You’re probably wondering what all of this is about… and that’s understandable, so let me explain.

Carl Richards is a Certified Financial Planner and creator of the Sketch Guy column, appearing weekly in The New York Times since 2010.

He is the author of two books – The One Page Financial Plan: A Simple Way to Be Smart About Your Money and The Behaviour Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money.

His simple but very unique sketches have appeared in shows at the Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah, the Parsons School of Design in New York City, and the Mansion House in London.  His commissioned work is on display in businesses and educational insinuations across the globe.

Huw was lucky enough to be one of 33 people allowed to purchase his latest book containing many of his awesome sketches accompanied with explanations as to what they are illustrating.

We wanted to share these with you so each month we will be including one of his sketches in our newsletter.  These will also be featured on our social media and YouTube channels.

“The Why” 

There’s a very important question we all need to ask ourselves from time to time.

Say it with me… Why?

Why do we invest how we do? Why do we spend what we spend? Why do we save so much (or so little)?

After all, the moment we start asking, “Why” is the moment we’re likely to discover that our behaviour doesn’t always line up with our values.

This type of introspection isn’t easy.  And I suspect it’s one of the key reasons we do dumb things with money.  We’re afraid to know why we do what we do, so we never take the time to understand.

But here’s the thing: Asking ourselves why we make a certain money decision is integral to our financial success, even if it takes a bit of time and effort to reach an answer.

So go ahead… ask yourself: Why?

Here’s another great question:

Why not?