The Path to True Well-Being: Rethinking Money and Happiness
Episode 18 with Chris Budd
When financial planner and author Chris Budd redefined 'financial well-being,' it changed his entire outlook on coaching. Join hosts Wes Brown and Dr. Sonya Lutter as they learn the practical coaching techniques Chris uses to help his clients find purpose beyond wealth, challenging conventional assumptions about money and happiness.
From contemplating life's purpose to embracing the transformative power of kindness, Chris shares invaluable wisdom that transcends traditional financial planning. He reminds us that happiness isn't merely a fleeting goal but a sustainable state of contentment and well-being.
Drawing from Buddhist philosophy, he emphasizes joy as the essence of existence, attained through acts of kindness and advocates for intrinsic motivations over isolated goals, urging us to lead lives filled with meaning and purpose rather than constantly searching for them.
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Wes Brown 0:01
Alright, we're good. Well, Chris, good to meet you. Sonya has said many things. Well, I was I was waiting, I was really sorry. That's kind of cool. She she has said extraordinary things about you. And so very, very kind, you know, in her description. So, but anyways, it's good to meet you, you know, I'm, you know, keen to just have a conversation with you today about the focus of your work. And, you know, we'd love to just kick it off with having you kind of tell us about, you know, I don't know, tell us an overview of your story, what brought you to where you are today and the work that you're doing? And, you know, feel free to stay on the at the high on the high points, or you're welcome to dive down into significant moments as well.
Chris Budd 1:01
Okay, well, I'll give you about an hour. And then you can talk again, because so I've been a financial planner for 20 years, I sold my business to the employees by something called employee ownership trust, back in 2018. And a couple years before that, I wrote a book called The financial well being book. So a couple of things led to me writing that book. One of them I guess, if you really, you know, when you talk about big moments in life, my father, who, as it happens, was a financial adviser as well. He went bankrupt when I was in my 20s, in my mid 20s. And it was a really traumatic period, obviously, for him, but for the whole family as well. And I kind of made a vow that I would not be a victim of life, but he was that was the phrase I use. You're welcome to unpick that once on your view on Live Live therapy session. But I decided I wasn't going to be a victim of life like he was. And so I set up my own financial planning practice, but set it up to charge time. Which in the UK at that time in 1998, was absolutely unheard of. I was literally laughed at by some of my peers. Because everything was commissioned, everything was upfront commission in those days. So that was kind of a big step. And then another thing happened. Many years later, when the lady who worked for me and had worked for me for many years, lovely lady called Sarah. She told me that she was resigning and moving on to do something else, which is fine. And I asked her what was behind the decision? And she said, I don't know. She said, I just want to do something different. I don't want to spend my time helping rich people get richer, or that was a body blow that was I went away and I reflected on Oh, damn, she's right. She's right. That's what we do. So I started researching for my book, because I was building up to selling the business and had some time. And I didn't want to just write another one of those what I've learned about money type books that so many people do. So I started researching the theories behind happiness. And there's a line I like to a joke I do when I do talks, which is I actually invented the phrase financial wellbeing. I just didn't know the two people invented it before me. But that's that's actually true. I did when I came up with a title for the book. It was based upon work at a local cancer cancer center where my wife works, called Living that where they talk about living well with cancer. And they talk about Well being a lot and I thought what financial well being there's some something there, and I googled it and there were two entries on that Google search that was it. One of them a book by Gallup authors, Ratan Harter called well being, which is great. And another was a report by Barclays Bank about well, being in the workplace, we might come back to that. If you Google it, now, there's something like 320 million entries on that Google search. So I'm claiming all of those. So yeah, that's a journey of how I got to the point of running a book about money and happiness. And then that book absolutely took off. And we founded an institute and I've written another book and lots of podcast episodes. So I've done lots of research on the subject ever since then. But that was the starting point.
Oh, oh, this is the most boring answer anybody can ever given? Is it because everybody says the same thing I kind of fell into it really? left university didn't know what to do, and fell into it.
Sonya Lutter 4:39
So you kind of alluded to this, Chris? That is a boring answer. And it is the most typical, by the way. financial well being has become a bit of a buzzword, right. I mean, however many million hits that you've said. So a lot of people say they're doing financial well being. But when you dig into it really all that they're doing is a budget seminar, it seems from the outset. So what I have appreciated about your work is that it is very much holistic, the Gallup book I use all of the time. I love it. And there's a lot of parallels between your book and that book as well, which is focused on, at least from the Gallup framework, these five areas of well being. So I wonder if you could expand upon that and how you saw well being financial well being, as being tied to your social well being and your career will be in your community, well, being physical well being, like how do you see all of those as being related versus what I tend to see as financial well being as the budget seminars, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I know.
Chris Budd 5:52
I'm with your 100%. That there is there's three versions of financial well being. There's there's mine, there's the budget seminar type, the describe, which is in the UK certainly is largely in the workplace. Because of that Barclays report, which was which was all about really financial resilience, I would call that non financial well being. But the third type is financial well being this used by financial advisors on their website, just for marketing purposes. I see this quite a lot. I see people on LinkedIn saying we're a financial well, being specialists, I say, Great, tell me all about it. And they go, Well, we do really good financial planning. Yeah, that's not financial well being me. So financial well, being is a deep and fascinating subject about anything to do with the relationship between money and happiness. And in my latest book, I talk about the four cornerstones which is a way of, of trying to break that down a little bit, because it is such a broad topic. But that can include all sorts of fun things like behavioral finance, like psychology. Now, here's the thing, right? So here's a bit of fun. I kind of think of this as this whole topic, like the school disco. Bear with me. I know if you had school discos, when you were at school, we probably the prom, you would have called it. But school disco was was five o'clock, your packet of crisps and your lemonade. And then you all said, and the DJ starts playing wham, or whatever it would have been in my day. And then everybody stands in their little groups around the outside of the dance floor. And they're all in the little gangs got our arms folded, they're all staring at each other. And that's how I think of this whole area of financial well being right, because you've got the neuroscientists who are talking about which area of the brain lights up when you think of your future self. Or when you think about money, you've got the behavioral finance, behavioral experts talking about confirmation bias, loss aversion, great stuff, psychologists talking about self limiting beliefs. And so you've got financial advisors, like, you know, us and we're trying to apply this into the workplace. And then you've got the Buddhists who are standing there with their arms folded, going, yeah, what guys, we've been doing this for two and a half, 1000 years. Really, you just say you discovered something amazing, really. So there's nothing new in all of this. It's been around for a long, long time. But what's happened is we've been distracted. We've been distracted over the last while with the advent of capitalism, really to think that becoming wealthy is the objective. And we therefore missed the real point of life. So some ways I think in financial well being as unlearning or relearning, which are even better, both probably. And that means it's placed with those four other parts of well being is as a conduit, not an objective in itself. So social well being to pick one, the Harvard longitudinal study on happiness overwhelmingly shows us that the quality of social relationships is the biggest contributor to our well being. Money can help achieve that if it means that I don't know in the UK, I know some people whose kids live in New Zealand actually, when we're talking about I've just been to New Zealand to visit my sister in law right? That gave my wife a huge and her sister a huge amount of joy and me. So money helps but money in itself sitting in the bank isn't going to help me. So those four of them are directly contributing to well being but financial well being is the conduit. The problem is, we have treated we should be treating money as our servant but instead it's become our master. And that is really the heart of what financial well being is all about. For me relearning the correct relationship.
Sonya Lutter 9:45
Yeah. I I want to challenge you a bit. Mostly just because I really struggle with this myself. Any of our listeners can take a look at us online like Gu Go are names. And it's fairly obvious that we're fine. Financially, like we're doing okay. So it's easy for us to sit around talking about, you don't need money to find financial well being. And I do believe that, but also, I struggle to believe that somebody who's struggling to meet day to day means can find financial well being, I am certain that you have pondered this. So
Chris Budd 10:32
it's a perfectly valid challenge. And I have to be very careful when I go online and start talking about hey, guys don't need money to be happy, someone will always come along Oh, yeah, easy for you to say you've got a bit of money. So I don't, I try not to say that, because I think you probably need to invoke Maslow's hierarchy of needs is one way of looking at this. If you're at the bottom of that, and you don't have food and shelter, of course, so money is going to help you get that and therefore make you more happy. Once you get to self actualization, money doesn't have a great deal of part to play. So there's that way of looking at it. The other way I would say is that there is that's a kind of the impact of money on your well being is going to go down as you move up that. But the pointed with, or the speed at which the impact of money on your hands on your happiness goes down, will vary for different people. So just come back to the Buddhists for Buddhist monk, they don't need anything at all. But us Westerners aren't used to that. And we aren't trained in that way. So hours will be a bit higher, and that's fine. But I am personally of the view that there comes a point in time where more money doesn't make you more happy, unless you need more money to be happy. Right? So if you're seeing money as the objective, then having a bit more money, just because you've got more money won't make you a bit happier. It'll be temporary, and it might be a bit short lived, but it could work. So it depends on where you are and your two quotes on your liver Mirsky your intentional activities around money. But yes, I absolutely accept that. It's easy for me to say when I've reached a reasonable stage of life, but I still think the amount of money that I'm not a rich person. And so my business was a life changing amount of money. I'm okay. And that's alright. Because I work out what I need to be happy. Yeah.
Sonya Lutter 12:23
Yeah, I have so many questions with earlier you mentioned you've missed the point of life. So I wonder also, if you figured out what this point of life is, because I think we've clearly established it's not money. But that's an easy one. I think everyone can reasonably agree on that, whether or not they see it at face value or not. And Wes, and I talk a lot about purpose. I think that you have answered your question in a way that I heard but I don't know if other people heard it. So I'm curious how you will answer that question. What's the meaning of life? Chris?
Chris Budd 13:00
42 is the obvious answer. I'm not sure American audiences will quite get that reference. But um, so the, there's a few different ways into this, you could look at the Buddhist way, which is to talk about the purpose of life as joy. And joy comes from kindness. That's a version of meaning and purpose is kindness. So one of my favorite things to do with people is to ask simple questions around what brings you joy in life, and it's not owning an expensive car, is it? That's never the answer that you get. The challenge I would give to your listeners is, how are you actually following this through both with yourself and with your clients? With the clients? How often do you talk to them about this stuff? How often do you talk through the investment portfolio, which by the way, your client is almost certainly bored stiff by? And how often do you talk to them about what would bring joy to your life? What would it bring purpose in your life? Adjunct there I also think we just need to calm down a little bit, by the way on that one, because it's very easy to talk like this and make it sound like we should all be but it's monks. I changed a word that I use with this, which is I used to talk about, well being comes from living a life of meaning and purpose. And I realized that that sounds like you've got to walk around everyday looking for where his meaning and purpose happening right at this moment. He's can't activate. So instead, I use a phrase living a life with meaning and purpose. And that might just be that your elderly neighbor you're looking at popping once a day. It could be you help out down at the local soccer club or helping the kids when your son is playing. It could just be doing little things that's that's fine. That's enough. Let's not get too carried away with it. Yeah, so those are the things in life that bring joy is kindness. A second way I would perhaps look at this is a talk in the book about the four cornerstones, but about their three simple steps to happiness. Okay? Very simple. What you do is you start with step two. And step two is what brings me joy. And the answer to that is internal self worth, as opposed to external self worth. Go back to my father's example, my dad was working class came from a humble background, and he made a bit of money. And when he made a bit of money, he started to show off. I'll be honest, he bought a fancy car Jaguar, it was a secondhand one. But still. I used to have the the, the race taken out of me at school because we had a Sodastream. And nobody else did. That was like 1970s, rural Somerset, England, that was the height of a wealth was having its own history. When my dad went bankrupt, he lost all of it. And he lost his pride with it. And he was never the same man. Again. That's because his self worth was dependent upon external sources, the approval of others. So step two is to say, our is to recognize that joy comes from internal self worth. Which leads us to step three, which is to say, Well, how do I get external self worth? That's what we've just been talking about. It's kindness, thinking of others, it's usually going to have some form of helping others, I do think, but that was exactly what form that takes will be unique to each individual. And then we can go back to step one, which is creating a financial plan to identifiable objectives. The trouble is, what we tend to do is we tend to start with step one, we tend to create the fat financial plan to get financial security. And once we've got there go great, how can I use more money to be happy, but you've just missed your last 20 years. So we need to start with step two, and learn what makes us happy, and specifically how we will bring that about and then start with our financial plan.
Sonya Lutter 17:19
It seems like I'm getting some sort of kickback here. Because every single episode, I bring up the book Sapiens, I do not receive any sort of financial benefit. But it's so really, you have to read it with there's something happening behind the scenes you don't know about. I know, it's like you just wait for it. When am I going to drop in sapiens? If you have not read it, you know, I'm going to have to transition to you, you have to read it. That's kind of the premise of it. how humans have evolved over time. And this, I mean, it's sort of does tie to what is your purpose? And while I wouldn't necessarily use the same words that you do, I think I'm saying the same thing as you cruise of CEA need meet a need. Like that's, that's why we're here is to serve others and whatever way that we have our unique capability of doing so. And again, taking me back to the challenge, it's easy for us to say, start with what brings you joy, and start with how you can help others when you are really struggling to make ends meet. So I think that there is some sort of attention that needs to be given to that Maslow's hierarchy of need and
Chris Budd 18:36
yeah, I I'll push back slightly on your because there's a great book when I favorite books is antidote by Oliver Berkman. And it's all about, it's all about the power of negativity. It's great. It starts on self help. It starts off at self help gurus conference somewhere in America. And he's, you know, the cynical Brits, and everybody else is a woman in a holler in excitement or just gotta be positive, you've just got to be positive, and he's going, No, I'm not positive, and I'm alright. But he then goes through loads and loads of examples, including things like Seneca and so on. But there's one bit where he talks about a slum in Nairobi and Africa, which is, you know, hell on earth, it's like on a million people in it, and they're living in tents. He describes as a certain shape that when you hear that shake everybody ducks because it means that there's a bag full of feces being thrown across the place. And it's had measurements to show that it's one of the happiest places on earth. So I'm not sure like I said before your line can come down that that Maslow's hierarchy of needs if you get your mind, right. And I'm not about to tell everybody that they've got to get their mind right because that will be patronizing and easy to say. And as I say in the western society, We are trained that we need a certain number of things to be happy. But But I don't believe that that's factual. You know, I think that's our that the culture. If we go back 150 years, 200 years, when farming was the way that we lived, how we were helping others was looking after our family that was it. tilling the land, looking after the animals in order to feed your family that was purposeful, that was enough. So I don't think we have to be too worried about sitting in a nice house and talking about this stuff. Because I still think it's real, I feel, I still think it's true. It's just maybe harder to find that as the answer. And so we must help people get there quicker, rather than wagging our fingers and say, You don't need any money at all. That's not very helpful, even though it's probably true.
Sonya Lutter 20:50
Absolutely. So let's go back to step one, how is it that you approach financial planning in a unique way that gets people away from the financial planning as the starting point and more towards helping them find their joy and their purpose?
Chris Budd 21:10
So I think one of the skills that I've been, I've been preaching this for over a decade in the UK now, one of the one of the most underrated skills for financial planners is listening, is what I would call coaching skills. So I trained I spent two years training going to get a diploma in becoming a business coach back in 2000, something 13. And it completely changed my attitude to everything really talking to anybody, because it made me realize that I was incredibly judgmental. When I was listening to somebody, I was forming opinions based upon my values, not theirs. My questions will be based upon my values and not theirs. And that the biggest skill that I never applied was shutting up. So I banned what we would call factfinder and a meeting. So you have a blank piece of paper, you ask an open question such as, how can we be of assistance? Or what would you like to talk about? And then you just shut up? That's it. That's enough. That's what you need to do. It's incredibly hard to do. Because we're trained to find answers. That's what our schooling does. That's what our technical training does. It says, the exam says, here's a set of information, there is a solution, please write down what it is. But when you're sitting in front of a client, and saying, What would you like your future to look like? What you're trying to do is create options, not find solutions. So I started adopting a coaching approach into my financial planning and distress. This is not some detailed psychological, this is simply coaching in the form of good listening and questioning, which is really hard. Take a lot of practice. But the impact on what the clients are starting to tell you was enormous. And the impact on on the client impact on added value was absolutely enormous. Because it people started to unload and just tell things that they really didn't expect it to. Some people really didn't like it. Because they were becoming a little bit exposed, which they didn't expect in a financial advisors office. And so my business morphed over time that some of those people left his clients, but far more keen. And I started to attract advisors who really wanted to have a positive, a positive impact on clients lives, not just on their money. So the coaching skills was the big part of it. So the talk that I do on this talks about coaching first, then planning cash flow, etc. And only then the technical advice, the investment performance, coaching, then planning that, yeah,
Sonya Lutter 24:03
similarly, I've run around preaching about, we just need to listen more. And, and even though it feels judgy, right, like, I'm telling you not to judge and to sit there and listen, and yet here I am telling you stop talking. Just listen, the irony here, I'm
Chris Budd 24:20
gonna give a quick examples. So I was coaching a guy who said he wanted to talk about you. He had three child daycare nurseries. He had no management team, it was just him. And he wanted to talk about creating a management team around him. He had four children under the age of six, and he was working six and a half days a week. Now, this was the first 25 minutes he was telling me all of this stuff and I was just listening. And after 25 minutes, I said, Okay, can I just read back to make sure we understand what the challenge is here. You are working incredibly hard. You want a management team to do create more time for you so that you can spend more time with your family. And he said, No, no, I'm quite happy with half a day with my family. Thank you very much, that's fine. I want the management teams working for fourth and fifth sight. Now, that's not my values. But I then had to coach him for what he wanted with his values, even though I disagreed with them. But if I hadn't have done that, you know, sense check, I would have carried on talking to him based on my values, not his. So listening is really, really tough, because you can't help but bring a little bit of yourself into the conversation, number of advisors who I've heard older, let's be honest, older white male advisors, they tend to be in the UK, who say, Yeah, my clients don't want any of this financial wellbeing stuff. And I say to them, Well, let's look at it this way. That client, that advisor over there, who's got the same number of clients with you, and probably somewhat different demographic, his clients do want it, your clients don't? What's the difference between those two practices? You your values and your judgments? Yeah, I
Sonya Lutter 26:05
totally agree with that. And that's what I think makes it so challenging for kind of this next evolution of financial planning is what I would call it is, it seems so simple. And yet, that ability to put your values aside and to listen, is a task that takes so much time and so much patience, and self reflection. One activity that I do with my students is to have them imagine themselves on a balcony. And then I have them invite their clients up to the balcony. I think you've heard me talk about this, Chris. And okay, Chris, I, I wonder if we could pretend for a second that you're walking by this conversation. And I'm wondering if you'll join me up at the balcony, and we can just watch how this conversation is going on? And really trying very hard to get people to put themselves in different mindset and, and see what's going on from their point of perspective, but also what's behind stage, what's the next act that's coming out? What are the people in the audience, your children, your parents, your friends, your neighbors? What are they seeing in this situation? And not only is that helpful for me as an advisor, to get some of that perspective, that empathy, if I dare throw out the word. And it also helps the clients, couple clients in particular, to see the other person's perspective, because we're talking about playing our clients, maybe misalignment and values, but what about if it's a husband and a wife, and they're coming in with different values and, and really trying to navigate that and come up with a financial plan that aligns to His purpose and her purpose and how they find meaning in life. And that's when it starts getting really complicating, really
Chris Budd 28:00
juicy? Yeah, I've got a I've got a case study that I'm going through at the moment, a guy I'm coaching. And I just tell you a little bit about it. Because this is so fascinating to me, this guy, he sold his business, he's in his 50s, he sold his business for quite a lot of money. And when I met him last year, he got in touch and said he wanted some coaching. And first meeting first thing he said, I said, I've got 9 million pounds in my current account. I got 6 million pounds in an investment portfolio. I've got a large house with no mortgage, and I'm bereft what a word bereft, such a powerful word. So we got talking, and I just asked him, you know, tell me a bit more. And he didn't know what to do with himself. He, his wealth manager and his accountant had said to him for the last 20 years growth, build your business, grow, grow, grow, grow, you've got to get financial security. And then he sold his business and he's got financial security, and then some, and he doesn't know what to do. Because they've been asking the wrong question or this time, you know, there's a little there's a there's a little challenge here, which I think is so fascinating. He's still working for the business that he sold to because he's on an urn out. And he's doing quite a high pressure job, which he's not enjoying, he's very unhappy. And at the end of the three years, if he achieved certain growth targets, he gets another 3 million pounds. Now, I'd ask the question of your listeners. What would you advise him? Is accountant a solicitor? have said to him under no circumstances much you stopped work, because if you do, you'll lose the 3 million pounds I've said to him, you're unhappy, and you'll have three times more money than you'll ever be able to spend. So why don't you just start work? And he says, Because I lose 3 million bands. And I say, Yeah, but you don't need the 3 million. That's quite a tough ask for a regulated financial adviser to say to somebody give up 3 million pounds to become happier. But personally, I think that that's the right advice. But I wonder how many people would actually give that advice? It's a fascinating conundrum. Isn't this fascinating?
Sonya Lutter 30:36
I doubt very many people would ask that at all, because it hurts the financial advisor to write, you also have 3 million less to manage. So there's a bit too well,
Wes Brown 30:51
and I also wonder, too, I mean, advisors are held to a fiduciary standard if fiduciary standard. And so what's in the best interest of the client? How do you measure that? I mean, Chris, from your standpoint, you're saying it would be in his best interest in in the best interest of his well being, for him to just stop working. But that's, I do you think there's a little bit of a difficult position there,
Chris Budd 31:15
you've just you've just touched on something that was which, if I may, I would just touch on because I do have the answer to that. Coming up. I've been working on something for a few years now, which I'm hoping will be launched sometime, but soft launch sometime in the next few weeks, and how to launch in a month or two, which is called the financial wellbeing pulse. And it is a way to measure your client's well being financial well being their relationship to money. It's a set of questions that we've worked on with some with a professor of happiness, which is quite cool. And a professor of a Doctorate of behavioral psychology. And, and me and we got this set of questions, and it comes out with a score and a report. Now, the beauty of this is, let's say a client goes through it, and they get a score of 52% financial well being and a short report explaining what that means in areas that they may wish to think about. A year later, or whatever period might be, they go back for their next review meeting, and they do it again. And now it says your financial well being is 62%, the firm can now say we've increased your financial wellbeing by 10%, which is as a result of advice, you can demonstrate the impact of your advice, which is huge. My little, so that's it, let's just stop there. So when I do my marketing, that's all I talk about, the firm can gather data across all advisors, looking at training needs, they can report to regulators on brilliant, actually don't tell anybody this, but actually, my Trojan horse is that when the client goes to see the advisor, and the advisor gets out the investment portfolio starts going through benchmarking of the, you know, us high growth fund, the class is gonna be going actually, I quite like to talk about this report, because it says that I'm not very good with spending and that that might be linked with my inability to envisage my future self. Can we talk about that a little bit. So I'm hoping that this is actually going to drive change, but I'm not telling anybody. Because they won't buy it. And buying it gives us a nice, quick, easy win. So you can measure something and stick on your website, we increase the average wellbeing of our clients by 10%. Yeah, sorry, I just wanted to get you mentioned that would measure and that's really big in my life. Yeah,
Wes Brown 33:35
I think that's really interesting. I mean, really interesting. And certainly something I'd love to learn more about you and one of the things. And I apologize, because I've been having technological issues. So I've been getting kicked out of this meat, I've been kicked out about six times. So I have been listening as as keenly as I thought it was. I just keep I've got things keep happening. I got I got places to be over here. Yeah. You know, I'm curious in your practice, in the application of your kind of approach towards enhancing well being, you know, you talked about asking the question, you know, what, what brings you joy in life? And, um, this came to mind as you were talking about the, the gentleman, the client that you have that who sold the business, and he's still working, he's working hard, you know? And what comes to mind for me, or are, you know, lots of times, and I know, a lot of people and we're, this is true in various realms of our life, we know exactly what we should do. You know, we have avoidant behaviors, for various reasons that caused us not to do it. We, in you know, one of things I wrote down was, you know, thinking about that guy was, you know, this belief that if it's hard, it's more valuable, right? If it's harder, it's more valuable, that type of thing. That's that could be one aspect of that. Right, he's got to work hard, make money, the money's a quantification of that hard work. And thereby, it's, it's valuable. And that's quantified in the in the money that he's gonna get. But then there's also the just the, just the avoidant behaviors like that are that I think we all have which is. And this could show up in relationships or this could show up in diet dieting or exercise, or it could show up in financial well being like you're talking about. So I'm just curious how you address those. Just those things.
Chris Budd 35:33
I think that's a very important role of the advisor is to keep your client on track. Now, that one of the things that really depresses me, is there are some who take behavioral finance, and behavioral coaching and say, use knowledge of behavioral finance in order to beat markets. So depressing. It's like buying a piano and chopping it up for firewood, you know, totally misses the point. Let's take this chap again. One of the things he said to me was, when I talked about what's the money for one of my questions, or what's his money for the No. I mean, obviously, I've got a buyer, expensive car. I said, Okay, can I just ask the thinking behind that? It's not obvious to me. So can you explain that to me? Well, he said, I need to, I need somebody to show for my money. And I said show who? So we carried on talking for a bit. And he concluded, God, you're right. This is ridiculous. Why am I bad? I didn't even like cars. Why buy an expensive car. This was in June last year, we then took a break because he wanted to reflect and do a bit of research and some charities that he might get involved with. And when we came back at the end of September, so right, tell me what's been happening? Well, he said, I saw I bought myself that expensive car. I said, Oh, I'm just looking back at my notes. And one of the things that you said was that you weren't going to vote, did I? Now, of course, what happens therefore is in between meetings with us wonderful financial wellbeing experts, people go and have lives. They go back and they see wealthy people as the measure of success. They get jealous because somebody else has got an expensive guy, you know, all the all the comparison things or the the fact that money is the starting point to everything. Some friends of mine have bought a field locally, the edge of our village and they bought it because they want to stop houses from being built on it. Brilliant, lovely stuff. They're going to rewild it, leave it to do its own thing for lovely. And then a month later, there's some horses in there because somebody come along said can we give you some money to keep our horses on, and they've got what we got to make some money out of it. Now, if we get dragged back in the money, distractions, that money is success, success is money. So the role, therefore the financial planner, this is to keep people honest to their true objectives, the meaning and purpose the intrinsic motivations. Now, I'll give you a little example of where I'm coming back to that point, I was saying that just calm down a little bit. I love my vinyl records. Okay, I love my music. And I've got a couple of 1000 records, I got loads of CDs, and I love collecting records and getting original Beatles presses and stuff like that. So I will go into Bristol on a Saturday, and I'll buy a couple of records and I spent 50 quid. It's a silly habit. I don't leave those records. If I if you press play on the first track, I put everything onto my hard drive. If you press play on the first track on my hard drive, right. And you played every track all the way through my entire collection 24 hours a day, it will take 137 years, play all the music. I ridiculous. That's incredible. And I'm still buying more. Now, that's absurd. But it doesn't cause me a financial problem. I'm still able to do the things that I enjoy in life. So we must make sure we're not being too judgy in all of this stuff. And if somebody wants to buy an expensive car and they can afford an expensive car, it's not a terrible thing. I give the example of a yacht so the classic cliche of wealth is trope of wealth is a yacht right? Somebody comes to a financial planner and says, I want to have a cash flow forecast to help you buy a yacht. The financial planner should ask that question what is the yacht for? And if the answer comes back, well, I want to take it down to the local Marina. where all the wealthy people go, and I want to stick it in one of the expensive meters right by the boat club. So I can sit on the back with my glass of champagne, waving and all the other wealthy people so they can see me, that will probably make you unhappy. If on the other hand, they say I want to take my yacht down to the local reservoir, because there's a sailing club there that I've been a member of for 30 years, so all my friends and family are all my friends. And when my family comes home, and my grown up, children come home at the weekend, they love coming at me on my boat, that's a much more internal form of enjoyment, and therefore will make them happier. So that's why it's so key that we ask these questions, and just challenged a little bit. What's it for? Sorry, I may have gotten off the question a little bit. But I got carried away.
Wes Brown 40:44
No, it's fantastic. And actually, you know, I think that's a good segue. I mean, you have you have these really great questions that you've mentioned. You know, what brings you joy in life? What is it for whether whatever it happens to be whether it's money generally, or it's the thing that they want to spend the money on? I'm curious, what are what are some other exercises that you do with clients? And maybe, you know, what are some of your favorites?
Chris Budd 41:13
The tricky one is getting people. Not many people look up in life. So the thing that I find people find hardest is actually looking up and going, well, what could I do that would make me happy, we're doing jobs, we've got these distractions we've got money is its role, all of these different reasons, we've also got areas of permission, permission to be happy, there's so many barriers to actually thinking about what could I do to be happy. So anything that gets you there is going to be a productive exercise, because it's not something that people ever tend to do, in my experience. There's lots of little tricks that you could do about that. One of them, which I confess, isn't mine, I think it was from one of our podcasts from like, I remember who was from so I always like to credit people when I'm nicking their ideas. But I can't actually remember I'm sorry, um, but it's to do with think about your funeral. But you're a ghost at the back and nobody can see you. But you're there listening. And somebody stands up and they say things about your life? What would you want them to say? But there's a lovely second part to that, which is, now you're at the back. And there's three of your old mates, it will go, yeah, right. To what the guy the front is saying, What wouldn't you want them to say? I think that's an interesting little exercise that you can go through with people gets a conversation going for sure. I
Sonya Lutter 42:55
like that. And I bet Wes is gonna jump in here. So I've got to beat him to it. You started that way, look up. And that's the problem, I think. And Wes, and I spend a lot of time talking about this, as well as social media, other forms of distractions on the phone, like you're literally looking down at your phone, and just getting them to look up and broaden their perspective beyond this electronic connection to people that they think that they have a connection with that they might not have quite the same kind of connection that they really do have. And I think your funeral exercise is a great one for people to really reflect on that how many people when they're looking down at their electronic device, or coming to that funeral? And what is their real relationship in your life and really reflecting on some of those things? I know that isn't exactly where you were going with that. But it's you really caught me when
Chris Budd 43:54
I got a conversation go. I just looked up. It was episode 67 of the financial well being podcast, Dr. Elia Grigoris. I wanted to make sure I credited the person whose idea that it's
Sonya Lutter 44:07
a great example, I love it. Can I transition to a different topic? Is it cricket? No. It can be cricket if you want. Because when I was in the UK, last year, I was in a bar eating by myself. And on TV, there was this most bizarre game going on. And so I took a video of it, and I sent it to some people back home like what the world is going on here. And they're like, da it's cricket. That's, that's how much I know about cricket.
Chris Budd 44:41
If you're, if you're a cricket obsessive like I am, one of our favorite things about cricket, is that it goes on for five days, and there's a very good chance that it will be a draw, and that Americans just cannot get their heads. Why?
Sonya Lutter 44:58
It is very bizarre. But I do agree. Okay, different transition. You've written a lot, we've talked a lot about your four cornerstones of well being book. But you have a number of other books, you do the podcast. And I know when people email you, you have a very nice disclosure, that you do not work on Wednesdays, because you use this for your writing time. So a different topic, but I'm guessing this is related to your own personal well being and how you can compartmentalize those tasks in your life. And how did you come to this point? And how is that working for you? I'm mostly asking for personal reasons, because I feel like
Chris Budd 45:43
okay, so there's a little bit of a story here. So forgive me, I'll try and keep it relatively quick. Back in 2010, I had what the doctor called a Mazy head, which when I looked it up, was depression wasn't serious, but I was struggling to concentrate. And so go to my local doctor. And she's a bit worried because she doesn't have anything that she can give me for there. So she doesn't quite know what to do. So she gives me a form. She says, forgot depression, here's a depression questionnaire. I go home, and I sit at the kitchen table a moment I can absolutely clear as a picture, I can fold the piece of paper, it's faded, it's been photocopied many, many times, it's a bit wonky on the page, it's headed to depression questionnaire. And the first question is, how many times a week do you feel like killing yourself. And I thought, I don't think conventional medicine is going to be able to help me here. So by coincidence, a friend of mine was training to be a coach. And she asked me if I'd be a guinea pig. And my initial reaction was all believe in that old who we are. And then this happened with a doctor and I thought, well, maybe I'll try that instead. So I agreed, and I had three, two hour sessions with him, and they changed my life. Because she did, um, I can't remember it's called with a wheel of priority, something like that, you probably know it, where you put them to things that matter to you. And then you put them you assess them on how much you're doing of each of them. And writing novels was a nine out of 10. And because I'd written a novel when I was a terrible novel, when I was when I was a student. And I stopped and hadn't written anything more for 20 years. So then when I when I put the how much you're doing it, I put not because I wasn't. And I, we realized that this could be the source of my depression. So I started writing novels. I, the depression lifted the mozzie headwind completely after about three months, and I published my first novel three months later, and I've now written five and published three. So the takeaway for that, for me, is twofold. Firstly, if you want to help other people get qualified and how to do it. Don't be judgy, then coaching skills, etc, etc, all the stuff we talked about. But in order to be helped, I firmly believe you need a third party. Because it's really, really hard to challenge your own assumptions. I knew this about myself. And yet, I never allowed it to actually come to this. But I knew that I was frustrated by not writing. But it was only by seeing it on a chart that somebody else had challenged me to put it on, on that on that flip chart, then I realized that that was the thing I needed to do. So that role of a third party and challenging your assumptions is absolutely key. Certainly wasn't my process anyway.
Sonya Lutter 48:50
Yeah. We don't need to go into this because we don't have the time at the moment. But AI is trying to make its way into there to be that third party and it's an interesting thought experiment. Is that going to be effective? Or is it not there's some preliminary evidence maybe it is effective in some crisis type of situations. But it's not that human connection. So I threw out a big bomb and yet we cannot discuss it
Chris Budd 49:22
I just have one line which is for what I've seen, and I'm not an expert, I might be a bit ignorant here but for what I've seen all he does ai ai does, is it makes things more productive, not better.
Wes Brown 49:37
greater efficiency. I love it. Yeah. So I have a I have a question that's popped up. You've mentioned the word happiness a lot and I'm is happiness the goal that's a that's a gigantic question. And I and I feel like I should qualify it and I'm happy to if you'd like me to but I we could also just let you run with that.
Chris Budd 50:01
Look, firstly, there's terminology here, I think of happy and sad is fairly in the moment type things and well being is more of a long term contentment. So there's, there's word to appreciate, that's not necessarily what you meant. And there's also the word goal, which I'd love to come back to because I've got a real issue. But his happiness is joy, the objective of life? Should we put it? If I can rephrase your question? Yes, that's a very Buddhist thing at the heart of Buddhism is the notion that joy is your reason for being on this planet. And that's one of the reasons why I love what I would call the philosophy of Buddhism as opposed to a religion. It's really for me, it's more of a philosophy. That's why I love it. Because it starts off by saying, you deserve to be joyful. That's why you're here. The simple answer to that is yes.
Sonya Lutter 50:53
Briefly, yeah, do that.
Chris Budd 50:57
Okay, so I really, really don't like the idea of financial goals. Or at least in isolation, there's a lot of goal based planning is a phrase that you hear quite often. The reason I like it is because once you've achieved a goal, then what happens? My chap whose goal was financial security, he achieved it, and have given no thought as to what happened afterwards. My goal might be to retire at the age of 60. Great, you get to 60 you retire, then what happens? Michael Phelps famously won eight gold medals at the Sydney Olympics, and then had a nervous breakdown. The world is littered with athletes who have achieved their goals and found deep depression straight afterwards, because they have no more goals. So if we only talk to people about goals, we often talk about owning things, achieving bucket lists, stuff, you know, the day is gonna come. And the most common thing people say when you say what you're going to do in retirement, everybody says travel, the most common thing by a street, and that's great, I am one of them. I've just been to New Zealand, but I'm very aware that I'll be coming back from New Zealand at some point, and I need to have something to do to make me happy. Maybe I'll go off to somebody somewhere else. But at some point in time, you're going to have periods coming back. So goals, financial goals are really problematic problematical for me, especially what I really mean is in isolation, but nothing wrong with travel. But you also need to look at what I would call motivations, intrinsic motivations, not just trying to achieve goals in life.
Wes Brown 52:37
Well, you know, James clear talks about that, right? And his book of systems versus goals. For that, I think, for that very reason. Just that once you get there, I think, naturally, yes. You sort of begs the question of then what if it's a specific goal, the dream
Chris Budd 52:52
and what happened? It's a great coaching question, then what happens? Just keep us we mustn't use the question why? My mum always used to use the five why's, which is really annoying. When you say, why are you doing that? Well, because of this, why that why the problem with the word y is that it usually elicits some sort of defensive kind of response. So a nice version of that is just to say, and then what, what, and just keep going with that until you start to get to some real purpose.
Wes Brown 53:21
So and I know we're coming to the top of our time together, and I want to be respectful of your time. I do have one more question on the along the lines of the pursuing joy, slash happiness, however, whatever phrase is used to capture that in your, in your opinion, I guess, where's the balance of that between, you know, investing in yourself spending more time writing as an example, right, that's something that you really enjoy, and, and you get a lot of happiness from or purpose from? But where's the balance between that and helping others, right? finding joy in helping others find meaning in and so on.
Chris Budd 54:11
I think that's so the four cornerstones are firstly, what is true of everyone. Secondly, what is true of you, Michael, know thyself. And the third and fourth are barriers that are true of everyone and barriers that are true of you. Go back to those first two, what is true of everyone, helping others will make anybody happy. If you do something that's nice for somebody else, you will walk away feeling happy. That's just true, everybody. What's true of you is how you do that, and how often you do that. So it's probably true to say the more you do it, the better but you're in your own life, you may well not have much money and you also need to work in order to pay the bills. So it's going to be different for everyone. So my answer to that was, it's quite, quite simple. It's different. Everybody, um, part of the financial planners job, I think is to help them work that out for themselves to facilitate that by being that third party questioner. Okay.
Wes Brown 55:09
Yeah, that makes sense. Makes sense to me. Chris, we always close with two questions. Generally, I think that sometimes we stray from that, Sonia, I guess. Or there's always, there's always a random one that sneaks its way in. But, you know, I'd love to have you share, you know how you build moments of authenticity in your life.
Chris Budd 55:38
I probably build too many. I've always been known as quite a straight talking person, which my friends appreciate, but also at times can give me a bit of hot water. I've got better though. But I think probably the thing that I would, I would quote, would be something that I went public over during lockdown. And it's a very controversial thing, particularly in the UK. And in the US, where the UK is very controversial. I think it is one of the last social taboos, I nap. It's quite fun, especially when you're talking to kind of corporate type. Can we have a meeting? You know? How about 130? And I said, I'm really sorry, I can't do Wednesday, because that's what I have. And they kind of go, oh, that Chris, buddy, you said, Are we serious? But 20 minutes, half an hour every day. And bam, I'm back for the afternoon. To the extent that I've asked my family to get me a t shirt made up, which says, I've had a nap and I'm thinking
Sonya Lutter 56:46
I might have to use that one that's really quite magical.
Wes Brown 56:51
That's awesome. I love that. And And last but not least, Chris, you seem to me as somebody who's very well read, I'm looking at the bookshelf behind you, which could either have CDs or books on it. I can't tell guessing from your music collection you talked about it might be CDs, but it's both. Be curious to know what you're reading right now.
Chris Budd 57:13
Well, I used to say that I'm the proud owner of the largest collection of unread books. And that's very possibly still true. Actually. I've got a lot of books on well being I'd usually have four or five books on the go at a time. There's usually a graphic novel that I love my comics. I've usually got a biography of the musician. I've always got the book of joy by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu next to me because it's the greatest book ever written and I absolutely adore it. And I'm but I always have affection of the one I'm just about to embark upon is my favorite author and I got to reread one of his I haven't read it for a while, which is the glass key by Dashiell Hammett.
Sonya Lutter 57:53
Okay, those are some good ones.
Wes Brown 57:55
Those are some good ones. Yeah. And
Sonya Lutter 57:57
in addition to all of those, we throw out some other books throughout this conversation. So people have their list for the year. Yeah,
Wes Brown 58:05
check those notes. That's right.
Chris Budd 58:06
I'm gonna just throw one last quick within if I may, which is a book that cheered me up so much. It just made my year during lockdown, which is a book called humankind by Rutger Bregman and Dutch historian. And it's all about it means humans are born to be kind. That's what the phrase humankind. That's what the title is referring to. And it just gives loads of example, and dispels the myth that you get from like disaster movies, when news comes of our impending doom when everybody goes out and fights and Lutz and all that. Actually, that's not what happens. In reality, we all help each other and we're kind to each other. And I think that's such a wonderfully positive message. I needed it in lockdown at a tough time. But actually now with financial well being when we started with what makes us happy, kindness is what makes us happy. And it's how we're built is such an important message.
Sonya Lutter 59:04
Yes, the perfect closer. Perfect, thoroughly enjoyed this, Chris.
Chris Budd 59:09
Thank you. So thank you so much for letting me talk to you about this. Because
Wes Brown 59:13
it's been it's been fantastic to spend time with you. And I always feel like there's there's, there's more to talk about. There's there's a lot of if you've watched it, I've been taking notes and have quite a lot of extra questions written in the margin. So maybe we can do around to at some point, part B. I'd
Chris Budd 59:31
love it. I could talk about this stuff for hours. Honestly. It's great stuff. So yeah, very happy to be fantastic.
Wes Brown 59:36
Well, thanks again.