A Draining But Fulfilling Choice

October 04, 2013

One of the things that I’ve lived through over the better part of the last decade is going through a relatively ugly divorce and beginning to rebuild my financial and personal lives while being a semi-workaholic.  This point was brought into view very clearly recently in a conversation with a woman that I have started dating. I work a lot!  So does she.  And, I have the added element of traveling a lot for work.  Somehow, we’ve started referring to my travel as being “out to sea.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining.  I have an awesome life.  I have 3 healthy, happy, amazing children.  I have friends that I could call at any hour of the night in the middle of a serious problem and they’d be there to help.  I have a job that I love. My life is pretty great. But, I do go “out to sea” a lot and that can at times be quite stressful and tiring.  But worth it!

One of the reasons I can’t imagine doing anything other than what I’m doing now is that I feel like I’m making a difference. In prior roles, I worked on teams in the traditional financial planning/asset management world of banks and brokerage firms. We worked hard. We put in long hours.  We had a lot of fun.

But for me, at the end of the day, I was left just a little bit empty.  Our clients were almost always relatively well off and frankly, whether they took my team’s advice or not, they were going be to fine financially.  The phrase that I started using when talking to friends about why I wasn’t completely happy at work was “those who can afford our help probably don’t really need it, but those who could truly use it, probably can’t afford it.” That troubled me.

Then…I found a company that focused on financial education rather than asset management or financial product sales and it looked like the kind of place that was consistent with my views regarding the world of personal financial management.  After a very lengthy, multi-stage interview process, I joined Financial Finesse and as I’m writing this, it’s the best decision I’ve ever made professionally.  (I’m hoping my coworkers feel similarly about the decision to bring me on board 3 ½ years ago!)

Why has it been good for me? Despite the long hours, the travel, the “being out to sea” consistently, I love being able to fulfill both the analytical side of my brain and the “inner social worker” side of my brain.  Yes, I’m still talking to some people who have considerable means and discussing their investments (although we don’t sell any, we still talk to people about their current investment structure) and their tax issues, working on projections for their retirement.  That type of work satisfies the number cruncher in me, and the fun that can be had helping people prepare for the rest of their lives is tremendous.

In equal numbers though, I find that I talk with people about their issues with day-to-day finances.  How to budget, how to get out of serious debt, and how to prevent foreclosure or recover from bankruptcy are frequent topics of conversation.  These are exactly the kinds of discussions I never got to have in the past when dealing only with the investing side of the business.

These conversations are often very emotional and very draining, and at the end of the day, I often find myself drained physically and emotionally as I climb into my hotel bed. But as draining as it can be, it’s very much a part of why I feel so incredibly fulfilled.  I am helping people who are in distress.   Often, that distress leads to issues in their relationships, their employment and even their health.  Being able to see someone’s face when they walk into a meeting filled with despair and then walk out feeling hopeful and with some tangible ways to make progress gives me a feeling that I was never able to get in my prior roles.  Even though it can be draining, THAT is what makes me so happy and fulfilled professionally.