What Does “Financial Wellness” Mean To You?
September 22, 2014Last week, we kicked off “Ask A Planner Week” at Financial Finesse. This was designed to allow our social media fans and followers an opportunity to ask us questions so that our team of CFP® professionals can provide an unbiased answer. This initiative is being led by Erik Carter, JD, CFP® and you can check out Erik’s response to the first question “When Should You Sell Your Mutual Fund?” by clicking here to see his Thursday blog submission. We have already received many additional questions that are excellent and this is an ongoing initiative. So we encourage others to keep the questions coming in to Facebook and Twitter.
The entire team of financial planners that I work with provides a constant source of support and guidance as we all strive to help others make the smartest financial decisions possible. In fact, we regularly field questions from a wide variety of personal finance topic areas that cover aspects of the entire financial planning process. One moment, we may be focusing on basic money management concerns and the next we are discussed advanced retirement income planning strategies or helping someone review their wealth protection plan. The one constant that we tend to observe is an underlying desire for others to improve their overall financial health. The term that we use to describe this state of financial well-being is “financial wellness.”
For full disclosure, I probably should acknowledge that I have a personal interest in the concept of financial wellness. This is not just due to the fact that Financial Finesse provides workplace financial wellness programs and the name of our blog site is actually Financial Wellness @ Work. My passion and desire for the concept of financial wellness also relates to the fact that I have just spent the last few years conducting research on the topic of financial wellness in the workplace as part of my doctoral studies at Kansas State University. In the coming weeks, we will be exploring the topic of financial wellness along with research and practical tips to improve your financial well-being.
What do you think about when you hear the term “financial wellness?” Unfortunately, as popular as this term may be, it is difficult to find a universally accepted definition. To kick off this exploration of financial wellness let’s take a quick look at how Financial Finesse defines this important concept:
“Financial wellness is a state of financial well-being where an individual has achieved the following:
- Minimal financial stress
- A strong financial foundation consisting of little or no debt, an adequate emergency savings fund and living below their means
- An ongoing plan that puts them on track to reach future financial goals
How do you define financial wellness? Feel free to share your thoughts about what this important term means to you personally and how you define financial wellness in your life. (Of course in the spirit of our recent “Ask A Planner Week,” you can also ask us some specific personal finance questions with the goal of improving your own sense of financial wellness – however you may define “financial wellness.”)