This Job Comes with Grief

This Job Comes with Grief

I’ve spoken at length about all the beautiful benefits and joys of a career in financial planning. I’ve had the immense pleasure of watching more people than I can count achieve different life goals and dreams. Let me tell you, sitting across the table from someone you’ve worked with for years, finally saying yes, the work we’ve done means you can retire tomorrow, is perhaps the most addicting drug known to man.

Despite what many people think, most people I know who got into this industry did it to make a change in others’ lives. It is a calling of sorts, and to me, one of the noblest causes out there. To show up day in and day out with the sole purpose of making others’ lives better and their dreams come true is invigorating to the next level.

To many on the outside it sounds like an amazing job, and truthfully I think it is. You get to not only help people, you get to help friends. Clients don’t stay clients in my experience. When you are working on someone’s deepest fears and biggest dreams, you enter into a personal connection that not many other relationships share. You simply become friends and family. As a matter of fact, plenty of my clients started as friends and family, and plenty of others started as clients and became friends and family. It is something I don’t take lightly.

In doing so, you get to root alongside them and be vested in their lives. I’ve seen so many of my friends not only retire, but have their kids married, become parents and grandparents for the first time, get advanced degrees, put a child through college, and just about any other life milestone you can think of we’ve celebrated it, and it feels good. Right before writing this, I caught up with an amazing friend who moved back overseas after we got them retired. They’re becoming grandparents for the second time. I simply couldn’t be happier for them.

But.

There is a huge but to all this warm and fuzzy. As the theme song of The Facts of Life suggests:

You take the good

You take the bad

You take them both and there you have

The Facts of Life

If we are going to be heavily involved in our clients’ lives, there is another side to this coin. The side no one really talks about is taking the bad of life. When clients cross over into the friend and family realm, that means we are also there through the bad. The deaths and divorces. Unemployment. The calls you never want to receive.

This year, I’ve been reminded of that side. And being honest here, it has really impacted me. Earlier this year, I lost one of those friends. Recently, another friend lost a child. There is nothing that prepares you for that — losing someone you care about that frequently. We must remain stoic and empathetic. We must show up for them and their families while also grieving ourselves. Simply put, it is hard for everyone, and we are included in that everyone.

As Spiderman once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” If we are going to be integral in our clients’ lives, we must recognize the responsibility that comes with it. We must remind ourselves that it isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, and this isn’t for the faint of heart.

Sure, we talk about money, investments, markets, and economies. But we really live for talking about your goals, dreams, families, passions, and what we’re doing all of this for. I’ve had some of the deepest and most meaningful conversations of my life with people who are considered clients. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say a large part of the person I am today is a direct reflection of those people and those conversations.

Today though I am simply sad. I am sad that I have lost loved ones, and I am sad for their families who have also lost loved ones. This job comes with the world’s largest family and with a family that big, you are destined for great times and painful ones. That’s simply the facts of life.

So, if your advisor ever checks in on you as a person and not just a portfolio — now you know why.

As always, stay wealthy, healthy, and happy.