Rob Macdonald | 30 September 2025
Rob Macdonald is an independent consultant who has coached and consulted hundreds of financial and investment advisers. He is a sought-after speaker and writer on topics related to financial health. He holds the Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) accreditation and is a qualified coach and counsellor. His most recent book, The 7 Pillars of Financial Health - Partnering with a Professional to Thrive, is the inspiration for this article.
Often when financial planners meet with clients, the clients don’t know what they want.
The reason that you would meet a financial planner may be prompted by a specific event: a death in the family; retirement; divorce. All these events have financial implications.
And very often you don’t know what to do. In a sense, these are “easy” problems for a financial planner to deal with.
But why would you see a financial planner when there is no obvious prompt? The answer is probably because you care about your financial health, and you want to have a financial health check. There are endless messages in the media about the importance of saving, preparing for a rainy day and having an emergency fund. The challenge we all face is how to make sense of our financial health before an event forces us to confront it.
When we think about our financial health, we tend to think that the core ingredient is money and having enough of it. Research has shown that when looking for financial advice, people most often want to know if they have “enough”. Financial security is most people’s priority.
But the problem with financial security is that it doesn’t guarantee that one lives a good and fulfilling life. One financial planner shared with me that their wealthiest client is their unhappiest client.
True financial health is about a balance between financial security and living well. And it is for this reason that when you meet with a financial planner to discuss your financial health, ideally the conversation is not just about money. Ideally the conversation is about what resources you have available to live a 
fulfilling life. If we think of our financial health in this way, we can recognise that we have both financial and non-financial resources.
The measure of your financial resources does tend to be money. Whether you are looking at your assets and liabilities, or your income and expenditure, the conversation tends to boil down to money.
The standard approach to developing a sound financial plan is to determine goals that you may have for your life and then match those 
goals to your financial resources.
Very often we don’t know what our goals are. We may think we want to own a home. But have we thought about how that impacts other life goals, like for example, travelling? Or we say we want to retire at 65 because that is the retirement age of our employer. Is that really what you want? Could it be that you want to retire earlier, or possibly later? You may really enjoy working.
We can’t determine what we really want from our financial resources without being truly curious about our lives. This is an important role that 
a financial planner can fulfil for you: Helping you be curious about your life.
An important aspect of this curiosity is to explore not just your financial resources, but also your non-financial resources. We underestimate what an impact our non-financial resources can have on our financial health. What do such resources look like? We can look at them in at least six categories:
Is your personality and your attitude to life an asset or a liability? How optimistic are you? When it comes to financial matters, there is a risk to 
being overly optimistic. Optimists often don't want to plan because they think everything will be okay.
If you have a conservative personality, you may be good at planning your finances but not living life fully. Either way, it is important to be curious about the influence your personality and attitude to life has on your financial health.
To what extent do you have purpose in life? How dependent is this purpose on your 
work? Often people who retire lose their purpose. So no matter how much money they have, they may end up having a miserable life.
Intrinsic purpose is a key to financial health.
Skills and qualifications are important factors when thinking how you might be able to 
generate an alternative income if you were to be unemployed, retrenched or even retired.
Some people start side hustles on the back of their skills and qualifications. These can be a key resource in helping you develop financial health.
A Harvard Study on Longevity and Happiness began in 1938, and over the past 87 years has determined that the one factor which is key to 
happiness and longevity is relationships.
Again, you can have all the money in the world, but if you don’t have close relationships with family, friends or members of your community, the likelihood is you will be unhappy.
Relationships in your life can also serve as critical financial resources if for any reason you need help in this area.
Many people spend their physical and emotional health to gain their 
wealth. And then they must spend their wealth to regain their health, and often they don’t ever regain their health. Our greatest asset is our physical and emotional health. Without it we have nothing. You may want to consider how your financial resources support or detract from your physical and emotional health. Sometimes the stress of a high paying job may not be worth it in the long-term.
Time is a finite resource for us all. How we spend our time determines the quality of our 
life and ultimately the extent to which we achieve financial health or not.
Having hobbies and interests that energise us, provide the opportunity to develop relationships, and possibly enable us to build new skills, will contribute to developing your financial health.
Unfortunately, when it comes to financial planning and investing, invariably you will be asked by a financial planner about your risk profile. 
The financial services industry has done a grave disservice to individuals by focusing attention on their risk profile when investing.
Risk profiles are problematic because often people with a perceived “conservative” risk profile need to take on risk and be more “aggressive” when investing to achieve their objectives.
It is more important when thinking about risk, to consider your overall attitude to risk in your life, and what that means for how you approach your financial resources. If you tend to be adventurous and have a high appetite for risk, you might need to be more conservative when it comes to your money to avoid taking unnecessary risks with it. The converse may apply.
Your financial health is not just about your financial resources. Be curious about the role your non-financial resources can play in your life, and ultimately your financial health.
If your financial planner is not talking to you about your non-financial resources, find one who will. Your level of curiosity is evident from the questions you ask.
If your financial planner is just asking you questions about your money and not your life, the chances are they are not curious about you as a person. And they are not going to activate curiosity in you, about yourself. Without such curiosity, the chances are that you will probably struggle to achieve genuine financial health.
