Your Financial House™
Your Financial
House™ is a new way of looking at, talking
about, and understanding your personal finances.
It gives you and your adviser a means to discuss, integrate, and
implement previously complex planning tools and strategies. How
does it work?
Visits to your financial adviser’s
office can be exciting, because they help you feel confident that
your money’s being managed and monitored properly.
Meetings like this give you a way to look into
the future and feel good about the road you’ve chosen.
Or
they can be (take your pick): confusing, boring, uninspiring,
defeating, frustrating, or outright irritating.
In the latter case, it’s usually
because:
1) The financial adviser uses
so much jargon, waves around so many charts, and rattles off
so many numbers that it’s difficult or impossible to follow.
2) The financial adviser hasn’t
taken the time to understand your real reasons for needing the
services of a professional.
3) There’s simply no way
to wrap your head around the so-called comprehensive strategy,
much less put it into action.
One woman came to see me, having
never been very interested in money management or planning her
financial future. “Bob did all that,” she told me,
“and when he died, I knew I wouldn’t be able to just
do it on my own. I knew I needed some advice.
“But when I visited Bob’s
adviser, he wasn’t able to help me make sense of what they’d
done together. In his office, I found myself nodding my head,
because it all seemed in order. By the time I got home, though,
it was all a jumble in my mind.”
Another couple came in, having read
many personal finance books and done their best to put several
important pieces of the puzzle together, but wanting some assistance.
“We just can’t see the whole picture at once, plus
we’re worried by everything we’re reading in the paper
and seeing on TV these days. It’s hard to tell if we’re
really on the right track and protected from major losses.”
Every day, I hear stories from people
who’ve had experiences that left them less than enthusiastic.
If you’ve ever been through something like that yourself,
know that it doesn’t have to be this way.
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