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WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER, I didn’t have a girlfriend. Now that I’m older, I realize not everyone had a girlfriend during their junior high or high school years. But at the time, I felt like I was the only one.
By this time, my father had passed away, so I only had my mother and older brother to confide in. My brother thought I might have a problem that prevented me from seeking female companionship, so he told my mother I should get counseling. This was the brain trust’s thinking, not something I wanted. Still, not having a better solution, I went along with the idea.
My first counseling session didn’t go well. I sat there and waited for the counselor to ask me a question. He didn’t. I stared at him and he stared at me.
The next time we met, I said, “Don’t you want to ask me a question?” He said he was waiting for me to tell him what I needed or why I was there. I told him the things that my brother and mother thought were my problems. His response has stayed with me to this day. He said, “If it’s not a problem for you, it’s not a problem.”
He also let me know that he didn’t feel I had any major issues. I was just shy. I thanked him and, with this new awareness of myself, left. My female relationships moved on from there, including taking a girl to a local drive-in theater in my first car. But my shyness was ever present back then. Things changed when I was a senior in college and met my first wife.
The advice from the counselor has helped me deal with the critics in my life. Those critics might ask, “Why the heck would you do that?” As a defense, I developed a routine of slowing down my decision-making process. Knowing the critics would be circling, ready to challenge my decision, I wanted to make sure any decision wouldn’t be a problem for me—and that meant making sure I wasn’t allowing others to make my choices.
How often are we influenced by those around us, including how we should use our money? It might be our choice of house, car or vacation, or perhaps the decision to save rather than spend. If we feel we need help making a decision, we might seek input from others. But allowing others to make decisions for us is, I think, a mistake. If we take their advice and it turns out badly, we have only ourselves to blame.
For instance, we’re often advised to hire a financial advisor. People who have busy lives are encouraged to focus their energies on the rest of their life and let a “professional” handle their finances. I believe this is a reasonable approach—as long as you make the final decisions or, at a minimum, you’re comfortable with those decisions.
If not, you’re letting others make choices for you. That can be dangerous. Making decisions with the benefit of other people’s opinions, ideas or experience can be helpful. But in the end, we need to own the decisions that we make.
It makes sense to gather information from others who may know more than you. But, as you say, you can then take that information and decide what to do.
While I agree with the larger principle that you have to do your own thinking and take responsibility for your own decisions, I also think there are plenty of times in life where you can learn from someone else’s wisdom and/or experience. Just to give one mundane example, I learn a lot about travel options and ideas by following a couple of travel-focused Facebook groups.
I’ve also been in counseling at a couple of junctures in my adult life. You have to find the right person, but both times, it was a very positive and helpful experience for me.
I never use financial advisors. A good friend is one, and I’d be concerned if I used his services, it would ruin the relationship. But perhaps the best reason I don’t use them — a WSJ article indicated they charge approx 1% of assets annually, whether you make money or not.
Another great post David!
The only person who ‘influences’ me about money is my wife of 40+ years.
Which is only right as some of it is hers too.
We do find we pretty much agree on most financial things.
The inexpensive stuff either one of us wants doesn’t get discussed.
It’s only the ‘big ticket’ items we chat about.
Oh … in case anyone cares … we are DIYers with regards to our investments.
I’ll bet that counselor would have been delighted to know he made such a big difference in your life in just a few seconds.
To begin, I love your counselors’ advice regarding “it’s not your problem”. Moving on to using an advisor, I’ve read statistics claiming people who use advisors save more money than those who don’t. I believe that because when it comes to investing there are the peeps that use advisors, peeps that DYI, and finally a very large group of people who don’t do either. Sadly the latter group aren’t Humble Dollar readers.
It would be interesting to see a study that only compared advisors and the DIY folks.
In many cases, but not all, the only ones who make money are the advisors