Mel Abraham#1 Best Selling Author, Money Mentor

Why Financial Planning Should Start With Your Life

14 Oct 2026 · 2 min

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1:33

In this talk, Mel Abraham—who survived cancer twice—explains how his brush with mortality reshaped his approach to financial advice. He recounts that his early advice was purely numbers‑driven, treating money as the primary metric. After confronting his own limited time, he realized that the true goal is the life one wants to live, not a specific bank balance. Abraham now advocates a "life‑first" planning model: first clarify the life outcomes that matter, then determine the cost (the "price tag") of achieving them, and finally set a financial trajectory to meet those costs. He critiques conventional financial planners for starting with metrics, arguing that without aligning money to personal life goals, people may reach a financial destination that isn’t the one they truly desire.

Chapters

The money advice that I used to give, and this will sound odd, is it all revolved around money. It was a metric to measure. It was a bank account. And many people know that I was, I'm a 2-time cancer survivor. And we grow up in a time where I think a lot of people will tell you, your days are numbered. Appreciate the days. I don't think we take that for Serious. I didn't take it seriously, but then when mortality smacked me in the forehead and I realized that my days are numbered, I realized that the number wasn't the thing that I was trying to get to. The life was. And so what I do is most, most financial planners, most, and I'm more of an advisor, a coach, a mentor, a guide, but most planning goes wrong because they start with numbers. And that's what I used to do. I'm an accountant. Give me columns and rows and math, and the math lasts out, I'm good. But the reality is that we need to start with life first to get really clear on what's the life we're trying to create. Otherwise, we, we can get to a destination, but it may not be the destination we want. And so I realized through that is to put the things that mattered in my life first, then take that and say, what's the price tag to make that happen? And when I know that price tag, now I know the trajectory I'm going for.