Financial Education and Behavior Risks
Hugh Massie
With the US economy in disarray, how will you behave in these turbulent times? What decisions will you make? How will you make them?
Every one has emotions. Further, nothing more than money can trigger your emotions and cause you to make irrational decisions. I've learned that the key is to have greater self understanding of your emotions and propensities to making financial decisions. Also, it is important that you stay focused on your life purpose. This may sound lofty and big picture. However, your life purpose is the foundation of your goals and your wealth creation strategies. I have always seen that those who stay focused on their life purpose are the ones who make it through turbulent times and manage their emotions.
Remember that 5 percent of your wealth will come from investments and 95 percent from your behavior. So, understanding your behavior will get the results in the end.
So, what is the next step? Get more of the right financial education and become financially literate. The focus of this education should clearly be to become more educated about who you are and your life purpose. Ultimately, if you are interested in preserving your wealth in turbulent times then this is the best strategy out there.
Generally in business, and particularly in financial services, people associate risk with the markets or economy. What we fail to drill down into are the risks caused by human behavior. Another way of looking at this is to consider how people handle the market risks. What decisions do they make? What solutions do they come up with? How do they manage their emotions? How do they communicate?
In essence, the market risks can be managed or exacerbated by human behavior. So, what needs to be better understood is how your people are going to handle market and economic risks that may be impacting your business. This will be particularly important when they are under pressure. What are their blind spots? What are your blind spots? Then, how will you manage your people so the risks are better managed?
Through our Financial DNA profiles we are able to reliably predict how people will behave and therefore the risks they may cause. Will they take too many chances? Will they be too impatient? Are they too independent and not accountable? We have found that the profiles are able to provide great insights into the true behavior of people when they are under pressure. Having this information can help you put in place the right management controls and also to provide the individuals with more self-awareness of how they will make decisions which could cause or exacerbate market risks. There is no doubt a large part of the success or failure of businesses in the long term comes down to being aware of and managing human behavior. You only have to look at some of the major corporate and banking disasters to see this.
So how aware are you of the risks that your people could be causing to the future of your business?
