Educating about happiness could be the key to getting people to think about their future self.
That was the main point shared by the founder of The Eternal Business Consultancy Chris Budd’s during his presentation at the Corporate Adviser Summit. He discussed how effective wellbeing propositions are and whether individuals can be helped to make their money work for them.
Budd said financial wellbeing is frequently limited to areas like managing financial troubles, budgeting, and financial education. But according to Budd, this should be classified as financial resilience which is just one element of financial wellbeing.
He pointed out that people seek financial advice because thinking about money can be overwhelming. Instead, the focus should be on helping people picture what life their money could provide for them.
He said: “Pensions are boring. I don’t want to know how much my pension is, I want to know what life that’s going to enable for me so that is what we should be talking about.”
“Research suggests that 50 per cent of how happy you are is in your DNA, 10 per cent of your level of wellbeing is your circumstances and 40 per cent comes from your intentional activity, which is how you go about your life, what you say, what you see and how you react.
“What do we all look at in the financial services industry, we look at your circumstances which is only 10 per cent of people’s level of wellbeing, we’re looking in the wrong place. If you work really hard with somebody and increase their financial position by 50 per cent, you will improve their overall wellbeing by just 5 per cent but if at the same time you also educate them about their relationship with money and improve their intentional activity by 50 per cent, their overall wellbeing will increase by 25 per cent.
“So financial wellbeing is not about money and if your financial education is only about the money then I’m suggesting that might be making people less happy. We should be educating about happiness so that money is back in its place as being a servant, not our master.”
