The first question I get when I meet new people is typically “What do you do?”
My answer, of course, is that I’m a Certified Financial Trainer with The Financial Gym Advisors. But that usually prompts the next question, “Oh. So what do you do?”
People are familiar with the terms “financial planner” and “financial advisor,” but “financial trainer” is a new one for most people.
To understand the difference between financial trainers and other finance professionals, it helps to understand the philosophy behind The Financial Gym Advisors. TFG uses a fitness based approach to improving financial wellness. We look at financial wellness the same way we look at other types of wellness: it’s holistic, intrinsic to our overall health, and one important part of helping us lead the fullest lives we can.
I explain to my new clients (and new friends!) that at TFG we work with everyone across the financial spectrum. I have clients who make $30,000 per year and clients who make $800,000 per year. I work with people who are navigating bankruptcy or paying off lots of debt, and I work with people who are managing wealth and fine tuning retirement investment strategies.
The thing that Financial Gym Advisors clients have in common, regardless of income, is a desire for personal finance training and practices that are informative, empowering, and help build confidence in their own ability to take on their own finances. And how Financial Trainers are different from other financial professionals is that we know you can do this with the right tools and support and we want you to know that, too.
One of my clients, who has since become a friend, first said to me, “Listen. I’m not looking for another guy in a suit to tell me what to do. I have enough of those.” She also didn’t want to pay for a service that was shrouded in mystery, where she gave someone some forms and got a folder full of papers she didn’t understand at the end of the year when she cut a check.
She wanted to have a space where she could talk candidly about her situation: where she was at, how she got there, what she was feeling good about, what she wanted to change, and what her goals were. And not just the safe goals. The crazy goals. The ones that are hard to say out loud, because they sound too big or too crazy or too unrealistic, but that you know are a part of who you are and what you need to live the life you want.
Financial trainers are here for all of it. We put you in the driver’s seat, you plug the destination into the GPS, and we show you the various routes for how to get there. We don’t get a cut of your savings, we don’t take commission, and we have no skin in the game when it comes to your investments. We judge our success by your progress towards your goals, because we are invested in you.
