Most financial planners are trained to think in terms of financial capital: portfolios contribution rates withdrawal sustainability asset allocation But as many planners approach the bridge—that moment where traditional advice starts to feel incomplete—one question keeps resurfacing: Why do our models ignore the single biggest driver of long-term financial outcomes? Human capital. A major cross-country … Continue reading Human Capital Is Not a “Soft” Concept. It’s the Missing Hard Evidence.
Tag: economics
The Bridge Financial Planners Are Standing On
What’s Missing from Financial Planning — and Why Total Wealth Planning Matters Now Most financial planners don’t wake up one morning and decide that financial planning is broken. They arrive at a quieter realisation. The plans are technically correct.The assumptions are defensible.The portfolios are optimised. And yet clients feel more anxious, more fragile, and more … Continue reading The Bridge Financial Planners Are Standing On
AI Didn’t Kill Work. It Killed the Old Map.
The debate about AI, work, and Universal Basic Income is accelerating. Government briefings. Think-tank papers. Media panic cycles. This week, the Institute of Economic Affairs reported that ministers are again exploring Universal Basic Income (UBI), driven by fears that AI will lead to mass unemployment. As Kristian Niemietz rightly points out, history doesn’t support that … Continue reading AI Didn’t Kill Work. It Killed the Old Map.
Standing at the Bridge:
Why Human Capital Is Pulling Financial Planning Beyond Its Old Limits Most financial planners were trained in a world where capital meant money, assets, and structures. But a growing body of research — including a widely cited study on the Significance of Human Capital for Economic Growth — points to a quieter truth: Financial capital … Continue reading Standing at the Bridge:
From Products to People: Human Capital Lessons for the Next Generation of Financial Advisers
Why the Future of Financial Advice Is Human, Not Just Financial For decades, mainstream financial advice has revolved around financial capital — portfolios, products, tax wrappers, asset allocation, and return optimisation. That model is now reaching its natural limits. A growing body of research — including OECD work on human capital and academic critiques of … Continue reading From Products to People: Human Capital Lessons for the Next Generation of Financial Advisers
Take Your Sign Down: Why Financial Planning Must Stop Living Within a Lie
By Steve Conley, Academy of Life Planning Overnight in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered what I believe will be remembered as an era-defining speech. Not because it was dramatic.Not because it was ideological.But because it named reality. Carney spoke about geopolitics.But what he really described was every untrustworthy system that survives by ritual, … Continue reading Take Your Sign Down: Why Financial Planning Must Stop Living Within a Lie
Most of a Person’s Wealth Is Not on a Balance Sheet — It Walks Into Work Every Day
A practitioner insight for Total Wealth Planners Traditional financial planning has taught generations of advisers to look down—at balance sheets, portfolios, wrappers, and projections.Total Wealth Planning asks us to look up—at the living, breathing human being who generates, sustains, and renews all of that capital. A growing body of academic research confirms what many of … Continue reading Most of a Person’s Wealth Is Not on a Balance Sheet — It Walks Into Work Every Day
Planning for Total Wealth: Why Human Capital Must Be at the Heart of Lifetime Planning
Most new financial advisers are taught to plan only half a life. The familiar model—accumulation, transition, retirement, legacy—has become so normalised that few stop to ask a more fundamental question: What exactly are we planning? The answer, in practice, is almost always the same:financial capital. Savings. Investments. Pensions. Decumulation strategies. Estate planning. All important.All necessary.But … Continue reading Planning for Total Wealth: Why Human Capital Must Be at the Heart of Lifetime Planning
Human Capital Is Not a Soft Idea
Why Total Wealth Planners Are Closer to Economic Reality Than the Mainstream For over two centuries, economists have been telling us something the financial services industry still struggles to hear: Wealth is created by people, not products. A recent academic review of human capital theory traces this insight from Adam Smith through to modern growth … Continue reading Human Capital Is Not a Soft Idea
When Human Capital Increases Inequality
Critical lessons for Total Wealth Planners from the latest economic evidence For decades, financial planning has rested on a comforting assumption: If we educate people more, inequality will fall. It feels intuitively right. Education raises earnings. Skills create opportunity. Human capital lifts all boats. But the evidence no longer supports that simple story. A major … Continue reading When Human Capital Increases Inequality
Academy of Life Planning 