I was in a financial community meeting with ~60 others yesterday, and we were comparing some of our commonly occurring experiences (as well as observing the NBA finals games in progress). One of the most common things mentioned was that people were coming to them because:

-they were clients of financial advisors

-their financial advisor had given them a “plan”

-but they had no idea what it said. They couldn’t process the big picture, let alone know the details.

A plan without understanding and execution isn’t a plan that’s worth anything. Statistics is far less intuitive to most people than finance, because everyone uses money every day and the same can’t be said for linear or logistic or Cox regression 😉 That’s why, when I meet with research investigators, my job isn’t finished by handing them a stack of statistical output. My job is done when I’ve handed them that output, summarized it, and explained it to them until they understood it and felt confident about how to move forward with it. Shouldn’t your financial advisor be the same way?

How about you, do you have an educator on your financial court?