The Anti-Capitalist Financial Advisor

(By Max Kulyk for RIA Reflections) –

If you asked me 30 years ago to describe the persona of a financial advisor, I would have responded that, for me, it was synonymous with “stockbroker.” And when I heard the term, I thought “used car salesman.” I wanted nothing to do with that.

For most of my life, anything to do with money made me feel very uneasy and triggered feelings of shame and anxiety. I saw it less as a tool and more as a weapon, one that too often hurt the people it touched. I didn’t understand money, but I knew that it could create a lot of pain and discord. From the family stories I heard, it seemed that greed had torn a whole generation apart. To me, nothing good could come from it.

Wealth is a relative thing. I grew up in what most would call a comfortable home, and I knew the doors that privilege could open, though I always felt very alienated from that privilege. Many of my classmates lived with far less, sometimes less than nothing. Out of about 175 students in my high school, nearly 80 percent were on public assistance. Only 10 people went on to college; I was one of them.

When I left home, I wanted to leave all of it behind. Even — or especially — my family’s 120-year-old manufacturing business. It had given me opportunities others in my hometown could only imagine, even as it had been the source of a lot of family strife.

Those early experiences with a family business and with capitalism had left their mark on me. I saw capitalism as a system that drained the life out of everything it touched; resources, communities, and even the people it claimed to serve. I wanted another way to live, something that didn’t demand giving up my sense of self to survive.  And I wanted that for others as well.

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