“Missing the forest for the trees” is a well known phrase dating back to at least the 16th century. Standing too close to a forest allows you to see individual trees really well, but it makes it difficult to see the enormity of the forest. Applied to real life, it means that someone needs to take a step back and see the bigger picture. It is easy to get so wrapped up in the details of something that it becomes difficult to see the big picture.
The financial debates raging today across both traditional and social media make it clear most people are concerned with the types, varieties, sizes, and shapes of trees. There is very little written concerning the health of the forest or its future.
As a financial advisor, I admit, a great deal of this miss falls on our field. When clients and their families make time to meet with us, they are setting aside time to really think through and discover what they want most from life.
What are they about as a person?
Who do they want to be?
How do they want to be remembered?
What do they want to accomplish?
How do they tie the resources they’ve earned and been entrusted with to a life filled with purpose and meaning?
Helping clients answer questions like these for themselves is the most rewarding and interesting part of our profession, yet we can fall into the trap of spending most of our time with clients discussing individual trees instead of the forest. The current debates across social media revolve around active vs. passive investing, the length of the current bull market, fiduciary advising, expense ratios, artificial intelligence, ETFs vs. mutual funds, Bitcoin, and Elon Musk’s most recent tweet.
Make no mistake. A number of those issues are a critically important part of the financial planning discussion. Ensuring a family has the right asset allocation for their given risk tolerance is integral to a good plan. Paying close attention to expense ratios for different investment options can save clients thousands upon thousands of dollars over their investment lifetimes. However, what if we spend all our time focusing on these things with clients yet their plan is aimed at the wrong target? What if they’re climbing the savings ladder quickly up the wrong wall?
I mentioned previously (here) that we’re in the process of building a home with a mother-in-law suite attachment. Imagine how frustrated we’d be if our architect only wanted to discuss his drafting pencils or CAD program. What if our builder only wanted to talk about the brand of hammer his sub-contractors would be using or only discussed the materials we wanted to use on different parts of the home? These things can be critically important to the build, but if they lose sight of the blueprint, the home won’t end up being what we’re hoping for.
In the same way, advisors and the financial media miss the forest for the trees when we write mostly about the tools we use instead of the design of the life our clients are trying to build. It’s important to talk shop and discuss the best tools for the job from time to time, but it should always be done with an eye on the plans to ensure what we’re trying design is what our clients actually want out of life.