By now you should have a good idea of what a partnership focused fiduciary can provide to successful families in this game called life.
You may think from your experience with your own financial advisor that helping you invest money is simple and easy and nothing more than routine. In our experience, that attitude doesn’t work.
True wealth management is not like a rain poncho—one size does not fit all.
In fact, after decades of experience with many individuals and families, we have developed a few essential conclusions.
What We’ve Learned From 29 Years As Fiduciary Advisors
- You are different from everybody else.
- Your family situation and level of communication is different from everybody else’s.
- Your goals are different from everybody else’s.
- Your time horizons are different from everybody else’s.
- Your passions in life are different from everybody else’s.
- Your day-to-day lifestyle, with all of the moving parts, is different from everybody else’s.
- Your portfolios, liquidity, and personal needs are different from everybody else’s.
As you can see, wealth creation and preservation are about diving deep into your inner being and figuring out what will work for you.
It’s always important to keep in mind that you have or will have increasing demands on your time and money, especially as you accumulate more wealth.
Yes, you could navigate some of these things on your own, but that’s like sailing around the world with no crew, no GPS, and a storm approaching. There are going to be some rough seas ahead.
Isn’t it better to have a crew that can help, radar to warn you of storms, and a vessel that can get you to safe and clear waters?
That’s what a good professional fiduciary is all about: smooth sailing.
So, what should you look for in a fiduciary financial advisor? Here’s a cheat sheet for building the perfect partnership.
- Find a fiduciary firm that’s small and nimble enough to be your trusted advocate and help your family create wealth and avoid the stumbling blocks of life.
- Make time to meet with your fiduciary advisors to uncover the dangers, opportunities, and strengths that your family is dealing with.
- Develop a first-year plan with your top three priorities to achieve success (for you, your children, and your extended family, if applicable).
- Make sure to set aside cash reserves for an emergency.
- Teach your family to have the courage to save intelligently and see the benefits of disciplined investing.
- Create wealth by setting boundaries beginning with dollar-cost averaging and not deviating when the market becomes volatile.
- Remember, your goal is not to save everything, but to be a committed saver and set up a budget for fun to enjoy your life.
- Be ready to change as your life changes—and prepare to see the benefit for your entire extended family.
- Stretch your fiduciary advisors to help you in other important areas of life, utilizing their professional network to connect you to the solution providers, vendors, or services that can reduce the stress in your life.
One other important note: if you are your family steward and now using a good fiduciary firm, this is an amazing opportunity—and even responsibility—to pass along some of the estate planning lessons to your children.
We recommend getting them involved as early as you are comfortable in the process. Get them aligned with your family goals. Get them aligned with our fiduciary firm to help uphold your family values and to help them on their own savings and wealth creation techniques.
We are at an amazing point in history. For one, this generation will see more growth in wealth than ever before. Why? Because the heirs of the Boomer generation stand to inherit trillions of dollars. And those heirs will not always know what to do and how to handle the complexities that come with sudden wealth. Second, we’re also in a very unusual time when the stresses of life seem overwhelming. People are confused, people are under pressure, and people have a lot more stress than they feel like they can handle.
And that is a dangerous course: opportunity and anxiety can create a tornado of tumult.
That’s where we come in. We can foresee problems. We can fix problems. We can think through problems. And we can give you…
More time.
More money.
More freedom.
You deserve more from life. We can help you get it.