When clients (or potential clients) think about working with a financial advisor, it’s a monumental decision—unlike most other decisions they’ll face. What other product or service carries this level of emotional impact? Certainly buying a car or a house is an emotional event but doesn’t compare to turning over the trust regarding the fruits of [...]
It’s no secret that the biggest focus on retirement planning has been on how much your clients have, and how much they’ll need. It’s a critical issue—if your clients don’t have enough money once they retire (even if they choose to continue working on a part-time basis), they’ll end up facing unnecessary challenges just [...]
As many advisors know, I’m a big proponent of getting to know your clients before you even start to talk about investing their money. Part of the process includes understanding their goals and transitions (and how those are different from each other). But even before you do that, you need to understand the mindset behind [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, September 1, 2023. Brett was just a green attorney, fresh out of law school when his father, a respected financial advisor, brought a client in to see him about an estate planning issue. His father, who was a master of understanding the emotional side of the business, brought [...]
Originally posted at Appenmedia.com by Lewis Walker, CFP, August 31, 2023. In Newtown Park in Johns Creek there is a free lending library in what looks like a big birdhouse. Walking in the park almost every day, I always check the library to see if there’s a new book that piques my interest. Recently I [...]
Originally posted at Appenmedia.com by Lewis Walker, CFP, July 8, 2023. On radio and television you constantly hear ads about planning for a well-funded retirement. Suppose with the help of a financial advisor, and/or through pluck and true grit, you do it. You wake up on Day One of your next 10 years in retirement [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, October 1, 2022. “Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.” —Steven Wright Have you ever watched the political talk shows where there are four or five columnists, all brimming over with opinions to the point that none of them can let any of [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, December 1, 2022. The financial advisory profession has done a great job getting quantitative information from clients, processing that information, and then analyzing it for reports or plans. But when it comes to finding qualitative information—knowledge about our clients’ experiences, principles and deepest hopes and fears—the industry often [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, June 1, 2023. In my previous article in April, I introduced a number of questions that advisors could ask their clients to get a sense of their personal principles when it comes to investing. Among the questions I asked in Part 1 of this story were: • If [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, April 1, 2023. During the several years I’ve tracked the concerns of financial advisory clients, I was surprised to learn that one of their more important interests was re-examining their investment philosophy, something up there with worry about their aging parents and their children’s college. I guess I [...]
Originally posted at Appenmedia.com by Lewis Walker, CFP, May 15, 2023. Ask people about retirement goals and you get a wish list ─ travel, play more golf, spend more time with family and friends, etc. Retirement is seen as a time to do more of the things you enjoy doing. But in some advisory circles [...]
Originally posted at Appenmedia.com by Lewis Walker, CFP, June 7, 2023. In the 1960s, and prior to that, financial advice, such as it was, came largely from purveyors of products such as stockbrokers, insurance agents and bankers. Each had a vested interest in selling their company’s products and solutions. Training primarily was based on techniques [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, February 1, 2023. Advisors are usually encouraged to talk to their clients about their goals, to ask questions like, “Where would you like to be in five years?” But how much richer would the conversation be if we asked them instead, “Where have you been in the last [...]
Originally posted at morningstar.com by Alessandra Malito, December 21, 2022. Get a jump-start on New Year's resolutions by reading these books to prep your retirement planning. Want to make the most of the money you've saved for retirement, or would you like to maximize your benefits? There are plenty of insightful books to shed light [...]
Originally posted at morningstar.com by Jessica Hall, January 23, 2023. In the first year of retirement, there's a 30% reduction in short-term memory. When we retire from our jobs we may be giving up more than staff meetings, desk lunches and a paycheck. The social interaction and mental challenges found through work can be good [...]
Originally posted at thinkadvisor.com by Jane Wollman Rusoff, January 27, 2023. How to hit it off with clients right from the get-go? Ask about their personal history. “Arrange the conversation to connect with people instead of connecting with their money. It starts with the idea that your client is a human being, not an account,” [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com by Mitch Anthony, May 1, 2022. I was recently going through my archives and came across some recordings I had done with Dick Wagner almost 15 years ago for a recording we were calling “Money Dialogue.” Dick, who passed away five years ago, wrote for Financial Advisor and was a recognized [...]
Richard Beckel was recently quoted in an article in Financial Advisor: “…as business owners, financial advisors need to connect with their clients on an even deeper emotional level than they have ever had to before.” Beckel advises emphasizing client goals, not the advisor’s performance. In other words, focus on your clients by making them front [...]
A brand-new edition of Your Client’s Story: Know Your Clients and the Rest Will Follow is now available! As financial planning continues to evolve, the book is just as relevant now as it was when it was first published in 2005. Financial Planning recently reported that one of the top trends for financial advisors [...]
According to reporting in Financial Planning, consumers still don’t trust the financial services industry: just over one in three (36%) of 4,400 US adults polled said they “tend to trust” investment and wealth managers—the same percentage that said they “tend not to trust” them and that their “trust has to be earned.” The remaining 28% [...]