Financial Advisers’ Empathy Gap

Sometimes a cliché is best captured in a picture. On my colleague's phone was a black Bentley, chrome logo glistening in the sun. The car belonged to one of his most successful clients, but it wasn't the presumptive price tag that was jarring. The custom license plate read, “NVSTWME,” surrounded by a frame stating, “My other car is a yacht.”

Photographic evidence of people's worst assumptions about financial advisers: extreme affluence, simplistic value proposition, garnished with a touch of hubris. Truth is, the majority of people in financial services do not carry themselves with…

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No matter how much you and your partner have in common, investing will uncover differences. Maybe one likes playing it safe while the other relishes risk-taking. One wants to invest every available penny, while the other yearns to live it up now. Or perhaps you disagree on when to retire.

Differences are inevitable, says Kathleen Burns Kingsbury, founder of KBK Wealth Connection in Waitsfield, Vermont. “That’s the nature of a partnership.”

But some couples don’t discover their differences until they fester into conflicts. You can avoid discord by bringing financial topics into the open, finding common ground and compromising.

“Learning how to talk about and work through conflict will make you stronger partners,” says Kingsbury, author of “Breaking Money Silence: How to Shatter Money Taboos, Talk More Openly About Finances, and Live a Richer Life.”

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