“I analyze (examine) the resources of the client, listening to understand their goals, objectives and learn their values. Then I share my recommendations to meet the client’s objectives and goals, sooner than they could on their own, using their values and the financial techniques that I have learned in my years as a financial advisor (now retired)”. This cuts years of frustration out of the process for them and is improving out comes. Then I groom, train, teach you and mint you as a financial planner with one client and that client is you. I am no longer interested in being hired just to do a formal financial plan. I no longer believe in the concept to be a valid practice. That is to sell a client a "financial plan" as a "product" which is not associated with what I call "client empowerment." It needs to be done as part of the process of helping and train a client to become stronger and more confident and financial self-sufficient, to not need outside help in satisfying one financial needs. This is my role in life, and to groom, train and providing ongoing mentoring you through this process and transition.
Note: My income primarly comes from accounts I have sold over the last 30 year or more and this site is to provide education and reminders of the benefits of those products or programs to those clients. I still offer products and services as solutions to clients for which I receive a commisions or fee paid direct from the institution, not the client. So when I help you it helps me. So I play the roll of a sales person in this erea.
Ironically, I have been getting more business and doing better for myself since, I have retired from being an IA (Investment Advisor), where I charged a fee for doing financial plans and charged hourly for on going support. As I explained above I no longer believe in providing a standalone, so called "financial plan" as a "financial product" nor anything I want to be assocatied with along with all of its conflicts of interest.
Although, I stay current on the knowledge associated with it, I terminated that registration for six reasons:
I felt it was too challenging to overcome the conflicts of interest to charge fees for time when my clients needed financial products that I was licensed for although it is allowed with the proper disclosures. But there was one big exception, where I found the regulations may have been conflicting. I found it questionable if it allowed charging for a financial plan that contained a suggestion for a reverse mortgage as a solution to the client to correct being under-funded for retirement. That was not always indicated as the proper solution, but was some of the time. Often I feel Reverse Mortgage is a good fit in some situations, so I just let go of the fees for being clean from a compliance point of view especially since I offer Reverse Mortgages as part of my product line. Since I starting to talk about them, (reverse mortgages), my experience is the clients seem to fall into two groups. Those in what I call the "survival mode" and the more sophisticated client as part of an overall strategic financial plan, and some of the concepts you may find interesting.
Plus, in my heart I began to feel that the “financial plan” was not a good nor an honest product for me because over the last several years, I was rarely calling on new planning clients. Then, also since my more influential clients in some ways taught me half of what I know it would not be fair to have them pay a fee to teach me, Lol. Now I will share that information with you and without a fee. My thinking shifted to believing in my client empowerment concept. Previouly, it was somewhat, controversial slowing down the process with the prospective client wondering, “Why should they pay a fee if they might know more than me.” That was a valid question. While I am still learning everyday, finanally after all these years, it is clear my prospective clients always learn a lot from a few meetings with me. It is a great value for the time they invest when there is no fee charged. It is good for me because it does not scare away business and completely removes all conflicts of interest professionally. So I am now back to just being a sales person, as far as how I get paid.
Plus, as my clients average age became over age 62 which correlated with eligibility for reverse mortgages and my ever growing belief that once you obtain this age group you need to re-think risk, which lead me to retiring the stock brokering component of my practice as well. As the direction of my practice changed to working with people who are either retired, or strongly thinking about it, or at least wishing they could afford to, my work migrated to new methods to accommodate that. It went from helping clients accumulate retirement capital in risky investments, to helping them retain what have built and accumulated. This all lead to a more conservative portfolio of products and programs. So here we are.