What Human Capital Inequality Teaches Us About the Future of Advice For decades, financial planning has rested on a comfortable assumption: If people have access to money and good products, they’ll make good long-term decisions. The study “Human Capital Inequality, Life Expectancy and Economic Growth” by Castelló-Climent and Doménech gently — but decisively — dismantles … Continue reading Why This Study Quietly Changes Everything for Financial Planners
Tag: human-capital
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
From Meaningful Advice to Total Wealth Planning
From Meaningful Advice to Total Wealth Planning Why the profession is right about meaning — and why the journey can’t stop there An Academy of Life Planning bridge‑mode explainer for advisers sensing there’s more to come A shared moment of recognition Recent commentary from respected thought leaders within the adviser profession captures something many practitioners … Continue reading From Meaningful Advice to Total Wealth Planning
Why Total Wealth Planning Isn’t a Lifestyle Add-On — It’s a Correction of a Category Error
What a landmark human capital study reveals about the future of financial planning Introduction: A Quiet Problem No One in Advice Talks About Most financial planners were trained inside a narrow frame: Learn the technical rules Model the money Optimise the investments Manage the risks Assume the client behaves “rationally” It’s a neat system.It’s also … Continue reading Why Total Wealth Planning Isn’t a Lifestyle Add-On — It’s a Correction of a Category Error
Life on the Other Side of Financial Planning
Why Human Capital Strategies Mastery Is Becoming the Bridge to the Profession’s Future There’s a quiet moment many financial planners reach. Nothing has gone wrong.Clients are still engaging.The rules are still being followed.The numbers still add up. And yet something feels incomplete. Not because financial planning has failed —but because the world it serves has … Continue reading Life on the Other Side of Financial Planning
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
The Planner’s Tension:
Why “Complexity” Doesn’t Increase With Age — It Shifts As more traditional planners explore Total Wealth Planning, a recurring tension often surfaces: “Planning becomes more complex as clients get older.” It’s a reasonable assumption.It’s also incomplete. What actually changes over a lifetime is not the level of complexity, but the composition of wealth — and … Continue reading The Planner’s Tension:
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
AI Cash-Flow Planning vs Traditional Lifetime Cash-Flow Tools
A reflection for planners navigating what comes next For decades, lifetime cash-flow planning tools have played a central role in professional financial planning. They brought structure, consistency, and a sense of rigour to conversations about the future. Many advisers built their confidence — and their practices — around them. So it’s understandable that the emergence … Continue reading AI Cash-Flow Planning vs Traditional Lifetime Cash-Flow Tools
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
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