Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on January 2, 2020 This past fall, I had the privilege of speaking once again at my favorite conference in the world—Back2Y—hosted by Paul Armson in Birmingham, England. This conference draws life-focused advisors from around the world seeking to deliver the highest order of value and the highest level [...]
Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on November 1, 2019 The self-centered self-delusion. Your clients live in their own world. You live in yours. Is it possible to tune into clients well enough in conversation to break out of the gravitational pull of your planet and make a permanent landing on theirs? Only if you [...]
Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on Sepember 1, 2019 As we approached the tee for the eighth hole, a buddy of mine said to me, “Last year I stood on this tee box with Advisor Joe Schmo, and you were up in the fairway ahead of us. He turned to me and asked, ‘You’re [...]
Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on July 1, 2019 In my last column, I described how messy a financial advisor’s value proposition is when it’s based on a return on investment and how unsustainable that value offering really is. Trying to guess the future and constantly outperform the market is an activity done out [...]
Originally posted in Financial Advisor (fa-mag.com) on May 1, 2019 I’d like to begin this article with a few new terms I’ve coined that will be helpful for reading along: Practicide: When you build a practice designed to kill you. Entremanure: What people often find themselves wading in when selling the wrong value proposition. Messyages: [...]
In his heyday, Larry Bird was recognized as the ultimate three-point shooter. In 1986, a championship year, he made 82 threes. His team, the Boston Celtics, made 138 total. The league average was 77. In the 2015-2016 season, all-star guard Stephen Curry made 402 three-point shots. His team, the Golden State Warriors, made over a [...]
Originally posted in FA magazine. When financial advisors have conversations about investments with their clients, there’s usually something missing—a dialogue in which the advisor can discover a client’s particular perspectives on important money issues. I’m talking about those issues that will inevitably lead to the flourishing or floundering of any well-intentioned plan. It’s awfully difficult [...]
Originally posted at Financial Advisor, by Mitch Anthony. Given the choice of addressing either an effect or a cause, a strategic thinker would always prefer the latter. A person constantly putting out fires without understanding the cause has a limited ability to control situations. Yet I’ve observed that the majority of financial advisors seem to be [...]
Originally posted at Financial Advisor, by Mitch Anthony. “Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, to that end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.” —Abraham Lincoln I certainly could not have predicted the outpouring of sentiment I received after writing my last article, “Harsh Lessons in Modern [...]
Originally posted at Financial Advisor, by Mitch Anthony. Imagine the feelings that horse traders had 110 years ago upon hearing about the “horseless” carriage. Their sentiments had to range from incredulity (“How can you pull a carriage without a horse?”) to cynicism (“Who’s going to take a chance on this unproven contraption?”) to utter disdain, [...]
Originally posted at fa-mag.com, by Mitch Anthony. As I sit down to write this article, I know it will likely be the most difficult composition of my writing career—difficult because it dredges up a miasma of regret, embarrassment, sadness and anger like nothing else I’ve experienced in life. I was conned out of almost a [...]
"Financial Life Planning" column by Mitch Anthony at Financial Advisor magazine. WHO: Mitch Anthony WHAT: Author, speaker, and founder and president of Advisor Insights and the Financial Life Planning Institute WHAT'S ON HIS MIND: “For the vast majority, traditional retirement is a really bad idea. So we have an entire industry built around helping people [...]
"Financial Life Planning" column by Mitch Anthony at Financial Advisor magazine. Recently, The Economist published an intriguing editorial asking what we are going to call the older people lingering between “work and decrepitude,” an expanding demographic that right now lacks a proper name, though some flippant ones include “geriactives” and “sunsetters.” According to the Census Bureau, [...]
"Financial Life Planning" column by Mitch Anthony at Financial Advisor magazine. To find my home in one sentence Concise, as if hammered in metal Not to enchant anybody Not to earn a lasting name in posterity, An unnamed need for order, for rhythm, for form, Which three words Are opposed to chaos and nothingness. —Czeslaw [...]
Financial Life Planning column by Mitch Anthony and Steve Sanduski, CFP®, published in Journal of Financial Planning. In our introductory article on Return on Life, or ROL-centric planning in the May issue, we asserted: “If you want to change the dynamics of the financial relationship to a value that is most meaningful, start by [...]
"Financial Life Planning" column by Mitch Anthony at Financial Advisor magazine. “You are not competing with anyone else. You are only competing with yourself to do the best with whatever you have received.” —L. Tom Perry In my last column, we discussed the cash-flow conundrum faced by so many advisors whose clients want to turn [...]
Financial Life Planning column by Mitch Anthony and Steve Sanduski, CFP®, published in Journal of Financial Planning. Our profession has made several transformations over the past few decades. Prior to 1980, most financial advisers were brokers who sold stocks and bonds on commission. During the 1980s and 1990s, stocks gave way to mutual funds [...]
Originally posted at Next Avenue, by Mitch Anthony. It’s a way to create a retirement income plan designed to simultaneously settle both emotional and financial ledgers and develop an income stream that lasts as long as you do, outpacing the inflation that threatens to rot your nest egg slowly but surely. In order to bring your life into [...]
"Financial Life Planning" column by Mitch Anthony at Financial Advisor magazine. I just finished an interesting call with an astute financial planner—Bryan Sarff, president of True Private Wealth Management in the Kansas City area—who was lamenting the shortcomings of goal-based approaches to financial planning. Bryan said to me: “When we deal with clients on a [...]
"Financial Life Planning" column by Mitch Anthony at Financial Advisor magazine. “As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “I tell you the truth,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all [...]