Personal Finance with a Happiness Dividend.

Mindfulness in the context of personal finance has the same definition and application as it does in every other aspect of life. It is the non-judgmental awareness of the present moment as directly experienced through our senses, thoughts, and feelings. It is the reality BEFORE we apply the narrative. Mindfulness is a doorway to reason at the precise moment when reason is out of reach.

Mindfulness is a powerful tool when applied to any part of life where reducing our stress response, or improving focus, is beneficial. Nothing else so thoroughly permeates every element of modern life as Money – it is the great enabler, it is our broadly adopted signal of “success,” and it is presented as the primary solution to both personal and cultural ills. In a culture as wealthy as ours, where inequality is rife, Money (and investing) will always the top the list of human stressors.

Stressful, however, does not mean complex. Money and personal finance are quite simple. It is the desire for, and the mistaken beliefs about, money that make it such a difficult topic for most people. Mindfulness is the singular tool that enables people to remain calm when the world around them is going crazy. This calm has a profound effect on our financial lives.

As we strip away all the noise and highlight the simple path to becoming better at money, we ALL get better financial outcomes.

Handling our personal finances more mindfully leads to better outcomes in four ways:

First, mindfulness can support us to discover our authentic selves and live our lives in alignment. We are born into the world not knowing our purpose, not understanding what choices will make us happy, and not recognizing all the forces outside of ourselves that push and pull us in every other direction. Mindfulness helps us understand our place in the world, our purpose, and our true hopes and dreams. We cannot make good decisions about day-to-day spending and saving (much less our future), if we have not considered how we would like that future to appear. If we aren’t mindful, we will be trapped in the world’s vision for our lives.

Second, mindfulness can improve investment outcomes. A calm, non-reactive, process-driven approach to investing is the only way to consistently improve your relative performance over time. It is when you STOP trying to predict what is coming next that you stop being subject to all the cognitive and emotional biases that lead to financial mistakes. When you follow our simple approach, you experience the highest probability of long-term outperformance. By eliminating the need to respond to everchanging market and economic conditions, you eliminate the guesswork and the biases that lead to bad choices and worse outcomes.

Third, it requires less time and energy to invest mindfully. A simple, mindful investing approach can save the investor 100’s of hours per year. All that recaptured time can be repurposed for better uses. No one on their deathbed wishes they would have spent more time at work. Even fewer wish they would have spent more time managing their portfolios. Time is our most limited resource. Managing our money mindfully allows better use of time and maximizes our happiness and contentment.

Fourth, mindfulness can improve the investing experience. The simplest, mindful portfolio – the one where all the equities are held in a single fund or ETF (for example, a Total World Stock Index or the All Country World Index) – already has exposure to every sector, every geography, and every size company. Any addition or subtraction you make to this simple portfolio will make things more complex. By adding this complexity, you WILL increase transaction costs. You WILL increase tax costs. And you WILL increase the mental energy you expend on your investing. But… the academics have proven time and again that you will NOT improve performance over long periods of time.

If you picture an old Ven Diagram – two overlapping circles – Mindful Money is meant for all people within each of the circles, but it would be especially interesting to those who find themselves in the overlapping space.

The first group Mindful Money is specifically designed to help are those who don’t have access to good financial advice. Maybe they don’t have enough assets to meet firm minimums? Maybe they don’t know who to trust? Maybe they can’t find an advisor who understands their story? The reason doesn’t matter; it’s for people who have the sense that they are on the outside of the financial services world.

The second group are those who don’t look at the financial section (or do so, but only begrudgingly). They know they have to save and invest, but they want the process of investing to take the least amount of time and energy possible. Mindful Money follows a simple process that can be employed by anyone with only a couple hours per year spent on investing.

Where those two circles overlap, we find people without access to the financial services world who also put financial concerns at the bottom of their to-do lists. They know they must deal with it, but they don’t know where to start or who to trust.

Mindful Money Membership is for anyone who wants to learn how to create a simple retirement portfolio that grows with their cost of living and requires minimal maintenance. There will always be complex situations that require more comprehensive advice. In that case, we will guide you to finding a financial advisor who is right for you.

Mindful Money is on a mission to provide financial coaching and education to everyone regardless of their current financial status. By offering a variety of educational tools at every price level, we aim to put the information you need within reach. Rather than traditional 1:1 financial advice – which is important in more complex situations, Mindful Money provides group financial coaching to help you answer the questions that make the most difference in your long-term outcomes. We give you all the tools and support you need to do-it-yourself, we gather twice a month to answer questions, and when things get complex, we will introduce you to a great advisor.

The longer we’re in this industry and working with people on their financial decisions, the more we realize how much anxiety investing creates for most people. This is really too bad. The anxiety and the efforts produced by that anxiety are huge negatives, both in terms of our well-being AND our financial outcomes.

The challenge most investors face is three-fold. First, we are physiologically adapted to respond to threats without thinking, and financial “markets” are often mis-perceived as threats. Second, our psychology is riddled with a host of well-known and documented cognitive and emotional biases (we can’t even explain why we’re making the decisions we’re making). And, third, our culture – more so than ever, from within our social media bubbles – pushes us towards unrealistic expectations and really bad choices.

The Mindful Money process can reduce this anxiety, and help people live better lives  – while improving their financial outcomes at the same time.

Financial advice is a luxury service. People pay thousands or 10’s of thousands of dollars annually for excellent financial planning and investing advice. If you pay $10,000 in fees (for anything), that $10,000 is NOT COMPOUNDING for your long-term benefit. Over many years and decades, the combination of the direct fees and the lost compounding adds up to a lot of money. To know just how much, we created this CALCULATOR.

For more complex financial situations involving real-estate or business planning, estate and philanthropic planning, wealth-transfer planning, family financial education, tax-planning, or even mixed family issues, paying these fees can make sense. However, for people with W-2 incomes, simple tax returns, and investable assets under a couple million dollars (i.e. most of us), it is an unnecessary expense.

1. Have an emergency fund.
2. You have to know what you’re investing for, and make the proper trade-offs in spending.
3. You have to save enough to feed your investments.
4. You have to keep the investments themselves as simple as possible – broad, global diversification means NOT having to make lots and lots of decisions. Fewer decisions mean fewer errors.

Don’t try to time the market… EVER.

No one knows the future. Every time you read a headline that suggests this-or-that investment decision, realize that the author is guessing, and that even their most well-reasoned arguments will be one argument among many, and that no one knows what will happen. NEVER invest based on headlines or how you feel about the current market environment.

The time to invest is when you have money to invest; the time to withdraw is when you need money to spend.

If you need help with planning… take a look at the Financial Independence Bootcamp.

If you need coaching… consider the Mindful Money coaching program.

Mindful Money wants nothing more than to be shared far and wide. From our Mindful Money Weekly Newsletter, Values, Purpose & Goals course, Podcast, Blog, Resources Page & Reading List, Facebook and LinkedIn pages, and YouTube channel, we offer a ton of 100% free and shareable content meant to inspire and uplift our community. We also give courses away freely to schools and non-profit organizations, and offer an Affiliate Partner Program for sales of our Financial Independence Bootcamp. If you know of any individual or organization that would benefit from financial education, or you have an audience you'd like to share financial education with, please reach out to us. We are here to help.