How Our Advice May Help You
The biggest thing we provide to our clients and their families is confidence and clarity. I’m extraordinarily honest and transparent when speaking with clients or potential clients about the investment business. Being brutally honest seems to resonate with people in a world of bait-and-switch marketing.
I love nice watches. How does the watch work? We know what time it is, but what’s under the hood? What makes the investments tick? Being super honest and open with people is very refreshing for them. Often they’re never heard about the inner-workings of the industry before. They don’t know that they’re not paying 1% to their advisor -They’re paying two or three. They don’t know that that video that popped up on their Facebook feed was designed to scare them, grab their attention, and make them click on the thing to get the seminar, free toaster or whatever.
When I shed light on the investment world behind the scenes style, they feel very relieved. I’d say 99% of the time people come into our office wanting to know if they’re going to be okay. A person approaching retirement wants to know if they have enough money to retire. Is their money going to last as long as they will? Can they retire according to their timeline and at their income number? We refer to our initial meeting as the “Fit” meeting, meaning we want to determine if we are a good fit for you and if you are a good fit for us. Ethically, personality-wise, investment philosophy, expectations, connection and gut feeling are just a few of the factors at play in determining fit.
After the initial meeting, we will have conversations around your money and lifestyle goals, asset allocation, product allocation, taxes, estate planning, dreams and aspirations, social security, pensions, and personal and family goals. We then input that data into our proprietary financial planning software, and it spits out a number to show if you are on track or not on track based on all your assets and how they’re positioned, and how much income we can generate. I can tell you with great certainty, “Yes, you can retire next year,” or, “No, you cannot.” That’s a great relief because most people don’t know that coming in. I often tell folks there are three promises that I can make regarding the initial “Fit” meeting. You will not be asked to make any decisions, the meeting will last around 45-60 minutes, and you will be the one to decide if we should meet again.
After the initial consultation, assuming the investor wants to continue the conversation, the next meeting is more planning focused. We’ll take them through our financial planning software called Goal Planning and Monitoring (GPM). This is a tool, an enlightening experience we take clients through with the end goal of providing clarity and confidence around retirement and investment goals. It’s kind of a collaborative experience where we can help identify and document the goals of the client and their family. After discussing your goals and imputing some numbers, the software will provide a roadmap for which we can travel. Similar to GPS, GPM is a tool to help us get to where we want to go. The plan literally gives us a probability of success for what the client is trying to accomplish, and we can have a discussion about any areas they may need to change in order to improve their probability of success. Perhaps the client is taking too much risk with their current asset allocation. Maybe they have lofty travel goals, and instead of staying at the Four Seasons for their future trips, they stay at a Hilton. Or maybe instead of passing down $1M as a legacy goal, they only can pass down $750k. These are all things that we can control. Unlike the markets, tax brackets, or who’s in the White House, we have full choice and control over certain areas of our financial plan, and those are the areas that GPM helps us focus on. GPM takes into consideration your social security benefit, health care in retirement, including Medicare and Long Term Care, and tax drag while taking Required Minimum Distributions. These are just a few of the areas that clients have told me over the years that they really needed help understanding. Other things I have heard a lot with regards to the planning are questions like “Do we have enough money to retire,” “Am I taking enough (or too much) risk in my portfolio,” and “How will we pay for Long Term Health Care.” Our financial planning process answers these questions with high conviction based on their specific situation and helps them feel comfortable with and take ownership over these key areas of their financial lives.