are four classes of beneficiaries who possibly gain from our efforts:

1. Ourselves and our life mate. Perhaps we plan on spending all our wealth during our lifetimes.
2. Our family. After providing for ourselves, we may want to provide for our children and grandchildren.
3. The government. Whether in the form of annual income tax, capital gains tax, or other taxes, or upon our death in the form of estate taxes, we all send the government money throughout our lifetimes.
4. Charities. Charities can be beneficiaries of our wealth during our lifetime or upon our death, or both.

Making Charitable Giving a Robust Element of Financial Success
An estimated $84 trillion in wealth will be transferred between now and 2045. Millennials (Gen Y) along with Gen Z inherit an estimated $550 billion a year. Investors/savers/consumers ages 21-41 represent 42 percent of the U.S. population. The seismic shifts in population and wealth make it vital for Independent Financial Professionals (IFPs) to successfully build relationships with younger prospective clients.

Fidelity Charitable is the arm of Fidelity Investments that exists to help investors establish Donor Advised Funds. Theirs are called “Giving Accounts.”

A 2022 Fidelity Investor Insights survey of 2,490 investors, including Gen YZ and Boomers+ (age 58 and over), found that one important way for IFPs to differentiate themselves would be to offer “charitable planning services.”⁸

Fidelity’s analysis revealed that nearly 50 percent of individuals in the Gen YZ generation who are not currently working with an advisor seek to work with a financial advisor who “helps me achieve my charitable giving goals.”⁹

Question: How does an individual personally benefit from charitable giving? Actually in several ways, including:

• The fulfillment derived from intentionally choosing the type of legacy left behind in the world.
• The satisfaction of allocating assets and wealth in a manner that aligns with one’s life purpose.
• Carefully choosing the causes and issues that most resonate.

In the previous list of four classes of beneficiaries that gain from a life of work, earnings, and wealth accumulation, two classes clearly benefit from Charitable Giving: 1) Ourselves and our life mate; and 2) Charities and their recipients.

Charitable Strategies
As an Independent Financial Professional (IFP), you will reap rewards for yourself by becoming a guide to the younger generations and helping the Gen YZ community achieve meaningful, sustainable charitable goals. Your reputation will improve. Your success in securing referrals will grow. You will be changing the world.

Where to start? It all starts with asking the right questions.

Examples:

• What are your priorities in extending generosity through charitable giving?
• How do you want your charitable giving to change over time?
• What do you want your legacy of generosity to be?
• Who/what do you care most about?
• Have you considered how impulsive/haphazard gifting may impact your long-term financial plans?
• Do you have a strategy for achieving long-term and short-term goals through a sustained pattern of lifetime donations?
• Do you plan to continue giving during your retirement?
• Do you intend to include charitable giving in your business exit planning?
• Do you intend to include charitable giving in your estate planning or legacy planning?
• Do you desire to see the impact of your giving now, or would you prefer to fund a trust to support your favorite causes after you and your life mate are deceased?

Point: As a skilled IFP, you know that the start of changing the trajectory of a client’s financial life begins with asking the right questions. This requisite extends to charitable giving.

Steps Leading to Effective Charitable Giving Strategies
Similar to saving for any goal, or investing to achieve specific ends, charitable giving requires a strategy. By incorporating charitable giving into his or her overall financial plan, clients can give back to favorite causes and organizations in a meaningful and sustainable way. IFPs assist clients in creating a comprehensive charitable giving plan and aligning donations with larger financial goals. The details in each client’s charitable giving plan will depend on factors like age, the composition of the financial portfolio, and the size and frequency of what the client is able to give.

Here are five approaches that successful IFPs use to help clients achieve charitable giving objectives:

Goal Definition: There are innumerable causes, needs, and opportunities screaming for the charitable donations of every potential donor. These include:

• Establishing a scholarship fund for low-income students at one’s alma mater.
• Supporting the Arts.
• Contributing to the financial needs of individuals who serve selflessly on behalf of people or causes one believes in.

Explore methods for multiplying the effectiveness of charitable gifting:

• Due to Standard Deductions many people do not itemize their gifting. Therefore, by simply writing a check to their favorite nonprofit each year, they miss out on tax benefits. As an IFP you can help clients to consider “bunching” or “bundling” their charitable contributions. You can urge the client to consolidate multiple years’ worth of donations into a single tax year. This will allow them to surpass the Standard Deduction threshold and receive greater tax benefits.
• IFPs help clients weigh the advantages of giving a percentage of appreciated securities directly to their favorite nonprofits. Instead of owing capital gains tax on appreciated assets they’ve owned for at least one year (which they would owe if they sold the assets themselves), the charity enjoys the increasing value. In addition, clients get a charitable income tax deduction for the full, fair market value of the gifted shares.

Create a Donor-Advised Fund: Clients can make contributions to a Donor-Advised fund and receive an immediate tax deduction for those donations when they itemize deductions on their income tax returns. Donor-Advised funds give clients the ability to distribute money to charitable organizations over time, in line with charitable objectives. By establishing a Donor-Advised fund, clients are essentially donating to a 501(c)3 that then donates to other charities.

Cooperation with family members: Sometimes, clients will create scholarships or grants that other family members contribute to in order to have a larger impact. As an IFP, in collaboration with legal and tax professionals, you can guide clients through this process.

Larger Gifts from Estate Plans: If clients wish to leave a lasting impact on their favorite charities, perhaps they should consider naming a charity as a beneficiary in their will or living trust. An IFP can communicate with the client’s attorney to achieve the desired outcomes. IFPs recommend that charitably-inclined clients establish Charitable Remainder Trusts, whereby the clients enjoy a stream of income during their lifetimes as well as current year tax deductions. This happens when the assets are donated to the trust. The designated charity takes ownership of any assets remaining in the trust when the client dies.

Point: IFPs have numerous tools that they use with clients to help them achieve their charitable aspirations.

Summary
I quoted Alexis de Tocqueville earlier on the capitalist essence of America. In addition to the drive to earn a living and make a profit, U.S. citizens impressed him in another way.

“The Americans make associations to give entertainment, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner, they found hospitals, prisons and schools.”

An Example from History
“In 1887, a Denver woman, a priest, two ministers and a rabbi got together… It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but they didn’t walk into a bar; what they did do was recognize the need to work together in new ways to make Denver a better place.”¹⁰ That year, their efforts raised $21,700 for the greater good, and created a movement that would become United Way.

While it is a sad truth that a diminishing number of American households are contributing to charitable causes each year, the dollar amounts remain roughly the same. The donations are simply coming from fewer people. IFPs in the United States generally have a tailwind at their backs when it comes to advising clients in terms of charitable giving strategies. We only have to look at the greater context:

Culture of Generosity: Over the last 40 years, total charitable contributions have grown year-over-year in all years except these:

• 1987 (Black Monday in October)
• 2008 (The Great Recession)
• 2009 (The Great Recession, continued)
• 2022 (Due to Stock Market volatility and inflation)

Giving Tuesday: Giving Tuesday occurs every year on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. This event falls in the heart of Giving Season, between Thanksgiving and Christmas. On Giving Tuesday, Americans embrace the spirit of generosity by donating to charities. According to the website, GIVINGTUESDAY.org, 34 million adults in the U.S. participated in Giving Tuesday in some way in 2023. Charitable contributions exceeded $3.1 billion!

Individuals (compared to corporations and foundations) comprise 65 percent of donations: “Those who make $10 million-plus per year give the highest percentage of their income: 9.3 percent. The second-highest donors are, surprisingly, those who make less than $50,000. Americans who fall into this group donate 8.4 percent of their income on average.”¹¹

Because IFPs are skilled in creating long term, sustainable strategies for saving, investing, insuring, and planning, they can apply these same skills to help clients multiply the effectiveness of their charitable intentions.

Many people are seeking the means of using their material wealth to accentuate the meaning of their lives and to leave a legacy.
Maybe 2024 is your year to show people that it is truly better to give than to receive.

Footnotes:

1. “Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World,” Hardcover – Illustrated, October 29, 2019, by Tom Holland, Basic Books, ISBN-10:046509350, page 143.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. “Dominion,” page 141.
5. “Dominion,” page 139.
6. Galatians 2:10, Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.®
7. “Dominion,” page 151.
8. https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/about-us/news/study-finds-next-generation-investors-are-seeking-financial-advisor-guidance-on-charitable-planning.html.
9. Ibid.
10. https://www.unitedway.org/about/history#.
11. Donor Box, “Nonprofit Statistics 2023.” (July 2023).

“No matter what a waste one has made of one’s life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.”
—Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

The life of an Independent Financial Professional (IFP) is a life of many imperfections, failures, and flaws. Wait, did you think I was describing the IFP? No, I was portraying the clients! Of course IFPs make mistakes and have shortcomings, but so do clients.

Thankfully though, perfection is not a prerequisite for progress. Something desperately needed by both advisors and clients in the financial journey, is grace and redemption.

Stories that are redemptive in nature progress from negative beginnings to positive endings. That sounds very much like what we hope will be every person’s financial journey.

Redemption
In Independent Financial Services, “redemption” refers to the repayment of any fixed-income security at or before the asset’s maturity date. Examples: Bonds, Certificates of Deposit (CDs), Treasury Notes (T-notes), and Preferred Shares. In addition, Mutual Fund investors can request redemptions for all or part of their shares.

Another use of the word redemption is in the context of coupons and gift cards, which we redeem at restaurants and grocery stores for products and services.

Frankly, “redemption” is one of my favorite words. How do we apply such a noble idea like redemption to our real lives? Consider:

• “In a redemption sequence, a demonstrably ‘bad’ or emotionally negative event or circumstance leads to a demonstrably ‘good’ or emotionally positive outcome.”¹
• Redemption is the story about someone going through trials and becoming a better person.
• An individual redemption story happens when past mistakes are redeemed through deliberate actions to achieve the story’s resolution.

In order to apply the power of redemption to our clients we need to look carefully at a few words contained in the above list:

• “Leads to”
• “Becoming”
• “Through deliberate actions”

Leads To
In our daily lives we tend to make innumerable financial decisions, and the choices we make can have far-reaching consequences. When we make the right financial decisions, the results can lead to increased savings, growing investment portfolios, and steady wealth accumulation.

Conversely, when we make negative or uninformed financial decisions, we can experience serious personal repercussions, putting our individual and family savings, assets, credit score, retirement accounts, and access to future financial services at risk. Some people fail by pursuing “get rich quick” schemes.

An ancient proverb says: “Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.”²

Poor financial planning may not cost us in the near term but may lead to us bearing a heavy price in the future.

In the short term, a wrong decision might lead to setbacks, such as financial loss, missed opportunities, or unnecessary stress and frustration. Wrong decisions can waste time, money, effort, and resources that could have been allocated more effectively.

Examples:

• Overspending
• Too much accumulated debt
• Not establishing an emergency fund
• Insufficient funds set aside for retirement
• Overly aggressive investment risks
• Failure to acquire proper amounts of Life Insurance

Point: A proactive IFP will attempt to connect with people in the early stages of their careers in order to lead them to right decisions. And yet every IFP will meet people still reeling from past decisions. Therefore, the IFP has a two-fold objective: first, lead the uninitiated in the right direction; and second, lead the financially-burdened client to brighter light and more positive status.

Becoming
“So be sure when you step,
Step with care and great tact.
And remember that life’s
A Great Balancing Act.
And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed).”
—Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

Every person develops a sense of their own life purpose, and this in turn determines personal definitions of success. Financial success looks different for everyone.

Financial failure surprisingly looks pretty much the same regardless of who achieves it. The path to redemption from past failures, on the other hand, looks quite different for each of us.

Financial success is not determined by the amount of money we earn, or how much wealth we accumulate; but rather, how comfortable and in control of our financial situation we feel (and how much we contribute to the needs of others).

There are several redeeming elements to becoming comfortable, confident, and charitable in our financial lives, including:

• Establishing S.M.A.R.T. goals. What do we want to do with our money? (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reasonable, and Time-bound)
• Make a list (debts, bills, budget, savings, investments, etc.) and be honest with ourselves about where we stand, money-wise.
• Create a spending and savings plan with specific strategies to make our budget actually work.
• Develop and stay disciplined to fulfill a comprehensive plan designed to reduce debt.
• Wisely, and selectively choose charitable opportunities.
• Seek advice and do research. We all need a seasoned, knowledgeable, and relatable IFP to come alongside us in our journey of becoming.
• Invest diversely.
• Contribute methodically.
• Insure our lives, incomes, and assets prudently.

A redemption arc in a story requires substantial character development. Redemptive actions must carry sufficient weight in order to cancel prior mistakes. Becoming successful requires meaningful change in behavior.

Point: Becoming is not something that just happens unless the goal is to fail. Becoming successful requires diligence and preparation.

Deliberate Actions
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”—Walt Disney

People who are committed say, “I’ll do it!”

People who want to leave a little wriggle room, say something like “Okay, I’ll try and do it…”

When someone tells you, “We must try and get together sometime,” they mean something like, “I really do not care if I see you again!”

“Try” invariably creates doubt and suggests that it is unlikely that success will be achieved.

A great secret to the redemptive story arc is replacing “try” with “will.”

When we say, “I will,” we are saying, “I am committed.”

Yoda says, “NO! Try not. Do, or do not, there is no try.”

In my faith tradition, redemption is only possible after repentance. Repentance means doing a 180 percent turn. The Greek word is metanoia and means, “changing your mind, turning around.” To experience a redemptive arc in a storyline that involves previous financial mistakes and misjudgments requires repentance—a change in mind.

• Here are some deliberate actions an IFP can recommend to people experiencing the consequences of past failures:
• Distinguish between identity and position. Someone who has made mistakes is not a failure. The consequences of poor decisions are often unavoidable, but that only means we are dealing with failure, not that we are not failures.
• Learn from previous mistakes and misjudgments or unproductive behavior. Experience is sometimes a harsh instructor.
• Choose to believe that failure is temporary. Remember the words of Winston Churchill: “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
• Adjust expectations. Redemption does not result from a random act of restitution. In a pure redemption arc, the protagonist will undergo multiple trials or encounter many people who inspire nonnegotiable moral shifts.
• Seek forgiveness. When we make unwise financial decisions, we inherently impact the people in our lives who depend on us. Like repentance, forgiveness must precede redemption. This includes forgiving ourselves.
• Reality check. We must remind ourselves that humans are inherently flawed. We all do things that are wrong, but we also know that people are capable of change.

Point: Without accepting responsibility we cannot learn from our failures; however, people cannot believe they are fundamentally a failure and expect to move forward at the same time. We must forget the negative emotions of setbacks and press forward.

Summary
Financial miscues, bad decisions, and negative habits can impact our lives greatly. The consequences can lead to legal issues (bankruptcy), bear social implications (broken trust and destroyed relationships), and have mental ramifications (anxiety, stress, and doubts).

Good news! We can redeem past bad financial decisions. This will require determination and action. But first we might have to:

• Seek forgiveness for the strain we have placed on key relationships with our spouse, and even with children. Money failures can be a distraction, and sap valuable time and emotional energy from other pressing concerns.
• Look our circumstances dead in the face and identify the anxiety we feel about being unable to pay our bills, our inability to save, and our fears and worries about the future. In addition we may not be as generous to others as we want.
• Remember that there are a lot of things outside our control. We cannot control the economy, inflation, geopolitical events, politics, or many other things.
• Deeply contemplate our money-related fears and ask ourselves if our worry reveals something about what we are trusting in. (Alternatively, if we are doing okay financially, we can be tempted to view money as our primary source of security.)

Definite Actions to Redeem Past Financial Blunders

• Reduce our debt by first creating a list of our debts, looking at minimum payments, prioritizing imputed interest rates, and comparing outstanding total loan balances. With these factors in hand we can develop a debt repayment strategy that works within our budget. This may include a loan consolidation plan.
• Regain ground lost in funding our retirement savings plan. The best time to start saving is now. We can gradually increase our contributions by a percentage or two every year.
• Dial back on nonessential spending.
• Increase our income by freelancing or starting a side business in order to supplement present income.

If you are an Independent Financial Professional, you will encounter people who feel shame, regret, or resentment. These feelings bubble up to the surface whenever they log into their bank account. It’s important for you to remind them that they are not alone. We all make mistakes in life. We’re only human!

As an IFP you can play a redemptive role in their lives! You can begin by giving them a clearer perspective. You can help them make a plan of action to help mitigate the damage. You can help them learn from past mistakes and work towards a brighter future.

A great redemptive arc always leads to long lasting improvement and renewal.

“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”—Sheryl Sandberg

Footnotes:
1. https://www.sesp.northwestern.edu/docs/RedemptionCodingSch.pdf.
2. Proverbs 13:11, The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright© 2001.

Mary Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. During her short life, she wrote two novels and 31 short stories. O’Connor’s best-known work, a novel entitled “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” was published in 1955. As a Southern writer, she wrote intentionally in a style that relied heavily on Southern history and culture and featured grotesque characters encountering violent situations. As a woman of Irish descent and Catholic beliefs, O’Connor wrote in such a way as to present the created world as being charged with God. Haunted by Him.

In April 1959, O’Connor wrote a letter to fellow writer, Cecil Dawkins. The letter contained this very personal revelation:

“The other day my Mother asked me why I didn’t try to write something that people liked instead of the kind of thing I do write. Do you think, she said, that you are really using the talent God gave you when you don’t write something that a lot, a lot, of people like? This always leaves me shaking and speechless, raises my blood pressure 140 degrees, etc. All I can ever say is, if you have to ask, you’ll never know.”¹

Point: We are all constantly evaluated by other people who have their own experience, opinions, and ideas for how things should be done. If they have to ask, maybe we are not making our purpose clear.

What Makes You, You
As an independent financial professional (IFP), you provide advice and guidance to clients regarding investments, insurance, and other financial planning matters. You propose solutions and actions which align with your clients’ goals, you listen to their needs, and you act in accordance with their best interests.

You may be extremely prudent in the advice you offer, professional in your practices and methods, and knowledgeable in your areas of expertise, but there will still be people who will find fault with you or reject you as their personal advisor.

What kinds of criteria do people use with which to select an IFP? Consider the following:

• Professional Certification (CFP, CWM, CLU, ChFC, or CFA)
• Education (university degrees, Masters, etc.)
• Experience (including the path to becoming an IFP)
• Range of Services
• Specialization(s)
• Compensation Structure (flat or hourly fee, commissions, or a combination of both)
• Reasonableness of your fee(s)
• Investing Approach
• Transaction Based Service Model or Consultative
• Whether or not you serve as a Fiduciary

Beyond these important factors, there is something that generates the most important value of working with you: Your individuality.

Question: As an IFP, have you zeroed in on your personal definition of “success?” The foundation of your individuality is the “why” behind what you do and how you do it. The “why” dictates what you consider to be success.

Oughteries
In my faith tradition, God is Love. He invites us into a loving relationship with Him. The same tradition makes one thing utmost above all else: We are to love others. But human beings can be geniuses at taking an invitation from God and turning it into a burdensome obligation–what someone once described as “hardening of the oughteries.”

Oughteries can obstruct the essence of who a person is. A person might be driven by love, and yet behave as if following some set of rules, trying to live strictly by a standard of dos and don’ts. This person’s freedom is restricted by a “hardening of the oughteries.”

As an IFP you must abide by all pertinent regulations, maintain all the record-keeping standards, and at all times avoid serving your own personal interests ahead of the clients’ interests. In addition, every direction you recommend that a client takes, each product you recommend, and the decision trees you utilize when making recommendations, all come with guiding principles. These collectively create the oughteries of being an IFP.

Point: It is tempting to construct a practice as an IFP that is entirely defensive, or primarily built on maintaining the right boundaries. Doing so will eliminate the joy and wonder that you hoped to experience in the profession you chose.

Rediscovering Your “Why”
Something attracted you at first to the financial services industry. You felt driven to gain the proper certifications. You sat for exams. You studied the broad array of products. Your fulfillment came from something in particular at first. What was that driver?

Examples:

• A huge passion for helping people achieve the freedom that is true wealth. As James Clear (@JamesClear) wrote on X:
  “Real wealth is not about money. Real wealth is: not having to go to meetings, not having to spend time with jerks, not being locked into status games, not feeling like you have to say ‘yes,’ not worrying about others claiming your time and energy. Real wealth is about freedom.”
• Protecting widows and orphans. This was my reason for getting into the career of selling life insurance. It felt religious as well as fulfilling:
  “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.”
  —James 1:27 (NIV)
• Deploying an in-depth analytical ability across all areas of financial planning (cash flow planning, retirement planning, investment management, insurance planning, estate planning, and tax planning).
  “Happiness comes from solving problems. […] Happiness is a constant work-in-progress. The solutions to today’s problems will lay the foundation for tomorrow’s problems.”—Mark Manson
• Excelling at salesmanship. This is a key requirement for successful IFPs. There is an art to persuasion. There is, however, a higher goal than making a sale or getting a client to act. The joy comes from seeing the client’s life improved.
  “Engaging people is about meeting their needs—not yours.”—Tony Robbins
• Releasing native curiosity. Some IFPs delight in uncovering precisely what each client needs and therefore approach financial planning like detective work. They like nothing better than piecing together minute details, fashioning a road map to success, and wrapping it all into a comprehensive plan.
  “I’m naturally curious, and I’ve always been driven by my curiosity. Curiosity gets people excited. Curiosity leads to new ideas, new jobs, new industries.”—Anne Sweeney

Point: The easiest thing is to let the work interfere with the joy of the career. The joy is rediscovered when you revisit the reason you chose to be an IFP.

Application—Serving As You Ought
Once you remember what it was that led you to choose a career in financial services, the next thing is to make your approach to business flow from that joy-giving purpose.

It starts with aligning your practice with transparency and authenticity.

Practical ideas:

1. Clearly explain why a client should choose you as an investment advisor. Plainly lay out the training, certifications, experience, and successes you have had.
2. If you are recommending an insurance product, pull out your own policies and demonstrate that you recommend what you also own.
3. Enthusiastically explain how you choose specific investments to recommend to clients. What have you learned that can benefit them? Why are you oriented to specific categories?
4. Willingly and honestly help your clients understand how your fees and the underlying costs might affect their investments. Use an example of a specific amount of investment to show how much will go to fees and costs and how much will be invested for the client.
5. Exemplify accountability. Who can the client talk to if they have concerns about how you treat them or what they consider to be disappointing results?
6. Reveal any past experiences of having clients complain, of being fined, or disciplined in any way. Lay out the facts. No one is perfect. Successful people attract detractors.

Summary
Flannery O’Connor’s own mother questioned the value of her work. You can be sure that people will look at what you do with dubious eyes.

If you love what you do, it should be evident in how you do it.

If you can stay focused on the reason for your career choice, and keep your work habits aligned with that purpose, you will be seen as authentic.

Do not succumb to the trap of oughteries. Yes, obey all laws, follow all regulations, conduct yourself ethically, hold yourself and your practices above reproach—but do not make all this effort the goal.

Flannery O’Connor knew who she was and what she was all about. She had no problem in explaining why she wrote the way she did. In an essay she described her use of the grotesque this way: “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.”²

If you have read all the way to this point, I want to encourage you to practice the art of your profession with authenticity and transparency. Remain committed to the cause that attracted you to the industry in the first place, and don’t get distracted by the “hardening of the oughteries.”

One last piece of encouragement (again from O’Connor):

“Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.”

Footnotes:

1. “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor,” page 326, edited by Sally Fitzgerald, published in 1979 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN 9780374521042.
2. “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction,” an essay by Flannery O’Connor, 1960.

“Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.”—Wyatt Earp

“It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.”—Winston Churchill

While reading in the Old Testament book of Exodus, my attention was riveted by the simple word, “fine.” For context, Moses successfully led the people of Israel out of Egypt, and they began their forty-year wanderings in the wilderness.

In Exodus 16, after one and a half months in the wilderness, the hungry, tired, and worn-out people of Israel began grumbling against their leaders: Moses, and Aaron. If you know this story, you are aware that God heard their complaints and began providing sporting fowl (quail) each evening, and something called “manna” each morning.

For us living 3400 years later it is hard to know what manna was like. Even back then it was a bit of a puzzle. “When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was.”¹

We read this description of manna: “In the morning, dew lay around the camp. And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground.”²

There it is. “Fine.” Repeated twice. The Hebrew word translated “fine” is Daq. It means a “very little thing, small, thin.”

Point: On occasion we benefit from taking a commonly used word and examining its application to our business practices, our personal character, and to the impact that we are having on others.

Financially Fine
How do we as independent financial professionals (IFPs) use the word “fine?”

I consulted a dictionary to learn the various meanings of the word. It is polysemous. (Like “run” or “bank” it has several meanings). Consider some of these various definitions of the word “fine:”³

• All right, well, or healthy: not sick or injured
• Superior in kind, quality, or appearance: excellent
• Very small, very thin in gauge or texture
• Very precise or accurate
• Delicate, subtle, or sensitive in quality, perception, or discrimination

Let’s ask ourselves three very fine questions:

1. Can we categorically state that our clients are doing fine? (All right, well, or healthy.)
2. Can we describe the planning that we do, and the products that we recommend, as being fine? (Superior in kind, quality: excellent.)
3. Do our clients experience the attention we pay them as being fine? (Very precise, detailed, accurate, discriminating, perceptive, of high quality.)

“We’re Fine”
As an IFP, you want to know how your clients are doing. At. All. Times. But how?
Here are several ideas:

• Talk to them. With current technology, it is even easier to talk with our clients because we have countless ways to connect to one another. When we talk with a client, we should not be afraid to get a little bit personal. Fine means healthy, and that extends beyond just financial wellbeing.
• Follow your clients across all social media platforms. You will discover that they are eager to post important events, milestones, celebrations, new purchases, and sometimes–they grow silent. That is when you really need to check in on them.
• Remind yourself of their goals, dreams, and objectives and keep these same ideas in front of them. By doing so you become known as someone who is worth doing business with.

Point: Frequent, intentional, client-centered contact is the only way to know if your clients are fine.

“These Are Fine!”
An IFP delivers excellent service and products when the clients’ expectations are met or exceeded. How do we know when we have met that test?

• Customer retention will tell us. If we are a fee-based practice, are our clients willing to continue to meet with us and pay the fees?
• Repeat business is key to knowing that we enjoy continued trust.
• Measure the clients’ enthusiasm with surveys.
• Take client complaints seriously.
• Measure client satisfaction by percentage of new clients earned through referrals.
• Track the number of attorney, accountant, and insurance professionals you get introduced to by satisfied clients.

Point: It is easy to delude ourselves that we are providing fine, excellent service and products. Our beliefs need verification.

“Fine Work!”
Nobody likes to have someone else look over their shoulder. Being inspected or audited is uncomfortable. The regulatory environment in which IFPs operate demands that we invite scrutiny. We need to know that our recommendations and financial reviews are both precise and accurate. Like scientists.

“Precision and accuracy are two ways that scientists think about error. Accuracy refers to how close a measurement is to the true or accepted value. Precision refers to how close measurements of the same item are to each other. Precision is independent of accuracy. That means it is possible to be very precise but not very accurate, and it is also possible to be accurate without being precise. The best quality scientific observations are both accurate and precise.”⁴

Think of the game of darts. The goal is to hit the bulls-eye (center) of a dartboard.

• The closer that the dart lands to the bulls-eye, the more accurate the throw is.
• If you throw two darts and they are neither close to the bulls-eye, nor close to each other, your throws are neither accurate, nor precise.
• If all of the darts you throw hit the board very close together, but far from the bulls-eye, there is precision, but not accuracy.
• If you throw four darts and all four land an equal distance from the bulls-eye, your throws are accurate, but not precise
• If the darts that you throw land close to the bulls-eye and close together, there is both accuracy and precision.

Point: Your service and the products that you recommend must be both precise and accurate. Your clients’ goals and objectives are the bulls-eye. Helping them reach their goals is the way to measure precision. Their risk tolerance, budget, and willingness to accept loss are each to be considered as a measure of accuracy.

Summary
When I checked where else in the Old Testament the Hebrew word Daq, translated “fine,” might appear, I was surprised and delighted with what I found.

In the book of 1 Kings, chapter 19, we find the prophet of God, Elijah, fleeing for his life. (He discovered that it is dangerous to criticize the King and Queen). He hid in a cave. God said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”⁴ Then, “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by. Theophany can be startling because it is not what we would expect.

• First, a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.
• Second, an earthquake shook the ground, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
• Third, fire blazed in scorching heat and flame, but the Lord was not in the fire.

No, after the strong winds, earthquake, and fire, there came the sound of a low whisper. (Literally, a fine silence.) God showed His presence in near silence. As the story unfolds, however, fine Divine silence does not mean Divine inactivity.

As an IFP you need to keep the idea of fine silence, quiet presence in mind.

• You are not required to be wildly entertaining, come across as brilliant, become pesky, or force your opinions on your clients. Let your presence be fine.
• Your products do not have to be heralded as the best, the cheapest, the highest performing, the leading one of its kind, etc. You are aiming for fine.
• You do not have to have all the answers. There’s a big difference between demonstrating your abilities and acting like a know-it-all. Your mastery of the concepts already exceeds those of the client and is likely just fine.
• Don’t try to impress through technical speech. Unless you’re absolutely sure the client understands the meaning of an acronym or what a buzzword means, stick to simpler terms. Don’t use words in your written communication (emails, planning documents, and text messages) that you wouldn’t use during verbal communication (in person or on the phone). People find plain vocabulary to be just fine.
• Bite your tongue. No client relationship is perfect, and disagreements with clients are bound to occur. Rather than responding angrily or defensively to a client who is being rude, take a step back, show self-restraint, breathe, and stay away from offensive statements—even if they’re warranted. Loud vocal volume or intensity is never fine.

“Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.”—Robert Benchley

If you are already exemplifying all of the above, I believe you are already a fine IFP!

Footnotes:

1. Exodus 12:15, The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
2. Ibid, Exodus 16:13-14.
3. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fine.
4. https://manoa.hawaii.edu/exploringourfluidearth/physical/world-ocean/map-distortion/practices-science-precision-vs-accuracy.
5. 1 Kings 19:9, The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
6. Ibid, 1 Kings 19:11.