George Kinder, the founder of the Kinder Institute of Life Planning, has written a new book sharing his views on financial freedom, fiduciary responsibility and global crises.
The new book, the Three Domains of Freedom, focuses on personal financial freedoms and how to achieve them against a backdrop of global challenges and conflict.
Mr Kinder has been on a worldwide publicity tour to promote the book and shared some time with Financial Planning Today editor Kevin O’Donnell recently to talk about the book and his plans for Life Planning. You can read the Q&A here: George Kinder Q&A.
Life Planning is a type of Financial Planning which focuses on holistic financial advice and a deep understanding of clients.
Mr Kinder said the book, at 131 pages, is purposely written as a, “a brief, easy to read, book of wisdom summarising my life’s work with advice on how to live in freedom both inside ourselves and across civilization.”
He said: “It goes deeper and is more far-reaching than my other books, searching out solutions to the economic and political crises we’ve fallen into the past few decades.”
Mr Kinder said the book looked at number of key concepts including living in the moment, the fiduciary obligations of providers and Financial Planners and mindfulness.
He said: “Nobody’s ever experienced freedom in the past. It’s always right here, right now. The present moment is the only moment we ever experience. So why not master it?”
One of the most wide-reaching parts of the books is Mr Kinder’s concerns about civilization and the damage it is doing to itself with multiple political and economic crises around the world.
He told Financial Planning Today: “Civilization is who we are. It should be the best of us, a domain of freedom for all. And yet, the world's burning up. There's no truth in media. People are turning their backs on democracy. Nobody trusts anyone.
“This is not how any of us want to think of ourselves or our species. It’s not what we want to bequeath to our children. And there's a simple solution: Celebrate the freedoms that we do have and insist that all institutions be Fiduciary In All Things (FIAT), that they be trustworthy and humane.”
Mr Kinder said one issue is that product providers devise a system of sales that is not set up to support advisers being fiduciaries to their clients. He tackles this in the book.
He added: “The large product companies should be advocates for and owners of their own fiduciary responsibility. It would transform everything if the banks, insurance companies, and mutual fund companies considered themselves fiduciaries for their community, for truth, for democracy, and for the planet.”
Mr Kinder runs several Life Planning courses in the UK and is a keen anglophile, spending time each year in the UK while being mainly resident in Massachussets and spending some time in Hawaii each year.
Many UK Financial Planners have been keen supporters of the Life Planning movement and its step-based approach to Financial Planning and getting clients to address key issues and ambitions in their lives.
• The book is available from Amazon and other outlets with the paperback priced at £13.27.
