Why is money psychology part of the planning process?
Short answer: Both entry points explore your values, Money Psychology, happiness styles and Return on Life — alongside investments, cross-border complexity and your definition of enough. The aim is to understand your decisions before designing the portfolio. Life adds dedicated couples alignment; Blueprint includes individual money-psychology work too.
Written and reviewed by Anthony Walsh, Selanis. Last reviewed 2026-10-07.
Why it works this way
The measurable cost of behaviour is larger than the measurable cost of fund selection. Selling in a downturn, delaying a decision for three years, under-spending an entire retirement or quietly disagreeing with a spouse about the purpose of the money each cost more than a percentage point of expense ratio, and none of them appear on a factsheet.
The work is specific rather than abstract. Your money history explains where the rules you follow came from. Your decision patterns show what you do under uncertainty — avoidance, over-control, hoarding, impulsive risk. Your blockage session takes the one thing you cannot bring yourself to do and examines it directly.
For couples it is usually the whole game. Two people with the same balance sheet and different definitions of a good life will make contradictory decisions for years. Doing the work separately and then reading both profiles side by side produces a statement of purpose that both people recognise, which is what makes the financial decisions straightforward afterwards.
It changes what the plan is measured on. The wellbeing baseline taken in step nine is what we compare against in twelve months, alongside the return — so the plan is judged on whether life improved, not only on whether the market cooperated.
The expensive mistake: Treating behaviour as a soft extra at the end
Firms that mention behaviour usually bolt it on after the recommendations, where it can change nothing. Placed before the design, it changes what gets designed: the spending rate, the work-optional date, the risk level and the trade-offs all come out differently.
What to do
- Write down what you were taught about money — One page. The rules you absorbed before you were fifteen are usually still running.
- Name the one thing you avoid — Spending, retiring, selling, delegating, saying the number out loud. That is the blockage the plan has to solve.
- Do it separately if you have a partner — Compare afterwards. The gap between the two answers is the most useful information in the engagement.