Financialwellness is all about considering the future, and exorcising thedemon that makes achieving long-term financial goals difficult.(Image: Shutterstock)

When I got out of college more than 50 years ago, I had collegeloan debt equal to about one year's salary. I figured out how topay it off, though I deferred paying it off for a couple of yearsso I could afford to buy a sports car. Did I need some financialwellness counseling back then? It might've helped, because myItalian sports car ended up needing multiple clutches and lots ofother repairs—mostly because I drove it like a maniac!

At the end of July, I participated in a BenefitsPRO webinar onfinancial wellness. The title for my presentation was "Financialwellness is for everyone." (It's available on the BenefitsPRO.comarchives if anyone wants to check it out.) Although this is alsoabout financial wellness, we'll consider it from a differentperspective.

Related: Financial wellness and the Red Queen'srace

Marty Traynor is anOmaha-based consultant in the benefits field.

This column's title is a bit of wisdom shared with me more than30 years ago by Pac Briglia, who was one of the country's leadingbrokerage general agents. He was teaching me two lessons, oneobvious and one important. The obvious lesson is that, as we lookto the future, our imagination allows us to make all our problemsgo away. We don't want to think about things getting worse, so wetend to look at the bright side of what will come. I was headedthat way during our discussion, describing all the great productsand services the company I worked for was planning to develop. Whenhe said "the future is an easy place to do business," I took it asa compliment.

Then I realized the important lesson. It became clear he wascalling out the difficulty of making all those wonderful thingshappen within the bounds of reality. My rosy glasses graduallydisappeared. It's easy to imagine success in the future, but verydifficult to achieve.

Financial wellness is all about considering the future, andexorcising the demon that makes achieving long-term financial goalsdifficult. The demon is familiar. I want something today, andsomeone will give me the money to buy it. I will worry about payingit off tomorrow.

Behavioral writer Nir Eyal recently posted some great ideasrelated to this idea. Eyal published a workbook based on thebehavioral concept of hyperbolic discounting, where people choosesmaller, immediate rewards while deferring larger, later rewards.We reward ourselves today while ignoring the future cost.

Ironically, this is almost the opposite of imagining all thegreat things that could possibly be done in the future. It's easyto think how great the future can be, but when it comes to action,we tend to think in the now.

Financial wellness encompasses a lot of disciplines, and thereare excuses for ignoring what we should do. Here's a brief list toillustrate:

• Budgeting (boring)
• Saving (difficult) versus spending (fun)
• Acting now (work) versus delaying (easy)

Excuses are used every day to prolong bad money habits and defergood financial planning.

As benefit professionals, we need to study all aspects offinancial wellness disciplines. There are many available products,educational sources and financial planning services. We have theopportunity to consider them in light of the greatest needs of theemployer's associates, and recommend an appropriate package to theemployer. The future is an easy place to do business—but thepresent is the best time to help our customers shape it.

Read more: 

• Can financial wellness programs improve Americans'retirement readiness?
• Financial wellness: It'svoluntary
• How to create employee financial wellness programsthat lead to lasting behavior change