3 Ways Having An Integrated Financial Plan Benefits Your Mental Health

We’ve all heard it before…the story of a married couple who couldn’t see eye to eye when it came to finances and got divorced; the story of the successful CEO who lost touch with his family and became very unhealthy due to the stresses of his financial mistakes; the story of the widow who was all alone when they lost the love of their life and didn’t know how to run the day-to-day finances.

Money is tough. Everyone wants to talk about getting the right pieces in place to increase your wealth, but is it enough?

The real key to improving your wealth as well as your overall health is to make sure you have the parts working together. It’s not enough to just have the right pieces, but those pieces need to work together harmoniously. This is what will allow you to achieve peace of mind and invest in the most important thing of all…your life.

What Is An Integrated Financial Plan And How Does It Actually Help?

An integrated financial plan is a concept that reviews your financial life holistically, not individually. It incorporates your balance sheet, investment strategy, estate planning, taxes and financial planning. The pieces are coordinated together to ensure everything is moving efficiently in the direction of your vision.

How does this improve your mental health? Here are 3 ways…

1. Time: The ultimate commodity that you can never get more of. Time is something that is so important, yet the hardest to manage. A proper integrated financial plan allows you to spend less time coordinating relationships and more time with your family. No more phone calls relaying messages from the tax team to the investment team. You can spend your time where it really matters! Meaningful relationships are a key to being mentally healthy and this allows you to spend more time where it matters.
2. Stress: Stress is a natural response for the body. Elevated stress is the thing that is detrimental to our health on many levels. One of the leading causes of elevated stress is money. There are many details around money that we can’t control. Knowing that we have an idea of how our integrated plan (such as future estate planning needs) possibly fits into our current tax plan gives us a feeling of control over something typically out of our control. Reaching this place of comfort creates more peace of mind, thus lowering your stress level surrounding money.
3. Fulfillment: This is different for everyone, yet a lot of people don’t know what would help them become ‘fulfilled.’ An integrated financial plan balances the technical strategies with the emotional strategies; this includes developing a vision, creating goals, and achieving more than just accumulation of dollars. The feeling of fulfillment is indispensable to being mentally healthy, and an integrated plan can help reach that point of fulfillment.

Mental health is just as important as physical health. There are many ways to improve your mental health, and working on your relationship with money is a big one. Integrating all of the areas of your financial plan can help improve your relationship with money.

If you need help understanding how to integrate your financial planning or are beginning to look into an integrated financial planning relationship, reach out to David Kern (dkern@wqcorp.com).

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