It’s Saturday evening and I’ve got a date with my wife. It’s time to get ready and what happens next remains a mystery to most men. The artful expression of a female brush painting her face is only exceeded by the millions of color and stylish variations she orchestrates with her clothing.

Not to belittle the importance of accessorizing, but when she completes the process of adorning her mortal temple, the inevitable and greatly feared question flows from her lips like silk from a spindle: “How do I look?”

Ladies! Are you aware that one out of five men are technically colorblind and the majority of the remaining four couldn’t match colors and styles if the only way we could watch the World Series depended on it?

Therefore, I find it most interesting that women, after years of empirical evidence to the contrary, continue to baffle all reason and logic by asking such an important question to an unqualified entity who usually looks at you with eyes that rarely see clothing.

The idea of asking the ‘unqualified’ for help seems to be part of our national pastime. How have politicians made things better? How about financial planners or economists? How has throwing more money at anything the government touches produced better results?

In his acceptance speech as the first Nobel Prize winning economist, F.A. Hayek said:

“Economist are at this moment called upon to say to how extricate the free world from the serious threat of accelerating inflation, which, it must be admitted, has been brought about”…by economists. “As a profession we have made a mess of things.”

Ironic isn’t it. The very people who promulgated the mortgage meltdown, the huge national debt, and failed social programs by the hundreds are re-elected every year to solve the problems that they created.

Political job security is the art of screwing up the country so badly that you’re the only one who can articulate what happened. So you get re-elected and mess it up some more.

The author Joshua Cooper Ramo in his recently released book “The Age of the Unthinkable” said, “And if you insert ‘foreign policy experts’ or ‘financial gurus’ for ‘economists’ in Hayek’s remarks, well, you have a sad, disturbing summary of the state of our world at the moment.”

During talks with the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, Henry Kissinger (Harvard Business Professor and National Security Advisor) commented that the university models of political theory are largely useless in reality.

Confidence in financial experts, economists, and politicians has proven empirically to be misplaced. So where do we turn for help?

Keep in mind I’m not playing the role of a troll. A troll is a critic that doesn’t create or solve. A couch potato who lives in an echo chamber, ignored by everyone except fellow critics.

I’m not qualified to mess up in the field of economics, politics, or financial planning, but I do have an opinion on how to improve your home life and your relationship with money.

Therefore, I offer my view of the financial solution to everyday Americans. To my knowledge, none of these areas are being taught or promoted by our experts.

1. Master your spending
2. Master your savings
3. Master your communication skills

Short, simple, and sweet. Empirically proven to work every time with no risk to your principle (moral and/or financial.)

What is Family and Financial Coaching? Here is a short list of what we do in contrast to a Financial Planner:

Financial Coach

Teach you how money works

Teach you how to master savings

Teach you how to master spending

Teach you how to effectively communicate about finances

Financial Planner/Advisor

Tell you where to invest your money

Not interested in your savings

Not interested in your spending

Not interested in discussing how you communicate

The financial planning community has one focus and that is to invest your money.

There are only three things you can do with money:

1. Spend it
2. Save it
3. Invest it

Spend:            We teach our clients how to give every dollar a rule. Any business that doesn’t know where each dollar is going is ruled by that dollar. Mastering spending is another way of creating a positive cash flow. Debt elimination is necessary to mastering spending.

Many couples have paid off all their debt before, but a vast majority of them did so through a refinance and not through developing new habits. Note that it is totally worthless having a strong spending plan if you don’t know how to communicate about finances.

Be careful not to allow pride interfere with your thinking right now. You come from a completely different financial background than your spouse. What schooling or in depth classes have you taken to learn effective communication skills about sensitive subjects?

Your home and the education system do not cover this topic as part of their curriculum.

Save:                 We show our clients how mastering spending and mastering savings will produce a greater rate of return than investing. Saving money means putting it into a protected position with very little risk. You can expect an actual rate of return around 4.5 to 5 percent (see invest for a detailed explanation of actual.)

Once you have eliminated all your debt and developed the habits to avoid the debt trap permanently, you will learn how to properly structure a savings plan that will almost always out produce a comparable mutual fund or 401(k) program.

Did you know that the current 401(k) average for a retiring baby boomer is less than $50,000? By comparison, if that same worker had put 10 percent of his/her annual income into their mattress during their working years, they would have more than double the account balance in their mattress than they do in their 401(k), and the latter has employer matching funds.

A coach will also teach you how banks make money and how you can become your own bank. Imagine buying all your cars in the future with your own money and actually profiting from the transaction. This is not a cash transaction, but actually borrowing against your own funds.

And finally under the savings heading, your future living expenses will be covered with tax-free dollars, in contrast to your 401(k) dollars which will be taxed at, well, we don’t know yet, but odds are not in favor of them being lower than they are now.

Invest:            Investing money means putting money into a potential position. Your principal may increase or it may decrease. A coach takes a neutral position on investing, meaning, it is neither good nor bad. But, we will teach you how it works and emphasize the importance of getting out of debt before you risk any money.

Most planners/advisors quote past performances using annual average returns. In the media today you’ll hear experts telling us to keep our money in the market because it always comes back. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) has averaged 7.26 percent for the past 100 years. Just hold the course and everything will work out.

Let’s look closer at the numbers. If you actually put $1,000 in an indexed mutual fund tied to the Dow Jones in 1909 and pulled it out in 2008, compounded annually you would have $1.1 million. That’s how the financial experts represent their investment advice.

However, if you calculate yearly Dow Jones returns and compound annually, the actual balance is $142,954 or a 5.09 percent rate of return. That’s a $963,107 difference.

Your account will no doubt have management fees and taxes. Let’s use 1.5 percent for your management fees and a 15 percent tax bracket to arrive at the ACTUAL rate of return: 3.51 percent.

The financial industry is broken and premised upon concepts that don’t work for most Americans.

Family and Financial coaching is for people who

• Desire a better future
• Will study and increase their knowledge
• Will practice and develop the skills necessary to succeed