As a financial planner for many years I have struggled with helping clients make real decisions about the important financial goals in their lives and the actions that need to be taken to achieve them.  By real decisions I mean decisions that they have thoroughly thought out and will take ownership of; that they will hold to through thick and thin and when doubt sinks in.  For the most part I have found that clients, more often than not, make easy decisions; default decisions.

• Do you plan on retiring? Yes, of course.  When? Oh, age 65 I guess.
  
• Do you plan on paying for your children’s education?  Yes.  Public or Private education?  Oh, I guess public.  It’s cheaper isn’t it?  Undergraduate only or graduate school?  Definitely undergraduate.  We will have to see about graduate school, if it comes to that.

These are not real decisions.  They are default decisions.  I have often told my clients to choose their goals carefully because they will achieve them.  I have often witnessed a client reach his or her goal only to regret it or demur from actually carrying out.  This latter action, or lack thereof, often happens when the client reaches their expected retirement age with more than enough money to retire only to keep putting it off because they haven’t got the faintest idea of what they would do to occupy their time if retired.  They claim to be worried about whether they have enough money or not but the real reason is that they don’t know how they would replace the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment that comes from their work if they retired.

This sort of decision making is carried on through out all of life.  I am seeing it now in those who are moving through their senior years.

• Do you expect to live in your current home the rest of your life?  I would like to die right here at home but I expect to stay here as long as I absolutely can. 
  
• When will you know or how will you know that you can’t stay here any longer?  I really don’t know, they may have to carry me out kicking and screaming.  If you have to leave where do you want to go?  I really don’t know.  What are my choices? 

This sort of decision making as we age is a recipe for serious and, perhaps, debilitating emotional confrontations with adult children and even professional health care providers.  Wouldn’t it be better to make real decisions well in advance of the events that will trigger the need to take action so that everyone – spouses, children, advisors, health care providers – know what your wishes are and that you have taken ownership of those decisions; that they are truly your decisions thoroughly thought out and made within the context of all the various alternative decisions you could have made but didn’t?

Thinking about all this has led me to develop a decision making model that graphically displays the dynamics that affect our decision making.  I call it the Decision Making Fusion Triangle.  (I have borrowed the term Fusion Triangle from an early mentor of mine, Harold C. Hook the founder of Main Event Management, Inc.  He uses many fusion triangles to model the dynamics found in organizational management.)  Each point of the triangle represents the three primary sources of influence that are brought to bear on any decision we make.  And at the center of the triangle is the decision itself.  The apex of the triangle is You or better stated, the Who in You.  At the lower left-hand corner of the triangle is your entire set of experiences.  I call it the Hot Stove Lid corner.  And at the lower right-hand corner of the triangle are all of the Messages you have received and stored up over your lifetime.  These can be messages you received from parents, close relatives, family members, friends, spouses, children and society in general.  Societal pressures and prejudices can come to bear on any decision.  I see it in church every Sunday; the effect of society’s expectation about appropriate dress on the decision each person made as to what to wear that morning.  The oldest generation will have a suit and tie on; my generation will have a jacket and slacks on; the next generation will have blue jeans and open collar shirt on and the youngest generation will have on flip flops and tattered blue jeans. The world around us, especially our cohort group, affects our decision making to a great degree.

Let’s first consider how the Messages we get from society can impact our decision making and how best to deal with it.  Society has a set of views and opinions on just about any decision we make whether it be marriage, retirement, having children, raising children, educating children, saving, investing, appropriate actions and activities at any age, dying, and on and on.  You can’t make a decision without the views of society affecting how you make the decision and society’s views might even make the decision for you if you’re not careful.  That is not to say that a decision made solely based upon what the society views as “normal and customary” wouldn’t be the right decision for you but it is likely to be a decision that is regretted, whether it is right or wrong, because it wasn’t your decision.  A good example is the decision to set age 65 as a goal for retiring.  Why 65?  Because that is when everyone retires.  Social Security starts at 65 (in fact, it is slowly moving up to age 67) and that is the normal retirement age for most pension plans.  In fact, age 65 is considered the “normal” retirement age solely by accident.  It was chosen by Chancellor Bismarck of Germany in the late 1800s as the retirement age for the first state sponsored social insurance program ever established in the world.  Why did he choose age 65?  For a very good and thoughtful reason.  Most people didn’t live that long so promising a pension benefit that wouldn’t start until age 65 wouldn’t cost the state very much money.  Is that a good reason for any one else chose age 65?  Probably not. 

When you are considering a decision, any decision, it would be wise to consider what messages you have received and internalized over the years from the world around you about what a right decision might be in this instance.  Ask yourself what would my friends, co-workers, family, etc. say would be the proper decision to make.  And why do you think they would think that this is the proper decision.  And, finally, do you really agree with them or are there other factors in your personal situation that would argue against the society’s “normal and customary” decision in this case.  I am a big believer in lists.  I would take a number of pieces of 8 ½ X 11 line sheets.  Under family I would list close family members that would have an opinion on this decision: spouses, children, parents.  Beside each name I would write out what you think they would suggest as the decision you should make and why.  Let me give you a personal example.  I set age 55 as my retirement age.  Why?  For two reasons, perhaps, the biggest was that my Dad had retired at age 59 and I wanted to beat him.  The second reason was that I felt my clients wanted to know someone was in the ranks of the firm to take over when I departed for what ever reason.  I felt I had to give that someone the certainty of taking over while he was still young enough to build the firm as he would want to build it and not just be a caretaker for a few years after I finally left or died.  The first reason was not a very good or sufficient reason to retire.  The second reason was perhaps a good and sufficient reason.  Neither one of those reasons had any thing to do with me nor what would have given me the most meaningful and fulfilling retirement.  Maybe working until I died would have given me the most fulfilling and meaningful life as opposed to not be engaged in the business any longer or some combination of staying involved and “retiring” too.  Whether it was a good or bad decision is not the issue.  It was not a real decision because it didn’t necessarily reflect who I was and needed to get from retirement.  So it is one I often revisit even though I am, in fact, having a very full, active and fulfilling retirement.

The message I am giving you is the world around us has opinion on every decision we make and, at least at a subliminal level, society’s opinion can affect our personal decision making.  Our cohort group, our friends and co-workers, our family and every societal grouping we are a part of impacts our decision making.  If we are not careful they will be the primary motivator for the decisions we make.  Should they be considered?  Absolutely.  Should they be determinant? Absolutely not.  The more we are aware of this dynamic and how it affects us, the better our decision making.

Now let’s consider the Hot Stove Lid corner of the triangle.  Mark Twain said something to the effect that a cat who sits on a hot stove lid will never sit on a stove lid again either hot or cold.  His point is that we often learn too much from our experiences; especially our negative experiences.  I have spent a great deal of time with clients exploring their experiences with the financial actions they had taken in the past.  I would tell my clients (mixing my metaphors) that I wanted to know where they had success and where they had had their fingers burned because I didn’t want to ask the moth to fly into the flame of the same candle all over again.  I spent a good deal of time exploring the “burned finger” experiences to find out what the client had learned from these experiences.  This would give us both an opportunity to learn what to avoid in the future and why.  The Appreciative Inquiry theorists have added a positive dimension to this decision making dynamic.  Their view, as I understand it, is that we should explore the positive experiences and outcomes in life so that we can learn how to build on them or learn from them.  This strikes me as very true and useful.  But I would also suggest that exploring the negative experiences (maybe after having spent a good deal of time on the positive experiences) would allow us to learn where we might be subconsciously pushed one way or the other by our fear of repeating a mistake.  At the very least it is important to know that we can learn too much from the negative and, perhaps, even from the positive.  We learn too much when we extrapolate those experiences – positive or negative—beyond their relevance into decision-making areas that are not really related to the experience we are reacting to.

These experiences can be inherited experiences as well as ones we have lived ourselves.  Those of us who are children of parents who raised their families during the Great Depression have learned from their parents’ experience, some times to a fault.  Others have reacted negatively to the fears their parents developed as a result of living through the depression and they tend to play out this reaction by being almost Pollyannaish or cavalier in their attitude about being prudent financially.    I tried to explore the stories my clients heard as children from their parents with regard to money matters.  We all should explore the stories we heard when growing up from parents and close relatives about whatever the decision making subject matter is.  Those who were brought up by parents that grew up themselves in an agrarian society will have a much different set of expectations about getting older and how they should live out their lives than someone who grew up in a metropolitan area without close relatives living nearby. 
We all try to avoid the pain of past failures and seek the joy of past successes whether they are our own or have happened to those close to us.  The problem is that these past experience may not have any relevance to the decision we are currently facing.  We need to learn as much as we can from these past experiences but not learn too much.  How do we do that?  Awareness is the key to dealing with all of the dynamics of decision making.  My role as host of this website is to help you gain that awareness through self evaluation.  With awareness comes clarity and from clarity comes good decisions.

Again making a list can help make us aware of how other past experience can affect our present decision making.  First of all I would start with a sheet of paper headed The Best Decisions I Ever Made and list as many as you can think of quickly.  Then on a separate sheet for each decision I would write out how that decision was made and what made it a good decision.  Secondly, take another sheet of paper and do just the opposite.  Head it The Worst Decisions I Ever Made and list as many as you can think of quickly with an explanation on yet another sheet of paper was to how each decision was made and what made it a bad decision.  Look for hints that the affect of prior experiences or the experience of others or the expectations of others impacted your decision making.  Finally take yet another sheet of paper and head it with the decision you are currently facing or trying to make.  Write out what experiences you have had or others you know have had that might relate to the decision you are trying to make.  You might even include what you believe the “normal and customary” decision would be of friends and the world around you.  Ask yourself whether there is any relevance to your decision within what you have learned in this exercise.  What should you retain and consider as you make your decision and what should you ignore and reject?  Instead of doing this on separate sheets of paper perhaps you might want to do it in a journal.  It would make a wonderful legacy gift to children and grandchildren.

Perhaps another personal example might help clarify this process.  About 4 years my wife and I decided to move about a 1000 miles to be closer to our son and family.  A good part of that decision rested on the fact that we had, 12 years earlier, moved about 200 miles further away from my wife’s mother who was a widow and legally blind.  For the next 12 years my wife drove 275 miles each way to spend a week with her Mom once every month or 6 weeks.  This got to be a real burden on her over time.  So we decided that when her Mom passed away we would move closer to our son so that he and his wife would not be burdened by a great distance between us when we began to age and have it affect our ability to live free of oversight.  This prior experience greatly drove our decision and we were aware of it but we were not aware of another experience that contributed to this decision.  My father when he became a widower decided to move closer to us and, eventually when he needed to be under hospice care, moved in with us.  Even though (as I am sure you have gathered by now) my father has a big impact, even now, on my decision making I don’t remember ever talking about his experience as part of our decision to move to be closer to our son.  Another aspect of this decision was the fact that we were moving from a dry, arid climate where we had lived all of our lives to a wet, damp climate.  We were moving away from friends and institutions and activities that had made up our entire lives into a “strange land”.  We were becoming aliens.  We discussed this but didn’t give ourselves a chance to experience it before we moved.  I don’t know how many times I have told clients “Don’t sell your house and move to an entirely new area without trying it on for size first.”  I would try to encourage them to rent in the area they are thinking of moving to before selling out of where they have lived for so long and moving away because “you can never go home again”.  We told ourselves that if we are going to move to be closer to our son and family we ought to do it sooner than later so that we can experience the grandchildren while they are still young and have time to create a new home environment for ourselves in our new community before we are too old to do so.  So we let experience and logic drive our decision.  Did we make the right decision?  Maybe but our process was not perfect.  If we had gone through the process I have just described perhaps we would have (I would have) realized how much our prior experience and my Dad’s prior experience was driving our decision.  Perhaps we could have stepped back and asked, “Are we learning too much from this?” 

Lastly we come to the greatest dynamic of the three that make up the Decision Making Fusion Triangle – YOU!  Who you are is the greatest determinant of all of your decisions.  That is why I call it the Who in You – with apologies to Dr. Seuss.  We seem to go through three stages of being as we develop the Who we are.  These stages are not mutually exclusive but are actually in play all the time.  However they seem to predominate one at a time as we mature.  The first stage is the stage of “Havingness”.   During this stage the greatest determinant of who we are is what we possess or wish we possessed.  It starts early in life when we notice all the things the other kids have that we don’t have.  It is the stage of Christmas Gift Lists and Wedding Registries.  Our sense of being revolves largely around cars, houses, country clubs and even Trophy Spouses.  We progress, hopefully, into the stage that is best referred to as “Doingness”.  This is the stage where what we do gives us the most meaning.  This stage is best reflected in the first question we ask someone when we first meet, “What do you do?”  Sometimes we even ask it before asking, “How do you do?” and “How are you?”   Hopefully we learn during this stage that what we do has a greater impact on others that what we have.  This stage leads naturally to the final stage called “Beingness”.  It is in this stage that we begin to get a sense of who we are from the reflection we get from others.  Others become our mirror on the wall.  It isn’t until we see ourselves reflected back to us from others that we really get a sense of who we are.  That is why the “Doingness” stage so naturally flows into the “Beingness” stage.  And it is why so many have such difficulty with retirement because their sense of being comes from the impact their “doingness” has on others and the resulting reflection they get back as to who they really are.

I have noticed that the three most debilitating experiences in life are the loss of a loved one, the loss of a role and the loss of a place.  Let me amplify.  There are a number of people in your life who give you the most reflection as to who you are.  Most often it is a spouse but it can be a parent, a child and close friend.  The loss of that reflection can be very debilitating.  Retiring is the loss of a role.  Just as an actor gets reflection from an audience by its applause each of us gets reflection from others as we perform our various roles in life.  I have often said that women live longer than men because they never retire – they always have a child at home, or least they do until their husband dies.  Why do you think ball players always seem to retire long after their performance peaks?  It is the fear of the loss of the reflection they get from their audience if they retire.  It is true of all of us.  Finally, why do you think so many resist for so long the necessity of moving into a better care giving situation that they have at home?  There are places in our life that have given us a stage upon which we get the feedback or reflection we need to in order to know who we are.  Again, this can be the work place.  I remember a client who when he retired the biggest sense of loss he had was that the employer would not give him his desk.  He had been with this same employer all of his professional career and had filled many important roles within that environment.  But the one constant through out his entire career was that he had always had the same desk.  It had been the policy of the employer to always give a departing employee of long tenure their desk.  But they changed the policy just before his retirement!  Always thought that was just a little odd until it happened to me.  When I first felt successful in my financial planning business I bought myself a custom made desk.  I had that desk with me in every office I moved to and even took it with me into my retirement.  But our latest move was to a home that would not accommodate the desk.  I had to sell it!  But I couldn’t find a buyer.  So I had to give it away to a thrift shop!!  Even now as I write this I feel the loss.

As you approach the important decisions in your life it is critical to know Who you are.  In this topic section of the website there is an essay entitled The Who In You.  It will give you and exercise to begin the discovery process leading to a greater understanding of yourself and what is important to you.  How do you use this information about Who you are to make decisions in the future?  For instance, if you are contemplating retirement and this exercise has indicated that the majority of the important people in your life are work centered and that the majority of places are work centered and the majority of activities are work centered then you really need to ask yourself how are you going to replace these work centered sources of your sense of being when you retire.  No one can tell you how to begin this process but begin it you must.  You might begin it with the work centered people in your life.  Can you still maintain a relationship with them beyond work?  If not, what is it about them that gives you the greatest sense of pleasure and meaning?  How and where can I find others that might give me the same sense of pleasure and meaning?  You can address the same sorts of questions to the places and activities of life that give you meaning.  Hopefully this will cause you to create an action plan to create new sources of meaning that will be taken from you when you retire.  But you could just as easily find out that the places and people in your life are not as work dependent as you thought and that retirement will not be the loss you had feared.

Selling family home is often just a traumatic decision for people as retirement.  This is especially true for those who have lived there “forever” and know it like the back of their hand or where the home is the place all the important people in their life had gathered or where they engaged in those meaningful activities of life such as gardening or painting or reading or writing.  Some people just need a sense of place; a center to their lives that only their home can provide.  But it often happens that we are literally forced out of our home because of illness or disability or just the deterioration that comes with age.  When this decision is forced on us it is very traumatic indeed.  Wouldn’t it be better to recognize the role that our home plays in our life and determine how best to replicate it if it becomes necessary to move?  Wouldn’t be best to be in charge of when and where and not have it forced on you?  Going through this process should help you learn what about you home is so important and begin to think about where and how that importance can be replaced.  Wouldn’t you rather be in command and control rather than the consequence of your circumstances?

Making real decisions requires that you be aware of the dynamics of the decision making process.   It requires that you be clear in your own mind as to the influences you are under when making decisions.  And, it requires that you know yourself.  Hopefully this essay can open you up to greater clarity as you make the important decisions in your future.