Beyond the Numbers: Incorporating Financial Wellness into Your Practice and Personal Life

BY STEPHANIE RYSTROM, Ph.D. STUDENT, TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY, AND JEFFREY CHRISTAKOS, CPA, PFS, CFP, CHRISTAKOS FINANCIAL

CPAs frequently encounter clients whose financial habits run deeper than what can be captured on a balance sheet. True financial wellness isn’t just about crunching numbers — it’s about fostering a holistic approach that builds confidence and security in managing money. By integrating strategies that enhance financial understanding along with emotional well-being, CPAs and accountants can guide clients toward creating lasting habits that lead to long-term financial stability and success. Integrating financial wellness into your practice (and into your personal finances as well) allows you to not just help clients achieve financial success, but also foster overall well-being — making sure they are financially secure, less stressed and aligned with their life goals. Maybe they don’t even really know what their goals are and assisting them in defining these life landmarks can be instrumental in overall happiness and satisfaction.

Financial wellness is not a numbers game, nor is it determined by net worth, how much money can be saved on taxes or even a client’s access to discretionary funds. It means having literacy to understand one’s financial situation, actively managing money in a way that aligns with a person’s values and having the tools to deal with downturns and financial challenges effectively. This means helping clients move from a purely transactional relationship with money to a more thoughtful and holitics approach.

Implementing Financial Wellness with Clients

One of the first steps is focusing on behavior and mindset, not just the numbers. People regularly know what they “should” do, but emotions like fear, anxiety and greed stop them from doing it. CPAs and accountants can play a crucial role in helping clients overcome behavioral biases which, in turn, lead to poor financial decisions.

For example, many clients fall victim to social comparison and thereby lifestyle inflation — as their income increases, so do their expenses. Educating them about common behavioral traps and guiding them towards more mindful approaches to money can be extremely beneficial.

Implementing Financial Wellness in Your Personal Life

CPAs are not magically immune to financial stress or imbalance, and practicing what you preach is a vital component. When you incorporate financial wellness into your personal life, you are better able to empathize with clients and model the behavior and mindset that you are encouraging them to adopt. Steps you can take to do this include the following:

• Set clear personal financial goals and ask yourself what financial success looks like for you. Having a clear picture of what you’re trying to achieve and work towards can help guide your decisions.

• Create a spending plan and be as intentional with your personal finances as you are with your clients. This could include identifying your values as well as long-term goals and being mindful of lifestyle inflation to maintain a balance between saving for the future and enjoying life now.

• Manage financial stress. Identify your stressors and implement strategies to help alleviate those financial worries.

• Find a balance between work and personal life. This includes setting boundaries, being available for self-care and ensuring that you are as invested in your personal life as you are in your career.

Tools to Gauge Financial Wellness

In addition to the commonly used objective metrics, such as savings rate, debt-to-income ratio, emergency fund and overall net worth, there are important subjective factors to consider, including financial stress, financial goals and confidence. Tools to measure and improve financial wellness include the following:

• CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) Financial Well-Being Scale: consumerfinance.gov/consumer-tools/financial-well-being/

• Gallup Financial Well-Being Index: gallup.com/topic/well-being-index.aspx

• Rutgers Cooperative Extension Financial Fitness Quiz: njaes.rutgers.edu/money/assessment-tools/financialfitness-quiz.pdf

• The PERMA model (positive psychology): positivepsychology.com/perma-model/

• FINRA Investor Education Foundation: finrafoundation.org/knowledge-wegain-share/nfcs

• Employer workplace financial wellness programs that provide access to personalized financial planning, education and wellness assessments.

By integrating subjective and objective metrics with a focus on well-being, these tools offer a more nuanced understanding of financial wellness. Financial planning, and specifically the evolving areas of financial wellness and well-being, require that CPAs and accountants remain diligent at growing as professionals in the field.

Stephanie Rystrom is a Ph.D. student at Texas Tech University’s School of Financial Planning. She can be reached at strystro@ttu.edu . Jeffrey Christakos, CPA, PFS, CFP, is a partner at Christakos Financial. He is a member of the NJCPA and can be reached at jeff@christakos.cpa .