How To Be Your Own Financial Coach

               When your sink is leaking, you call a plumber. When your child has a fever, you call a doctor. When you need your will revised, you call an attorney.

               When you need help in the financial aspects of your life, you call specific financial professionals. When you need tax help, you call an accountant. For a disability policy, it's an insurance agent. When you need investment advice you call a financial advisor.

               But who makes sure all your professionals are working together in a plan that meets your needs and life goals?  You. You have the financial responsibility to oversee the completeness of the plan.

              And, who do you call to make sure the cash flow plan is working? Or as we call it in the business—the B word—budget. The budget is the base of the entire financial plan. If your budget isn't working, you won't have the money to pay your insurance policies, or your loan from the bank or your taxes that you owe. If the budget isn't holding each month, all the financial planning that you have done with your professionals is being quietly eroded. There are professionals to help you if you are truly in cash flow trouble. But for most, there is no professional help for the day-to-day management of your cash flow except yourself. Again, You. You are the person in charge of daily cash flow management.

              Call yourself a financial Coach. You, like all coaches, have to make sure all team members and other coaches are playing and coaching together. As the financial coach, you need to make sure all your financial professionals are working together for your life goals. To that end, you'll have to schedule regular team meetings, rather than waiting to communicate when something goes wrong.

              You have to be able to envision and plan the basic structure of the running of the team, itself. You have to be able to maintain order and control within that structure. As the financial coach, this structure is your budget. You will need to re-work parts of the budget that look good in theory, but don't work in reality.

              Learning to be an effective coach will take two primary skills.  First, you will have to learn how to disengage from your own emotions and be able to identify and strategize problems that arise. For example, a friend of yours who is one of your financial professionals, but isn't working within your personal goals and with the rest of the team, may need to be let go from your team—even if you feel disloyal. This is what a good coach would do.

              Secondly, talk to yourself in a way that encourages progress rather than impedes it. Many of my clients have talked of coaches who used ridicule — humiliation or blame—as a way to motivate to a certain level of expectation. If you want to be effective as your own coach, you'll want to practice a different style of coaching—one that will work well for a lifetime—not just a few minutes.   If your financial life isn't working and it seems overwhelming to figure it out, and you just want to give up or blame someone else. Stop! You are the coach. Say to yourself, "I need to figure this out. I've done harder. I can do it." Sounds simple, but it works.   

              Try it, Coach, and see.