153: Rethinking Goals-Based Financial Planning: Using Behavioral Experiments to Improve Client Outcomes with Meghaan Lurtz

Feb 25, 2026

Meghaan Lurtz, behavioral finance and financial psychology expert and professor of practice, argues for testing life plans with small experiments. She discusses why static goals fail, how to design reversible trials for retirement, travel, hobbies and spending, and a simple four-step experiment framework to help clients learn what truly fits them.

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ANECDOTE

Therapist Taught Reframing Relationship As An Experiment

Meghaan Lurtz first learned to reframe life decisions as experiments when her therapist proposed treating her relationship as research instead of ending it.
That mindset led her to test career moves (writing, speaking) by trying them before committing, which shaped her path.

INSIGHT

Goals Can Anchor Clients Into Wrong Future Choices

Goals-based planning helps focus money decisions but clashes with research showing people are poor predictors of their future preferences.
Locking clients to long-term goals creates anchoring that prevents course correction as lives and tastes change.

ADVICE

Test Big Travel Dreams With Shorter Purposeful Trips

Before grand retirement moves (like three months in Europe), design smaller tests: extend a week to two, try different cities, or break the trip into multiple shorter ones.
Debrief quickly to see if it was place, pace, skill learning (like cooking) or community that mattered.

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Most financial planning is built around goals.

Goals like:

Retiring at 60
Spending more time traveling
Leaving a legacy through philanthropy

But there’s a structural flaw in that model: human beings are notoriously poor predictors of their future preferences. What we think will make us happy at 60 often looks very different once we get there.

Yet as Advisors, we routinely ask clients to define long-term goals without fully pressure-testing the assumptions behind them.

In this episode, Meghaan Lurtz explains how we can shift away from the shortcomings of goals-based planning by focusing on the power of experiments.

Instead of asking our clients to commit to big, static goals, we can help them design small, intentional experiments.

Help them test the retirement, test the travel, and test the hobbies they “think” they’ll enjoy one day.

Because a client who has tried something knows what they want. And an Advisor who helps them get there becomes indispensable.

If you want deeper conversations, more engaged retirees, and clients who actually use their money in ways that improve their lives, then this episode offers a practical framework you can implement immediately.

You’ll Learn:

Why goals-based planning may be unintentionally limiting your clients’ happiness
The simple 4-step experiment framework that unlocks confident spending and clearer decisions
How to help chronic under-spenders safely test higher spending without triggering fear
Why debriefing client experiences may be more powerful than the financial plan itself

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Links To Resources Mentioned:

“Helping Underspenders and Savers Understand They Can Spend More With 4 Stages Of Experiments”

Connect With Brendan:

RFG Advisory

LinkedIn: Brendan Frazier

About Our Guest:

Meghaan Lurtz, Ph.D., FBS™ is a globally recognized expert on the psychology of financial planning and the human dynamics of money. She is a partner at Beyond The Plan®.

Dr. Lurtz is also a Professor of Practice at Kansas State University, teaching in the Advanced Financial Planning and Financial Therapy Certificate Programs, and a Lecturer at Columbia University, where she teaches Financial Psychology. Her academic and professional contributions include published research in Journal of Financial Planning, Journal of Consumer Affairs, and Financial Planning Review, as well as regular columns on Kitces.com.

Her expertise has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, BBC, Million Dollar Roundtable, New York Magazine, and more. She has co-authored chapters in the CFP Board’s textbook Client Psychology and serves on multiple fintech boards bridging financial advice with mental health. Meghaan is a past President of the Financial Therapy Association.