{"id":243316,"date":"2025-10-27T03:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T03:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/243316\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T03:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T03:44:08","slug":"meet-a-financial-adviser-who-doesnt-really-care-about-money-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/243316\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet a financial adviser who doesn\u2019t really care about money \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI don\u2019t really care about money,\u201d says Carl Richards.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not exactly the first thing you expect to hear from a man who makes his living talking about money.<\/p>\n

Then, when he goes on to say, \u201cWhat I care about is that money is a portal into people\u2019s souls, a way to get them talking about what they really care about,\u201d you know this is not a person trying to sell you a portfolio on the S&P or get you to invest in a new tech startup. <\/p>\n

His unconventional message is the focus of a new book he\u2019s released this week: \u201cYour Money: Reimagining Wealth in 101 Simple Sketches.\u201d<\/p>\n

Open his book to a page, any page, and there, right in front of you, is a sketch designed to get you thinking deeply about what matters most to you in life.<\/p>\n

He calls the sketches \u201cconversation grenades.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next thing you know, you\u2019re talking about why you do the things you do instead of how much you have, or don\u2019t have, in the bank. <\/p>\n

\"\"Carl Richards, author and financial adviser, discusses his new book, “Your Money,” at his Park City home on Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News <\/p>\n

Is there a market for this \u201clet\u2019s talk about money by not talking about money\u201d approach? Carl certainly thinks so. He\u2019s made it his life\u2019s work. This is his third book on the subject (following \u201cThe Behavior Gap\u201d in 2012 and \u201cThe One-page Financial Plan\u201d in 2015).<\/p>\n

Along with that, there\u2019s his \u201cThe Sketch Guy\u201d column that ran for 10 years in The New York Times; his podcast, \u201cBehavior Gap Radio\u201d; the bimonthly retreats he hosts in the Park City mountains; his \u201cSociety of Advice\u201d phone calls; and the dozens of speeches and presentations he gives every year. You can even buy frameable copies of his sketches on his website, behaviorgap.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Carl has created a space heretofore unfilled in the financial adviser world, with himself as CCO \u2014 chief conversation officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to be a conversation starter,\u201d he says. \u201cIt feels like we\u2019ve lost the plot in so many ways, where money and work have become the organizing force of our lives. Then you get to the top of the mountain and find a void and ask, \u2018Is this all it was for?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cHow we spend our money and our time tells us a lot about what we value. How do I align my use of capital with what\u2019s actually important to me? How do I deal with that gap? That\u2019s what the work is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s having the conversation that matters, he stresses. \u201cSo much of it is magic I can\u2019t take any credit for. I just try to expose people to places and questions that allow them to ask a deeper, more meaningful question of themselves. I\u2019m not trying to tell anyone how to live, I don\u2019t want to be judgmental. I\u2019m making all the mistakes too, I\u2019m walking down the same path as everyone else. This is just an adventure journal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Carl Richards, author and financial adviser, poses for photos as he discusses his new book, “Your Money,” at his Park City home on Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News <\/p>\n

Tracing \u201cThe Behavior Gap\u201d and its unique philosophies to its beginnings, Carl entering the financial world was a complete fluke.<\/p>\n

Thirty years ago, he was a student at BYU, studying organizational behavior, and needed some part-time work to help pay tuition. He applied for a job working at night as a security guard. Or so he thought. \u201cThe ad actually said \u2018securities,\u2019\u201d Carl remembers. \u201cSo I wound up answering phones at Fidelity\u2019s big call center in Salt Lake. I suddenly found myself in the finance industry. I figured it would be just a stopover into getting into some kind of consulting or organizational behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, as he explains on his website, \u201cThat slight misstep sparked a lifelong dedication to reshaping how we think about money.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s never really left his organizational behavior roots. Never stopped musing more about why we do things than what we do; never stopped looking for ways \u201cto really help people figure out how to live life wide open.\u201d Himself included.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like what (Stephen R.) Covey said: the last thing you want to do is climb a ladder, only to realize when you get to the top it\u2019s leaning against the wrong wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Money, in Carl Richards\u2019s world, is a way to talk about making sure that doesn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

\"\"Carl Richards, author and financial adviser, poses for photos as he discusses his new book, “Your Money,” at his Park City home on Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI don\u2019t really care about money,\u201d says Carl Richards. It\u2019s not exactly the first thing you expect to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,99,186,15065,5872,184,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-243316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-news-division","13":"tag-news-feed-local","14":"tag-personal-finance","15":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}