What do you believe is the single most important factor driving up the cost of living in Nigeria?

George Kinder Kinder Institute

'You should be focused on your dream of freedom'

Greg Iacurci: What is the basic premise of the life planning movement? George Kinder: The basic premise is that financial planning is about delivering a client into freedom. Every person has a dream of freedom, and they ought to be living it. And that goes for people who don't have any money, people who are in debt, as well as people who have lots of money. The focus shifts from money — where we have a lot of anxiety and there are a lot of tasks to do — to freedom. What does it actually look like, feel like, and what are the steps to get there?

GI: What do you mean by freedom? GK: I think each of us has our own feeling for it, and the way we get at it is through the three questions. If people just focus on the money, they lose track of who it is they really want to be and what it is they want to do. And often they assume, "Maybe I can't do that until retirement, or maybe I'll never get there. So I don't really want to face it. I'll just try to be more efficient around [my] money." The premise of life planning is, no, you should be focused on your dream of freedom, and do some of these exercises to discover what it is. And then you'll find that the money side of it goes much smoother, because it doesn't feel like an onerous task.

'People get lost in the daily stuff'

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