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A Better Way to Money
The Truth About That Financial Advisor Conversation You’ve Been Avoiding
00:28:13
Most people picture a financial advisor behind a mahogany desk, running spreadsheets for people with serious money. Jonathon Gais grew up thinking the same thing—until he became one. Now, as VP of Client Experience and Personalized Planning at Nort...
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- [00:00]
Jonathan Gase
Planning is not saying, I'm going to magically find more dollars for you. It's, well, let's talk about where all the dollars are going, and you can decide whether you could adjust any of those expenses. And often, creating a financial plan is one of those catalytic moments that help people change those behaviors.
- [00:20]
Jennifer Bourget
Welcome back to A Better Way to Money. I'm Jennifer Bourget. Throughout this season, we've been following the big life moments that change everything. Getting married, buying a home, having a baby, navigating a career shift. Whether you're ready or not, these milestones reshape your finances and your future. To help us through them, we've brought in experts who work inside these decisions every day. Behavioral scientists, attorneys, planners, and advocates who've helped us understand not just what to do, but how to actually do it. Today is a bit of a reset. Instead of zooming in on one life event, we're pulling back to look at the most common financial blind spots and how to overcome them. Jonathan Gaze leads financial planning strategy at Northwestern Mutual. Which means he's not just one advisor with one set of clients. He shapes how Northwestern Mutual's advisors think about planning at scale. And that gives him a view into patterns most people never get to see. Before we dive in, grab Northwestern Mutual's free family finances workbook@northwesternmutual.com podcast. It's a great companion to everything we'll cover today. All right, let's dig in. So, Jonathan, how did you end up doing this work and what keeps you doing it?
- [01:35]
Jonathan Gase
Yeah, I was just thinking about this going back to. It's been 20 plus years. I've spent time in the industry and wealth management and started as a financial advisor out of college. And I think a lot of it is the way I was raised. My parents had careers that were the benefit wasn't necessarily just the income, but also what did you get out of the role itself? So raising four kids, well, you work at the department store, you get a discount on clothing and other areas. You know, my mom got a job at an airline so I could fly to college. So I'm graduating and I didn't really have any experience and I realized I just had zero financial literacy and that it's not an area I grew up with like that. You know, my, my perspective at the time was that a financial advisor, somebody with the mahogany desk and the green banker's light and only people with, you know, massive net worths ever met with a financial advisor. So I got into it and I spent, you know, the first seven or Eight years of my career as an advisor and I was most excited about not just learning for myself, but learning the questions and the paths that you could take at any level of wealth that would help move your family along to help secure, you know, financial strength and security. And this, you know, I think the terminology probably is date at this point, but this democratization of wealth management that comes from how do you bring more accessibility to financial planning was something I was really excited about. Something I loved was deepening those relationships with my clients in the first few years career.
- [02:56]
Jennifer Bourget
And how was that transition and how you were thinking about it, you know, because I think a lot of people still do think of, you know, it's this mahogany desk situation where you're, you know, for the ultra rich or something. But it's not just all, you know, number crunchers, spreadsheets, projections, what does the actual conversation look like? What are you really doing when you're sitting down with someone?
- [03:17]
Jonathan Gase
The math has never been the issue. I mean, this is funny saying, as somebody who runs and builds the financial planning tools for our firm, and I've spent my time in industry working on financial planning technology, but the math is something we have solved for optimization or the computational side of it. Really planning is behavioral. You know, it's not just committing to a financial plan, it's committing to the financial behaviors that help you actually achieve those outcomes and being really intentional about, you know, where you are aligning those assets, where you're aligning your savings. And sort of the misconception is that, you know, I need to wait until I have enough money to start planning or I need to wait until I resolve this big thing and then I can take my first step. When really what you're doing is I'm committing to taking actions and being intentional about what I want to do with my financial outcomes. And I can do that in a spreadsheet, I can do that with a calculator, or I can do that with, you know, a comprehensive financial plan. But the commitment to that path is where really as an advisor, my role was not just to say, here's the exact dollars you should put in this bucket versus that bucket. It was to say, like, where do you feel that you could take action right now and commit to it? Because that commitment, it was what led to long term success, not optimization of dollars in qualified or non qualified assets or some of the which stocks did I pick? Like we're past that part of financial planning. It's behavioral, not computational.
- [04:38]
Jennifer Bourget
When you start walking through that with someone is do you hear certain questions more often than others. And what are people most surprised to discover about where they actually stand with their money?
- [04:49]
Jonathan Gase
It's this dissonance between where am I? And am I okay? Versus what I see. And it's only become more prevalent with social media and Instagram and TikTok. When I started as an advisor, that wasn't a thing. But you still had the surveys of, I need to have three times my salary at this age saved in retirement funds or, you know, the average buyer of a home is X years old. And that stuff. It can become overwhelming if you're not on this perfect track. And so some of the conversations is this lack of almost vulnerability. Starting the meeting. Someone's like, I wanted to meet with you, but I'm not sure. And it's almost. They're hiding coming across this table with you. Or like, I don't want to really tell you where I am right now because they're nervous. There's a bit of shame for some reason. So, like, the American mindset around finances can be so sheltered and so protected. And that cathartic moment of being able to say, like, you're doing great. You're as best as you can be with where you are right now. And there are things we can do that can help you with where you want to go. And this realization that, you know, clients like me or people in my situation is not this drastic difference between what I see on, you know, somebody driving a fancier car or buying a larger home or going on more trips, which right now is just relentless.
- [06:06]
Jennifer Bourget
Yeah, that's gotta be doing a number on people. Like, just. I know, even for me, when I'm in different groups or seeing different people share different things, I'm like, how are they doing this? You know, like, what. What is going on here? What you do for a living? You know what's going on.
- [06:22]
Jonathan Gase
You drive around and you're like, how does that person have that car and that house? Like, how I. I know what the statistics are. How is that possible? And you don't actually know what anyone's situation is. I mean, this is. The challenge of financial planning, is that the advisor is not just there to help with the math. We can do the math. It's to help put you in perspective of what you're trying to accomplish and not to sort of live up to chasing what ideal looks like. Because the plan is directional. You know, the plan is not a map. It's a compass. Or if we know now we're in 2026, it's a GPS, you're going to take a path, you're gonna have to change course. And when that course changes, it's important to be able to tack back on to where you were trying to get to and not just to be upset that you didn't fall perfectly in line with this financial plan. And where I see the conversations I had as an advisor and where our advisors are most successful is helping people through the moments and where everything isn't going to plan so that you're still taking the right actions, taking the right behaviors and adjusting as you need to. Because life is not linear. It's not this perfect thing of like oh, if I get this promotion, I'll be able to buy the car that my neighbor has. Like that's not how this works. There's a million other things that, that complicate our financial situations. And being really intentional about where do I sit and what am I trying to achieve. And doing that with your spouse or significant other and finding that path together is where the real outcomes come to life.
- [07:44]
Jennifer Bourget
Now I want you to walk us through some of the biggest personal finance mistakes that you see people make. Maybe specifically in their 30s.
- [07:52]
Jonathan Gase
Yeah, I think you've seen and 30s is a great time right now because we're now, you know, 15 plus years into historic bull run markets. You know, it's this idea of this chasing wealth and meme stocks and this over reliance on growth. We're in a period where we haven't had to see the other side of actually comprehensive financial planning of insur events as often in the market side where protection does not feel as significant. But I know that when we think of holistic advice and I think of this as a former role and specifically with Northwestern Mutual. One of the mistakes is this over concentration on I'm trying to hit a big number. I'm trying to focus on how much more I can get without also balancing of what would happen if I couldn't make an income for a number of years. What would happen if God forbid something happens to myself or others. We have a financial plan. You know, I've former cfp, I've been an advisor, I build financial planning tools and last year I lost my home in a tornado. And so in May we get hit by a tornado that comes through St. Louis. My financial plan did not have prepare for some time in your 40s to lose your home and be displaced for a year. But what I have is like I had protection. You know, we have the privilege because of emergency savings and other goals we put around it. That we've been able to spend the last year working through what our settlement is and our treatment or repair, replace and our plan is not on track. Like a plan that we had a year ago is not the same plan we have now. And the mistake is that everything's going to go perfectly. And not preparing for the likelihood that something won't and weathering that storm when it happens and knowing that you can adjust on the fly and be dynamic in your plan and take the actions necessary to put yourself in the best possible position you can be in the moment. But to move forward knowing that everything's not going to be this perfect Monte Carlo run, like it's not going to be the number one outcome in the financial plan in most scenarios.
- [09:47]
Jennifer Bourget
Wow. Well, I'm really sorry about your house.
- [09:51]
Jonathan Gase
Well, you know, it's. It's one of those things where, you know, I've lived in St. Louis for my life on and off. We haven't had a storm hit at that level in a city in over 75 years. That's the kind of thing you go like, why, why would I worry about that doesn't happen. I don't live in an area where I should be impact impacted. And yet you are. You could have the same conversation about disability insurance. Everybody in my family is healthy. Like I haven't had an issue. Then something happens and now you can't achieve your near term goals or long term goals because you can't replace that income anymore. Or you think about insurance and you know, it's this one point in time cost rather than actually thinking about it as just as important as your growth side is, how are you protecting yourself for life's events that will inevitably happen in some way or another and being able to monitor and shift your plan in that time.
- [10:37]
Jennifer Bourget
Now, in the first episode of this season, we actually talked with Wendy de la Rosage and she talked about the gap between financial education and financial behavior. Knowing what you should do but not doing it. Now, where do you see that show up most painfully?
- [10:53]
Jonathan Gase
I think the first is just inaction. You know, the hardest thing to do is to say, I'm ready to talk to a financial advisor, I'm ready to start my plan. There's always something that feels like I'm just not ready yet, there's some hurdle in the way. And so my wife and I, we use this example right now we're actually in the process of working with a new financial advisor and we're in the process of settling with this home insurance. And the conversation was like well, let's just wait until this number comes in so we can start with a full financial plan. And then the conversation really went to, well, we should have the conversation to prepare for the potential scenarios should this come in and what else we're doing around these things. Like, yes, it would be perfect if I waited six months and I had already bought the new home or whatever path we had taken. So being able to just start the plan matters more than is the plan perfect in the first place. I'll share another story here for a second. So coming in today, I actually had a message from a friend who was talking about there was a purchase he wanted to make. And he was like, I need help because I cannot figure out what behavioral thing is stopping me from making this purchase. I've never been more successful financially than where I am right now. I can absolutely afford to do this. And I feel fully paralyzed that I shouldn't purchase this thing. And I just asked, like, have you ever started a financial plan? Have you ever worked with a financial advisor? How do you know you can afford it? And how do you know that you're on track for your other goals? He's like, no, I'm not even sure what I want to achieve with these dollars. I'm not sure where I was like, well, that really matters more than do I have the right number. In the end, it's some intentionality. And so where I think the biggest mistakes in the behavioral gap is I can know everything about finances. I can understand diversification in my investments. I can understand the need for risk and others. But if I don't take the action, if I'm not vulnerable enough to start when things aren't perfect, then it won't actually matter.
- [12:46]
Jennifer Bourget
I think that is so true. Like, I, you know, see so many people when we have these goals of like, you know, I want to do this or I want to do that, or I guess kind of like your friend, he had a goal but wasn't maybe sure of his other goals. You know, I see people talk about that with retirement. You know, it's like, you know, do I have enough? And it's like, well, how much do you spend? What do you want to do? Like, you kind of have to think
- [13:08]
Jonathan Gase
all that's the conversation with an advisor, because no one comes in and says, I want to spend exactly 73 and a half percent of my current lifestyle when I retire. So can you just do the math on that, please? Like, you have to have a conversation. And it's like, well, you know, and the same Conversation becomes like, well, how do we get there? You know, my wife is brilliant. She's a professor in political science. She's one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life. She would rather we take our money and put it in a Folger's can and dig it in the backyard and be like, it's safe now. And I would say, let's invest in emerging frontier stocks. And like, between the two of us, that's a financial advisor's role, is to say, how do I get the two of you together in an open, vulnerable conversation? That she's going to feel that we're taking on too much risk, and I'm going to feel like we're being too conservative. But the actual idea of, if you do this, you are going to be okay. You know, we're actually getting ready to engage with an NM advisor. And one of the things was this conversation of, I, I'm overly financial literate. Like, I, I know too much for my own good. And I start doing the optimization math. I start going into the algorithm and calculation. And then when she and I talk about it, she's like, I don't get it and I don't want to get it from you. Like, I like, you know. And so, like, we very intentionally, like, she's like, and I want to work with a woman advisor. And so we were interviewing women advisors, and I said, please meet with her without me. Like, go and just talk to her, Figure out how she works, figure out what you need and have this conversation. And she came back exhilarated after this conversation because she's like, I felt heard and I know that I don't have to, like, ask you all the questions that we should actually be discussing with each other versus it. Feeling like I'm asking for permission or approval of doing the right things and this person's a resource for me. And then all that said, she came back and said, well, we shouldn't start working with her until after we get this insurance settlement. And I was like, that, that doesn't work. Like, we should start now because we'll find out how to use the insurance settlement. Like, in this conversation, you'll feel comfortable about the choices you have.
- [15:05]
Jennifer Bourget
So that's really cool. I didn't even think about, like, interviewing advisors too. I feel like that's a good point
- [15:11]
Jonathan Gase
where I think the importance is saying, yes, people are different. And so we have to have conversations that match more than just this computational output that's optimized. Next, best dollar math. And that the best case is that you balance these like better financial outcomes and better financial health and wellness and lower financial anxiety around those items because that's where when things go off or when the plan doesn't go perfectly, you're able to stay on track or on path and adjust on the fly with the help of somebody who's there as both like a financial therapist and behavioral coach and supporting you on the calculations as well.
- [15:49]
Jennifer Bourget
So you were talking about protection, and I know that's something you dealt with with your home and you talk to a lot of people about this, but protection's one of the biggest blind spots that you see. And life insurance is a topic that most people just want to actively avoid talking about. It's probably not a comfortable thing to think about. Why is that and what are people getting wrong about it?
- [16:11]
Jonathan Gase
Well, there's an inherent discomfort in it because you're talking about mortality and that's an uncomfortable conversation in general. And what you find is because something is uncomfortable doesn't mean it's not worth doing. And so the conversations that really as an advisor, I felt even before I was with Northwestern Mutual, I didn't do my responsibility if I didn't talk to you about that protection. Because nobody walks in and says, hey, I'm looking forward to buying life insurance, can you please place a policy for me? The conversation is actually like, what would happen if you do it with a family, you can do it with long term goals, whatever may be. And in the scenario where something happens and that income is not there and your support is not there, and all the things that you provide as an individual to your family and others, how would you like others to have to move forward? In the moments afterwards, that conversation becomes more about values. Is this something that you're protecting for a short period, or is this something you want to protect for a longer period? Or is this something that you want to ensure at the end, no matter what, there's going to be a liquidity event, there's going to be something that pays out. And that conversation is more about what is it you're trying to achieve and what is it you're trying to protect, rather than like what's the optimal financial product mix to achieve, some specific net present value calculation, et cetera? Like, that misses the mark. But it's an uncomfortable conversation. And so where advisors become helpful is that it's our responsibility to have uncomfortable conversations and to help people guide through those because it's a lot easier to say, you know, I'll think about that again later. Right now, let's just do this. And that's okay. That can happen. But if you don't come back to it later, now you've done yourself a disservice.
- [17:57]
Jennifer Bourget
And what do you say to someone who maybe feels like planning is just pointless right now, like they're feeling overwhelmed with interest rates being unpredictable, the economy feels unstable, like maybe either feeling paralyzed by how uncertain everything feels right now, what do you say to someone who's feeling that way?
- [18:15]
Jonathan Gase
So first, that's true in every economic environment we've ever had, in the sense of you do not know what's going to happen in three months, six months, 10 years. Financial planning is predicated upon a litany of assumptions. So capital market assumptions, how will my investments perform over the next 30, 50, 60 years? How we model that in any given year, you might sequence 3, 4, 5 bad years in a row. In that case, that plan is going to look pretty tough. If you flip it and say three, four, five years in a row, that look a lot like the mid 2010s, that plan looks phenomenal. Assumptions are only there because there's no way for us to predict the future. Planning should not be predicting the future. Planning is about assuming you continue the things that you're doing right now and assuming a variable group of assumptions that we can with some certainty, feel are as directionally correct, are you going to be okay? And right now, when things feel the most stressful about what should I be doing and I can't make a decision because there's too many variables that move. What could be more valuable than an activity that lowers financial anxiety? What could be more valuable than setting some intentionality so that when something changes, not if, but when something changes, I can take a path that makes me feel more like dynamic in my plan and know that I have the opportunity to speak with an expert, know the opportunity to be on the same page with my significant other, that we're going to be okay through this. That to me is like, it's the same thing from Wendy's conversation. Doesn't matter how much financial education or financial literacy you have, though that is critical. We have to raise the floor on that. It matters that you take action and that you continue to take action and that you set intentions and that you set positive behaviors. You're committing to the financial behaviors that will get you on track. Not necessarily, did I put the right dollars in the right accounts? That matters too, but less so than the behaviors.
- [20:10]
Jennifer Bourget
And you've mentioned how you and your wife talk about this, but also have differed so much in your and how you want to handle things. Like, I totally, I totally get that my husband was in your wife's shoes. I think with the like, let's just, let's hide it under the mattress. We got something, you know, let's do it. But I think it's harder these days, you know, like because of. And you see so many things online. There's lifestyle creep, you know, you start making more money. That was one thing I felt like we were a little bit good at was like, okay, when we get a raise, let's not start spending more. Let's like pretend like we're still making this much and then we'll save the extra. But that seems to be hard for a lot of people.
- [20:51]
Jonathan Gase
I think capitalism is weaponized against that. We've become really successful at separating people from their money in the commercial space. Lifestyle creep is by far the biggest impact between the data we see of like how you switch from. As the income grows, the expenses just tend to grow with it. And it's exactly that idea of like, okay, maybe I'm not going to switch from the average car to the luxury car, but I did switch and buy the luxury package of the regular car. When we started doing that math, you're like, well, you kind of just bought the basic package of the luxury car. Like you convinced yourself you did the thing that did didn't creep the lifestyle. And then it did you start doing more convenience based spending. I'll just have that delivered versus like driving down the street. And so it's so easy for it to catch up. And you look around and you go, how am I making more than I made when I was 19 and getting married? And yet I feel like I'm saving less than I used to. Family and priorities and life events, these things shift. I think the statistics show that more than 50% of Americans would not be able to meet a $1,000 expense right now should that hit. And that's real in the sense of how do I continue to save for something that feels 30 years away? How do I save for retirement if I know that right now if my windshield broke, I'm gonna have a hard time justifying where I'm gonna spend this week's paycheck, Whatever it may be. It is not an uncommon position to be in. I don't know how I could save any more than I'm currently putting away. I'm doing my match for my 401k and then I don't know what to do. And sometimes planning is not saying I'm going to magically find more dollars for you. It's saying, well, let's talk about where all the dollars are going and you can decide whether or not you're at a position right now where you could adjust any of those expenses. Could you make any choices of cooking more at home? Could you make any choices of maybe on the next car you don't buy the premium package and you put that money into a Roth ira? The intentionality there, I know we've hit a couple of times, but in the same way a therapist would have you do the work, it's the same thing as like a financial advisor. It's like, I can't make you save. I can't get you to spend differently. All I can do is share with you good habits and the trade offs of those habits. And when you're ready, you'll make those changes. And often creating a financial plan is one of those catalytic moments, one of those forcing mechanisms that help people change those behaviors.
- [23:19]
Jennifer Bourget
Right? And as you're listing those things, I'm like, oh man, all the tv, premium subscriptions, that's another one. It's creeping in. I held off so long, I felt like I was the last person to get Netflix. And now I got them all.
- [23:34]
Jonathan Gase
You used to have cable. It was like, cable switch used to have cable.
- [23:37]
Jennifer Bourget
And I was so mad at cable. And now I'm like, can we go back to cable?
- [23:40]
Jonathan Gase
Yeah, I just want one bill and I want to know what's coming in. And now I've got, you know, if you've used, you know, AI is now around. Like it's, it's part of the conversation. We have to think about how does that help our clients and how does that help our advisors be more effective in their conversations, be more effective in their positive money habits and others. And there are things like the ability to aggregate all of my cards and my checking account and see where are my subscriptions, how many subscriptions do I have open right now? And you do those sort of discoveries. You're like, I don't want to replace an advisor with AI. I want to empower my advisor with AI to help me do things like, you know, you're spending. And this is something I actually just realized. I have three different Apple subscriptions for Apple Music. I like the Apple one and I was paying for it individually. And I was like, why am I like, nope, Apple didn't call me and say, by the way, you're paying 3x what you should be paying every month for our services. You know, it's like, and I look in one of my credit cards has free Apple package anyway, so I'm paying something multiple times when I could have been getting it for free. It's so easy for all those things to happen. So how do we use technology to help us with these types of activities? And even CFPs and other credentials, there's always a little bit more of like, how could I do more for this client? How could I do more for Jennifer and her husband? Let's power that with technology. But the part of it that comes back to it is not that I'm going to give you this next best dollar optimization analysis. I'm going to come back to it like here's something you could do. Do you feel like you could do that? Do you feel like if you could stay on this path if we try this, that's where the real lift happens. The plan is more than just what it's printed on. The plan has to be dynamic to where you are and what's happening and what's changing and your ability to stay committed to it.
- [25:21]
Jennifer Bourget
Yeah, it sounds very empowering. Thank you, Jonathan. Now I got one more question for you, A takeaway question for someone who's maybe been putting off the financial piece of a big life moment that they have coming up. What's the mindset shift that makes everything else easier? Maybe not the first like action that they need to take, but the first
- [25:40]
Jonathan Gase
thought, oh it's such a good question. I think the answer is just realizing that there is no better time than right now to take action. And that sounds overly simplistic because it is and it would be very easy to procrastinate of. I need to have the perfect answer. You know, which exact amount of home can I afford? Which exact amount should I be saving for retirement? How much should I save exactly for my kids education? And that exactness can be overwhelming. And so the first thought should be am I ready to start? I can be vulnerable, I can be open. I'm not going to be in the perfect position. But it's important to engage and take intentionality of what you're trying to achieve and have that conversation than it is about I'm going to buy the exact perfect stock or I'm going to go invest the exact right amount. So I think intentionality to start and just being willing to take action is the right path forward.
- [26:36]
Jennifer Bourget
That's Jonathan Gase, vice president of client experience and personalized planning at Northwestern Mutual. This one hits close to home for me and I think it will for a lot of you, too. What we keep coming back to this season is that the gap most of us have with money isn't about knowing more, it's about doing more with what we already know. And if this conversation gave you even one thing to act on, don't let it sit. Download Northwestern Mutual's free family finances workbook@northwesternmutual.com podcast. It's a great way to start turning that intention into an actual plan. Next time on A Better Way to Money. The biggest difference between the power pause and just a pause is this concept that when you make room for family life, you're actually also making them for yourself. Stepping back from your career to raise your kids can feel like the right call and a financial risk at the same time. Neha Rush joins us to talk about the power pause, what it actually costs, what it gives you, and how to make it work on your own terms. Tap Follow in your podcast app so you don't miss it. Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Life and disability insurance, annuities and life insurance with long term care benefits and its subsidiaries in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Not all Northwestern Mutual representatives are advisors only Those representatives with advisor in their title or who otherwise disclose their status as an advisor of Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. NMWMC are credentialed as NMWMC representatives to provide advisory services.