Asking for help when we were in school was so easy. All you had to do is raise your hand. As an adult, it becomes much more difficult. No one wants to be the needy friend, the one always looking for help or asking for a hand out. Yet, we all need help in one capacity or another.
I don’t know about you, but I am not the best at asking others if they need help. Yet I know that would give those I am concerned with the ability to open up and come clean with what they help with. It’s my hope to inspire you to approach the ones you care most about to see what you can do to help them. You may not be ready for what you could be getting yourself into, but you may find that the rewards on the other side are much better than you would have ever imagined.
Why Be Afraid?
It’s amazing to me how skittish I can be when talking to people. Not really sure why, but sometimes I just find it hard to open up especially when it comes to difficult topics. The two most difficult topics to open up about are money and politics! Now, we are not going to going over how to talk about politics here, but we are going to talk about money!
I have an interesting position as I get to talk with people about their money everyday and you know what I have found? One people open up to you about their money, they will open up to you about everything else meaningful in their lives. Maybe this is why it’s such a tough topic to discuss? Needless to say, it is such an important topic you need to be willing to discuss it with the ones you care most about. You might find that it is more difficult to talk money with the ones you care most about rather than the other people in your life. You know why, because you know how important money is. The more important things are the more passionate we become.
Ask the Question
The easiest way to begin the conversation is to ask a simple question. Something like, “Who are you using to help you plan for retirement?”. It’s a very easy ice breaker that’s easy enough to answer. From there it will be very easy to ask following questions to see if you can help. The worst is that you may learn something if what they are doing is really effective and working well for them. If that is the case, then please share it with me so I can use it to help others as well.
Another easy-to-answer question you can begin the conversation with is: “How are you planning for retirement?” Okay, maybe that’s not an easy to answer question, but it will help you start the conversation and starting the conversation is the toughest part!
What’s Next
After the conversation has started, here is where you can help. Hopefully you have been learning a lot from our firm as we spend a lot of time each month writing and video taping content to help you get a deeper understanding of how we are helping you plan for your retirement. If you are comfortable enough to share what we are teaching you, then do just that, share what you know that will benefit their future. If you are not that comfortable, then ask your friend or family members permission to share their information with us and we will do a few things for them.
First, we will send them what we call our Retirement Rescue Toolkit. Inside there are two books, reThink, rePlan, RETIRE! and Planning on Living Forever? In addition, we have a few third party articles on income planning for retirement. We also give access to our online retirement planning class called Mastering the Art of Financial Planning which you can see a few courses from here. This entire kit retails for $79 dollars and we will send it to them absolutely free.
We have created this web page for clients that need our help to come along side their friends and family members to guide them to a successful retirement.