Money is essential but most people are still reluctant to learn how to handle it via financial, investment planning
money anyway, they still don’t feel motivated to learn the principles. This paradox has bothered me as a financial educator, but I guess I understand where the roadblock lies. We are so short of trust-enforcing behaviours in the financial arena that it makes many wary to step in.
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Talking straight is the top trust-creating behaviour. ‘What you see is what you get’ is a gold standard in trust. You book a holiday after seeing the pictures of a place, but when you get there, you find it small and cramped; the pictures were just clever photography. You would not want to use the service again. It could be an exception, but you have a lived experience that you will stick by.
Spinning a story or positioning a product with the light shining on its merits alone, posturing as if they are thinking of your well-being, manipulating as if the product is available only to a select few are all part of the selling processes of goods and services. These selling tricks are even more rampant in financial products and services, where the seller’s claim can’t be matched to a product’s photograph. However many happy families one may feature, savers may remain unimpressed. Imagine the picture of a gooey good chocolate, or shiny, lustrous hair flowing down the back of a beautiful model. Financial products fail even more trying to sell their stories.
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