Many people confuse financial coaches with a financial adviser. These are two very different animals that need distinguishing.
Financial Coach: A true financial coach focuses on your knowledge, your habits, and your ability to make wise decisions. They don’t superimpose their feelings upon you. A true financial coach knows that each person is unique with different goals, different attitudes about money, different challenges with math, and different strengths/weaknesses. A true financial coach will know how to strengthen your where you are weak.
Financial Planner or Adviser: This person is most often selling a product. A financial adviser wants to profit on the money you have already accumulated. The problem is that this is not what most people actually need. Most people need and want to know how to create the money in the first place and then how to manage it wisely, perhaps with the help of a financial adviser, once they acquire it.
Think about how a salesman wishes to make money. They sign up with an institution and then submit to their training. What kind of training will that be? Will it be training on five other competitor products so they can sell for them as well? Absurd, not ever! This employer wants to train you on his or her own products. In the 
case of a financial adviser, who are truly not a lot more than sales representative, they are encouraged to acquire knowledge and even
seek degrees like Certified Financial Adviser, to show the public that they are knowledgeable. All of this effort by the sales representative can be helpful to you with a small part of the puzzle, but they very rarely have all the answers to every part of your financial life. Have you ever thought about asking a financial adviser about what to do about your overspending? Of course not, they wouldn’t be likely to have much information about how to help you with this, and even if they did, this is not what they’re paid to do. What about how to get out of debt, or to create a passive income from better managing your own money? They wouldn’t know the first place to start helping you with these important matters. Where they can sometimes help is in what to do with extra money you have created, but that’s really where their “advising” ends.
Here is the real difference between a coach and an adviser. A coach helps you with problems you are having with managing your money and your emotions. People have lots of emotions surrounding money. The products financial advisers sell have very little to do with how to manage emotions and get in control on a grassroots level. They don’t teach you principles of financial management, they only sell tools that can help you once you have money to manage. A coach, on the other hand, offers solutions on how to control spending, get out of all debt, save for retirement, and pay the right amount of taxes. If you don’t have someone who can teach you how to do all of these things (at the same time) then you aren’t getting advice from the right place.
Here is a test question to ask a sales representative to determine if they are an adviser or a coach: “What do you recommend I do?” Then listen carefully as to how fast they go directly to a product that they think you need. If they make a specific recommendation they are a financial adviser. If they say, “Tell me more about what you are trying to accomplish, today and in the near future?” Then they search out your true feelings and even coach you along these lines before identifying options. A true coach will strengthen you until you are making good decisions. Once you are making better financial decisions, then you can talk about what to do with your money from there.
There are huge differences between a coach and an adviser, but it will take some time interviewing and asking questions of these people before you will see how they approach helping you. Most likely you will find 1 out of 25 advisers that will serve you like a true coach will. For true financial coaching without the pushing of products, visit www.moneymastery.com.
