Summary:

In this 105th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Doug Dahmer, CEO of Better Money Choices, to talk about democratizing financial planning, having a long-term view of planning, and more. 

Episode Highlights: 

● 00:32: – Better Money Choices is a financial platform that puts the power in the consumer’s hands. 

● 01:25: – Before Better Money Choices, Doug founded Retirement Navigator. 

● 02:22: – Better Money Choices allows consumers to gamify their choices to explore what their financial options are. 

● 04:50: – The biggest obstacle to financial planning is the initial data collection, so the Better Money Choices platform has a wizard that allows for that data collection in 7.5 minutes or less, and to identify the places that need further detail and clarity later. 

● 08:59: – Financial planning is a verb, not a noun. 

● 10:20: – Better Money Choices is owned by the client and can be shared with any other financial advisor if the client wants a second opinion. 

● 13:12: – The platform is based on the idea of adult learning; it isn’t effective to tell an adult what to do, but if you give them the tools to learn, then they’ll come to you for help. 

● 20:24: – Doug is able to duplicate a client’s plan to play around with it and explore options without touching their actual plan, but then can send that new version of the plan back to the client for review. 

● 21:50: – It’s almost never as easy or simple as choosing one option or another. 

● 24:06: – Financial advisor decisions are best guesses at the time of the decision based on the information they have and the factors at play. 

● 26:17: – The majority of Doug’s time is spent reassuring high-income people that they can spend money and won’t run out of money, which sounds strange to the average person who typically overspends. 

● 27:40: – Doug pushes clients to decide if their current life is the best life they can live, if this is their goal, or if they can reallocate their money to get closer to goals. 

● 31:27: – If Doug could change one thing in the industry, it would be to democratize access to financial planning. 

● 32:06: – Doug’s biggest challenge has been the current state of the financial services industry and the lack of new thinking. 

● 35:06: – What excites Doug the most is that the need out there is so huge, and he wants to get out there as fast as he can. 

3 Key Points 

1. Financial planning isn’t a one-time action, but an ongoing process. 

2. Better Money Choices empowers clients to learn the process and help them make 

decisions or propose changes to a financial advisor themselves instead of relying entirely on someone else to tell them what to do. 

3. People should stop looking at financial choices as permanent or definitive when the best anyone can do is to make their best guess based on the information they have at the time. 

Tweetable Quotes: 

● “Close to 30 years of financial planning has taught me that it’s not the latte’s that are killing financial plans. What’s killing financial plans is that people aren’t getting what they want because they don’t know what they want.” –Doug Dahmer 

● “More of one thing usually means less of another. What choice do you want to make? Your life will be defined by those choices, but now for the first time in your life you have a tool that allows you to discover the outcome of those choices before you make them.” –Doug Dahmer 

Resources Mentioned: 

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook 

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn 

● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact 

● Better Money Choices website – http://web.bettermoneychoices.com/index.html 

● Doug Dahmer Twitter – https://twitter.com/dougdahmer2 

Full Transcript

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