Financial Jargon Is Overrated: Let’s Make Money Make Sense

RRSP. TFSA. ETF. MER. Asset allocation. Diversification. Volatility. Registered. Non-registered. Tax-efficient withdrawal strategy.

Still with me?

The financial industry has an incredible ability to take something relatively straightforward and make it sound like you need a finance degree just to participate in the conversation. I’ve never believed that complicated language makes for better advice. In fact, I think it can do the opposite.

If you walk out of a financial meeting nodding politely while secretly wondering, What did we just decide?, that’s a problem.

My job isn’t to prove how much I know. It’s to make sure you understand what we’re doing with your money and why.

Let’s translate

Take diversification. It’s essentially the financial version of not putting all your eggs in one basket.

Volatility? Your investments are going to move up and down. That’s normal.

Asset allocation is simply how we divide your money between different types of investments based on what you’re trying to accomplish. Risk tolerance helps us understand how much movement you’re comfortable with before you start losing sleep or wanting to throw the entire plan out the window.

And compounding? Your money makes money, and then that money has the opportunity to make more money. Given enough time, it can do a lot of the heavy lifting.

Of course there’s more nuance behind each of these concepts, but you shouldn't need to speak fluent finance to understand the decisions being made about your own money.

The process shouldn’t feel complicated either

When someone first comes to see me, I don’t expect them to arrive with perfectly organized statements, a 30-year plan and a detailed understanding of every investment they own. That’s literally why I’m here.

We start with your life. I want to know what it looks like today, what matters to you, what you’re worried about and what you want your money to allow you to do. Then we can look at the investments, accounts, income, retirement plans, estate considerations, taxes and all the other pieces that make up your financial life.

Once we can see the whole picture, we start making sense of it. What’s working? What isn't? Is anything missing? What deserves our attention first?

From there, my job is to explain the recommendations in language you can actually understand.

I want you to ask questions

There is no financial question that is “too basic” to ask me. If you don’t know the difference between an RRSP and a TFSA, ask. If you have no idea what you own inside your investment account, ask. And if someone has explained something to you three times and it still doesn’t make sense, ask again.

I mean that.

You should never feel intimidated in a conversation about your own money, and you certainly shouldn’t agree to something simply because you’re uncomfortable admitting you don’t understand it.

If something isn't clear, we haven't finished the conversation yet.

Simple doesn’t mean unsophisticated

This is an important distinction because your financial life can be complex. The strategy behind it may be sophisticated, and there can be a lot of work happening behind the scenes to make sure all the pieces are working together.

But that doesn’t mean your experience of it needs to feel complicated.

I can do the deep dive, pay attention to the details and work through the moving pieces. Then we can sit down and talk about what matters in a way that feels like a conversation rather than a finance lecture.

At the end of the day, I don’t measure a great client meeting by how much information I managed to give you. I care much more about whether you leave understanding what we talked about, feeling confident in the decisions we made and knowing what happens next.

And if you walk away thinking, Okay, maybe this money stuff isn’t nearly as scary as I thought, even better.

That’s the point.