It’s fine if investing bores you. Some money professionals feel the same way.

For a certain type of money professional, there’s one particular question that’s definitely unsolicited and tends to come up in a variety of social settings: Do you have any hot investment tips?

No. The answer is always no.

For financial advisors who feel this way and those in similar fields of work, investing is necessary, but it may not be particularly interesting and does not cause much joy.

These professionals know how to invest and take care to do it right. But to them – and perhaps to you – investments are simply a tool that helps people achieve their most meaningful goals. And helping people define those goals and then achieve them is what makes the job satisfying.

There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it may be the healthiest way to think about money management, whether you’re managing your own finances or trying to find someone to work with who feels the same way.

Challenge requires courage

Making goals—and the ongoing, deeply meaningful conversations required to set and refine them—a higher priority than paying close attention to the stock market may seem reasonable and even obvious. The financial services industry, however, struggles with it.

For decades, stockbrokers made more money when you traded stocks, which encouraged more trading and investment strategies. Many financial planners still base their fees on the assets they manage for you, which tends to focus a lot of the conversation on how (and how aggressively) they invest those assets.

So it takes real nerve for a financial professional to avoid talking about investing or to admit that the markets aren’t shining.

“It feels dangerous to say it in the paper, for sure,” said Danika Waddell, a financial planner in Seattle who first said it out loud in response to a request from Joy Lere, a psychologist and executive coach. She and Dr. Lere were returning from dinner at a conference when Dr. Lere asked her what she likes least about her job and what consumes her most energy.

Resilience is also necessary for individuals trying to make their way financially in the world. You need to block out the hype about how everyone is supposedly making a fortune in Nvidia or whatever the hot stock or fund is.

But how do you do that?

Boredom is a virtue

“I think investing should be boring,” said Leighann Miko, a financial planner with offices in Oregon and California. “We don’t want to make too much of it.”

The big idea here is that you get what the various markets—stocks, bonds, real estate—will give you. This means that you buy mutual funds or exchange-traded funds that own any stock in a particular segment. So a fund that tracks the S&P 500 stock market index owns all 500 stocks.

If you can handle more risk, you own more stock funds and keep less money in, say, cash. But you don’t bet too much on a handful of individual companies or a segment of a market, because that can quickly lower your net worth if you get it wrong. And that IS an assumption.

The virtues of this approach are many. These market tracking funds have low fees and the overall portfolio is usually less volatile than individual stocks. In the long run, this approach is likely to give you better returns.

Pleasure comes from different conversations

Buying boring, market-tracking index funds is known as passive investing. There is some logic to this label, as you generally swear by jumping in and out of markets when things get messy. Instead, you stay the course with, say, 80 percent of your retirement savings in stocks for the first 25 years of your career.

The beauty of this is that it leaves time for more pointed questions of yourself or a counselor. What kind of living situation would make you happiest? What will elderly relatives need from you and how much do you have to give? How do you best help your grandchildren? But asking and answering these questions is the opposite of passive.

“We’re making sure we’re actively planning for things that matter when people express their deepest and most important desires in life,” Ms. Miko said. “If you don’t know what the purpose of the money is, how can you create an investment strategy for it?”

Mike Zung, a financial planner in Lee’s Summit, Mo., has a bit to say about things like interest rate predictions for people he meets in social settings. “I’d rather hear about their first memories of money and how the partners make money together,” he said.

This is a little strange to ask of a stranger, but not out of bounds for a friend. A good friend of someone who doesn’t have access to professional financial assistance may want to investigate—and try to help—when they feel the conversation is right.

“I want to know what their ideal life looks like now and in the future and make sure their financial picture is supporting that,” said Ms. Waddell, who recently spoke with a client who felt that working as a therapist might have been a better career choice.

Is a job change too late for someone in his or her 40s? Maybe no. And the other big pivots of life?

“There will be one or two things that are quite critical,” Ms. Waddell said. “And for most people, they won’t invest.”