Clarify and prioritize your unique core values

Financial planning and investing are about so much more than money

When you take the time to understand your own core values, you can make better decisions about your financial planning strategies and investment choices. Knowing that you’re basing your choices on your closest-held values can help you navigate through uncertainty and toward your financial future with greater confidence and less stress.

As life changes, your values may change, too. You can always return to this exercise in the future to review what’s remained and what’s changed. And your financial professional is here to help you keep your strategies aligned with your core values.

The exercise is simple. Just add and remove the values to create your personalized value set.

Begin by splitting the deck into the “keep” and “discard” piles by dragging and dropping cards. Select the most appealing values from the card deck and eliminate the ones that don’t resonate as strongly. If needed, you can create individualized value cards to describe your own unique principles.

Next, follow the simple elimination process to prioritize the core values that are most important to you. Discard value cards to pare down your selections, starting with your top 15 values, down to your top 10, and finally your top five — which you can share with your financial professional.

Those final five core values can serve as a starting point for your planning strategies — and as a frame of reference for rational decision-making in times of uncertainty.