Be the Pilot, Not the Engineer
October 24, 2014One of my colleagues is hopelessly stuck in the years BC (“before children” as he explains) with his cultural references. He made a reference to the movie “Airplane” (acting as if it were a relatively new movie) and as we discussed the absurd premise of the movie, he made an interesting observation. “If I had to fly a plane, I’d rather be getting directions from a pilot than the engineer who built the plane.” His point was that a pilot knows how to focus on what is necessary to keep the plane flying whereas the engineer may get bogged down in the details of how the plane works. That’s how far too many people feel about their financial lives after they attend a class or read a book about finances.
In some ways, getting your financial life in order is like flying a plane. There are lots of moving parts and with a few wrong turns, you can be WAY off course. In order to stay on course, a lot of people turn to self education (books) and many employers now offer financial education classes. But most financial books and employer-provided financial education efforts are like getting flight instruction from an engineer. It doesn’t do you any good to be able to explain the inner workings of Modern Portfolio Theory if you don’t know your risk tolerance or your longer term goals or how to implement change in your life.
How can you transform articles and books and classes into something useful in your life that can help you get closer to your goals? First of all, don’t focus on it as simply education or data. View it as financial wellness and an opportunity to make some behavioral changes. The goal is not to help you pass a test on financial planning, but to develop good financial habits that can transform your life.
Taking a class or reading a book is an event, but financial wellness and progress is a process. Don’t assume that one class or book is going to do the trick and have you reach retirement in style. The mistake most people (including financial planners) make is in thinking about their financial lives like an engineer and trying to gather fact after fact, data point after data point.
Once you understand the basics or how your financial life works and your goals, it’s time to do what so few people are able to do…take action that moves you forward and closer to your goals. Choose 1 or 2 action steps after reading a financial book or taking a class. Then give yourself 24 hours to take the 1st action. By tweaking your thinking from engineer to pilot (why did the engineer give instructions in Airplane?), you can move from data to wisdom and make the kind of progress that can transform your financial life.
Hopefully you have a great pilot the next time you fly and when you start thinking about your long term financial goals, remember that you are the pilot of your financial life. You’ll do much better than if you try to be the engineer. If you do that, hopefully you’ll never have to use the phrase “I guess I picked the wrong week to……” (If you don’t get that reference, you’ll have to hit YouTube to understand it)