In Parts I and II, we explored the client's financial psychology. In Part III, we turn our focus to how financial planners can take this understanding and apply theories and techniques from psychology to help clients improve their lives and meet their goals. As we all know, financial planning is a helping profession and the client should be the primary focus of the work. However, we spend a considerable number of resources, in both time and attention, investing in what we are saying, doing, and even how we look. Perhaps more importantly, we can (knowingly or not) impose our worldview onto our clients or provide the same advice to entirely different families from different environments, money beliefs, and even goals. As our profession continues to mature, we must seek opportunities to know our clients better so that we can maximize our ability to have a positive impact on their financial well‐being.

Part III focuses on what it actually means to be client‐centered. It opens with a discussion of communication techniques that can be easily implemented by advisors from all types of firms and business models. We then explore techniques advisors can use with clients from solution‐focused, cognitive behavioral, and positive psychology approaches. Part III closes with a discussion on how to work effectively with couples and families in conflict around money from a systems perspective. As we have highlighted throughout this book, our goal is not to create therapists out of planners, but rather, to bring some of the insight and techniques from a variety of psychological disciplines to help us be better advisors. We hope that many of these theories of counseling and communication will inspire you and that you will find ways to integrate one or more of the techniques in your current or future work with clients.