Mistakes Your Financial Advisor Wishes You’d Stop Making

Lena Nebel [00:00:00]:
Hi everyone. Claudia and I want to welcome you to another webinar that we are hosting through our Wealth and Wellness program. This one’s going to be a fun one because we’re going to be talking about mistakes your financial advisor wishes you’d stop making. So some of the webinars we’ve had have been timely around year-end market conversations or tax law changes or benefit programs, but Claudia and I thought we would do something a little different and just kind of share some of the top mistakes that we’ve seen in client meetings and interactions. So let me introduce you to my colleague, Claudia Glover. She is our Chief Investment Officer here at BFG Financial Advisors. My name is Lena Kneble. I am the CEO.

Lena Nebel [00:00:51]:
We are both advisors, been advisors for a very long time. I’m not going to Put our age out there, Claudia. But we have a lot of experience in looking at various client situations. Actually, right before this webinar, we were chatting about some clients and, you know, wish they did something a little different. So hopefully through this webinar, you’ll kind of hear some stories and scenarios and maybe think it’d be a good time for you to chat with your advisor. About maybe some decisions you made that you hadn’t yet told him or her. And when I talk about a financial advisor, what I mean is this person could be the individual who is managing your money, or they could do what Claudia and I do, which is actually take care of your entire financial plan. So whoever is in your, in your camp on either of those scenarios, it’s important to have the conversations about money with that individual.

Lena Nebel [00:01:47]:
So with that said, let’s start the show.

Claudia Glover [00:01:53]:
All right. I guess I’ll take the first one. So this one may seem obvious, but we have lots of conversations about this one and often comes up. So mistake number 1, waiting until after you’ve made the decision. So you’d be surprised how often this happens. But, you know, one of the biggest mistakes is treating your advisor as somebody you call after you’ve made the major financial decision. We tell clients a lot of times during our first introductory meetings and when we’re initially building the financial plan that we want to be one of the first phone calls that you’re making when you’re trying to make these financial decisions. And we certainly want to be involved in all of them because a lot of times we’re able to give that big picture perspective and give you ideas in terms of how other things in your plan might be affected by the decision that you’re going to make.

Claudia Glover [00:02:50]:
So ideally, the conversation is happening before we’re making these decisions. A lot of times, I know I do, and I know Lena kicks off meetings asking what questions clients have. And then always, what goals or what expenses do they know are coming up, or even some things that may be on the horizon and maybe it’s just an idea at this point. But it does help us as advisors. The more time we have to have these conversations with you, the more time we have to think through the various different scenarios, the better advice we can give you and make sure that you are making the best possible decision for your financial plan. So a couple of, you know, things as an example. Before you file for Social Security, this is a big one. You know, a lot of times we’re talking about When will you file for Social Security? And for some people it could be early filing.

Claudia Glover [00:03:44]:
For some people we might be getting all the way to age 70. But what we often tell clients is that plan can change. You know, even the Social Security decision becomes one that you review annually. We have to look at your income situation. We have to see if you’re, if you’re better off taking Social Security from your investment portfolio. you know, taking income from the investment portfolio before you take it from Social Security and what the effects could be on taxes there. So that’s a big one. A lot of times clients will come to us after they’ve already filed, and after you filed, there’s nothing we can do to change that.

Claudia Glover [00:04:21]:
And another thing with Social Security is if you’re married, if you have a spouse, you know, a lot of times the planning is joint and you may not both be filing at the same time. We may be staggering it for reasons that can vary, but it’s definitely a discussion that should be happening with your advisor before you make that decision. You know, other ones are selling a business, buying a home, exercising stock options. You know, those are all things that we typically know about, and we may be giving different ideas about during meetings, but certainly before you actually pull the trigger on those decisions, it’s a good idea to give us a call. The big one, believe it or not, I know, Lena, you’ve had this here just recently, but call us before you retire. And that’s a big one. But we do oftentimes get surprised. So we start retirement planning ideally, we’ve been working with clients for several years, but about 5 years out from retirement.

Claudia Glover [00:05:27]:
And we start putting things in place to help make sure we know when we’re going to be filing for that Social Security, understand the different account types, et cetera. But there’s always that final meeting that should be happening before you tell your boss that you’re quitting and that you’re retiring so that we can make sure we know exactly what it is we need to do and that you know exactly what it is that you need to do. And better yet, so that you know what to expect, because it is a big difference going from getting that regular paycheck to then all of a sudden having your investments investments having to provide that income. So mistake number 1, waiting until after you’ve made the decision. So please call us first.

Lena Nebel [00:06:10]:
I think this is kind of like the asking for, you know, instead of asking for permission, you’ll beg for forgiveness, something like that, you know, where it’s like going to your doctor’s office and you don’t want to tell them, you know, what your diet is actually like, right? So in this situation that The client recently told me, oh yeah, I retired last month. Fortunately, because we had been doing planning all along, and even though we were planning on retirement in 2 years, they were still on track. But it was definitely a big pivot in the meeting and having to then restructure the portfolio to, to try to plan on that. So yes, I think this is a huge mistake that is commonly made.

Claudia Glover [00:06:55]:
Absolutely. And we get very good at, at the pivot. You have to master the pivot. All right, so, uh, I think the next one is yours, Lena.

Lena Nebel [00:07:04]:
Sure. Uh, so mistake number 2, assuming your advisor doesn’t need to know. Um, so I, I think we do a, a really good job when we’re going through the financial plan to kind of show them all the different areas that we’re going to talk about in the hopes That when something happens in one of those areas, they’ll tell us about it, whether it’s a change from their auto insurance policy or their benefits, or they change CPAs, or, you know, do they open up a new bank account? I mean, all these different areas that we go through regularly with clients, I would hope that, you know, they’re seeing, well, maybe we should contact our advisor and let them know. Sometimes, you know, clients just feel like if something too small or too personal maybe, or if it’s unrelated, they don’t think that they should mention it, or unrelated to finances. And so a big one tends to be around health. So clients tend to think, well, you really don’t need to know if I’m having some health issues right now. And we absolutely do, especially the extent of the issues. You know, we have a lot of clients who are aging.

Lena Nebel [00:08:16]:
who are starting to develop, whether it’s Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s, things like that. And so it’s important to make sure legal documents are in order. If we have to have somebody else in the meeting with us from a power of attorney perspective, it allows us to kind of pay a little bit more attention in behaviors and decision-making and everything as well. Another area where it may feel like too personal that, you know, we don’t need to know, Has to do with your family tree. We spend a lot of time asking clients about their relatives, about their cast of characters, and that’s important because those are all responsible parties. And so we need to know if the client is responsible in making decisions for their siblings, as well as if the siblings are responsible with, you know, whether it’s guardianship or anything else. I had a, you know, a client recently where just kind of casually dropped, oh, well, if my, you know, something happens to my mother-in-law, then my father-in-law is gonna be moving in with us and we’re gonna have to take care of him and all these things. Well, that is an important piece in your overall financial plan to let your advisor know.

Lena Nebel [00:09:32]:
Some of the other things that are pretty common is dealing with spending. And debt, clients may say, well, I have a little bit of credit card debt and I’m just going to pay it off. It’s— you don’t even have to document it. And when we ask what that little bit of credit card debt is, it could be about $20,000, but the bank accounts don’t have enough in there to pay for it. But in their mind, it really doesn’t matter, right? It’s just, I’ll take care of it. So it is important to be able to talk about those things. And sometimes, again, kind of Going back to Claudia’s first slide is, you know, sometimes we just don’t want to talk about it because we know we shouldn’t have that $20,000 in credit card debt, and we don’t want to kind of come clean with, with it. So it’s, it’s our job to encourage clients, you know, not to filter the information based on what they think, you know, it’s important enough for them to know that they can talk about all of these different things because we can determine if it’s relevant.

Lena Nebel [00:10:32]:
Or not. So I would say those would be kind of the the few things that we see happening when clients don’t think that that we need to know. I’m very guilty of when going through a client meeting where I’ll start in the beginning. Is there anything that you want to talk about? And we’ll go through everything, and then I’ll say, okay, did we miss anything? Any accounts? Any this or that? And it’s no, no, no. And then we’re still kind of wrapping up, and then I say, okay, is there anything else? And then I I kind of keep prodding a little, and there’s usually something there. There’s usually, I forgot to tell you about this transaction, or I got this bonus, or this happened. So it’s important for the advisors to also ask all of the important questions as well. So that’s ownership on us.

Lena Nebel [00:11:19]:
And so I think when you’re working with somebody and they’re just focusing on the investment side and not so much in kind of going through the planning piece, That planning piece can be so much more important than just managing the investment account. So making sure your advisor is asking the right questions so that you feel comfortable in sharing some of that information is also important.

Claudia Glover [00:11:40]:
Yeah, I think that’s a, that’s a great point, Lena. And a lot of people that come to us that, you know, maybe have only worked with an investment advisor often wonder why we ask so many questions, but it really, it really is important to know the, the big and the little things just to help make the best possible decision again with all of the pieces that are there.

Lena Nebel [00:12:03]:
So, all right, well, go to mistake number 3. Oh, you got the good one. You got taxes.

Claudia Glover [00:12:09]:
My favorite topic. All right, mistake number 3, making decisions based on taxes alone. So this is a big one, and it’s coming up more and more, you know, this year than it has in years past. But it, you know, taxes matter. Taxes are a part of the plan. And, you know, one of the things that I think we do very well that may be different from some other advisors or investment advisors is working in tandem with client CPAs to make sure that we’re doing the financial planning and the tax planning, you know, making sure they’re working hand in hand and certainly making sure that they don’t work against each other. But sometimes we let that tax tail wag the dog, and that’s not what we want to do. You know, sometimes you can save a lot of money on taxes.

Claudia Glover [00:13:02]:
There are some strategies out there that are attractive from that perspective, but it isn’t automatically the same thing as maximizing your total outcome in the plan. You know, Avoiding taxes might feel good in the short term, but over the long run, you could be creating bigger headaches. So some of the things that I see, particularly on the investment side, is clients not wanting to take capital gains, or maybe having in mind, you know, that they, they only take X amount of capital gains on, on any given year. because it could potentially cause them to go into a different IRMAA bracket, or it could cause them to, you know, pop into the next tax bracket. But sometimes avoiding those capital gains could be costly. So, you know, the capital gains are there because investments have done well, and sometimes you need to rebalance, and sometimes stocks don’t continue to go straight up. And so I have seen clients miss out on opportunities to take some gains off the table because they don’t want to pay those capital gains taxes. So it’s important to look at the big picture and make sure it’s all in the strategy.

Claudia Glover [00:14:20]:
You know, also thinking that there can be that cap on taxes for any given year does limit your financial planner and your investment advisor in terms of what they can do. And sometimes if that’s the mandate, then it’s difficult for us to do kind of what’s best for the overall plan. And not only in, in missing out on, on opportunities, but over the long run, it could be creating more of a tax headache. So an example of this is, you know, clients who maybe bought Amazon stock years ago or, you know, shares of Google, whatever it is, and they held onto it forever because it’s doing so well. And they have absolutely amassed, you know, significant amounts of wealth in a single stock, but it’s very difficult to then do anything with it because the capital gains are so high. You now have a diversified position. You know, a lot of those clients end up holding on to those positions and just passing it on to beneficiaries because they get the step-up. So there’s a lot of opportunity costs along the way from not taking action because of taxes.

Claudia Glover [00:15:26]:
And then, you know, some of the tax decisions are real. I briefly mentioned, you know, IRMAA. For some people, that is absolutely a big deal. So that’s the Medicare premium that you have to pay if your income goes above above a certain amount. So this kind of goes back to the, the last couple things that we’ve been talking about, is just make sure you communicate with your advisor, you know, everything. If that’s something that, that’s important to you, if there are other sources of income, if you have a business or something else that is providing income, it’s important for us to know so that we can get the full, the full picture from taxes.

Lena Nebel [00:16:05]:
I think on this one too, when thinking about taxes, it’s not just like, um, you know, your traditional taxes that you owe. But I think of a client where they were really concerned that they didn’t have any Roth money, and so they decided, well, I’m going to shift all of my pre-tax contributions in my 401 to all Roth 401, um, because they were just worried they didn’t have enough in future tax-free money. And what ended up happening was Obviously that impacts your paycheck because they’re not going in pre-tax anymore. They were tight on cash flow to begin with. So then they actually started incorporating credit card debt because they were so concerned about creating a Roth to get tax-free income in the future. So understanding that behavioral side of, of their concerns, we can then kind of talk about how to adjust the rest of the portfolio to help to prepare for a little bit of tax efficiency in retirement. But I think people have made mistakes not just thinking about saving or spending on taxes now, but it’s the future of taxes also with required distributions and Roth conversions and everything else. Yeah.

Claudia Glover [00:17:17]:
And I think, you know, that, that’s a, a good reminder that not everybody’s portfolio is going to look the same or financial plan is going to look the same. So just because you might hear people at the office or friends and family talking about, You know, their, their Roth accounts or the contributions that they’re making. Everybody’s plan is unique, and that’s absolutely true with, with taxes. And so making sure that decisions are being made based off of your individual plan, not what you’re hearing out there from friends and family, is, is really, really important.

Lena Nebel [00:17:51]:
And speaking of friends and family, I was gonna say, that was a good segue you did there. This is a big one. Letting the headlines drive your plan. I would say this is kind of why I tell clients, prospects, we take the emotion out of stuff. I mean, that’s our job. We have to be able to manage a portfolio, manage your plan, but stay, you know, I don’t wanna say unemotional, but I don’t want to let those headlines be the reason why I am all of a sudden getting out of something just because I read a newspaper article about it. So we’re— and we’re surrounded by financial headlines every day. And, you know, the challenge is that headlines are designed to get attention, not necessarily to help you make a thoughtful financial decision.

Lena Nebel [00:18:44]:
And markets are going to change, headlines are going to change, and we can’t rewrite your plan every time it changes. And lately, AI is a big part of these headlines. We have a lot more individuals now kind of figuring out through AI, should I invest in this? Should I do this strategy? Can I retire here? And AI is not going to know everything about you. And so it makes it very challenging when you’re putting information into some of these tools, some of these tools that are really good and helpful to kind of formulate questions and thoughts about your situation, but to kind of come back with recommendations is very challenging. A couple of the headlines that resurface every few years, just depending on the time period, Claudia had mentioned about Social Security. So a big one is people just assume Social Security is tax-free when you receive it. So when they find out that it’s not, tax-free. Um, that creates a lot of anxiety and frustration of, I’ve been putting into the system the whole time, why isn’t it coming back, you know, tax-free? So anything surrounding a Social Security headline is always going to then come back to how Social Security is actually taxed to you.

Lena Nebel [00:20:03]:
Um, and with Social Security, we may make recommendations to clients that they should defer Social Security for a variety of reasons. It could be Longevity in their family. It could be the assets that they have to be able to supplement it so they can push the deferral on Social Security to maximize the benefit. It could be for spousal reasons. It could be a lot of reasons to defer Social Security. But if a client thinks that Social Security is going to run out, or if they’re not trusting the administration, they’re going to make that decision. They are going to let that kind of emotion take over and not really look at those financial— the financial side of it. So politics tend to drive the conversations as well.

Lena Nebel [00:20:46]:
Any time we get into an election year, clients will definitely ask, should we sell everything and put it into cash? Should we move overseas? And it could be regardless of the party that’s getting elected. We see it on both sides. So we are very straight down the middle on this one because we see it in every pres— in every presidential election, I would say. And those headlines, what ends up happening is it causes more emotion and stress and fear and anxiety. And then what happens is people then start making decisions based on that. And that’s where sometimes market volatility can come into play with that. So when there is a big news event, we just kind of brace for impact a little bit to see, are we going to get a little bit more phone calls? Are we going to, you know, get a few more emails? But what’s great is when we do answer those calls and emails and reassure clients and talk about that this may not be the first time that something like this has happened, and, you know, the things that we’re doing to protect the portfolio in the event of volatility, it goes a long way so that the next time that headline resurfaces, the client can kind of take a step back and think about everything. So it is important that when you’re reading the headlines, when you’re seeing some of the news out there that you just don’t react immediately to make a change.

Lena Nebel [00:22:05]:
You call your advisor, you talk it through before you actually decide, I’m going to sell my entire 401 and just put it in the money market account, or I’m going to take a full distribution because I’m not trusting on something, or I’m going to file Social Security early because I’m worried. Talk it through with your advisor. That’s what we’re here for. But headlines is Is always a doozy, I would say.

Claudia Glover [00:22:29]:
Right. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of those decisions that we talked about, you know, you can’t, you can’t reverse them. Or with investments particularly, it’s all of the studies, you know, over and over and over again show that people get nervous, they sell, it’s typically the wrong time, the markets recover, and then it’s really hard to get back in. So it’s, you know, for areas where you can, kind of hand the keys over to your advisor on the investment side. I’ve actually heard more often now than in a while that it’s nice to not have to worry about the headlines, and it’s nice to not have to worry about making those decisions and knowing that, you know, we are taking care of that and are able to take the emotion out of it because it’s a lot of headlines and a lot to sift through to try to make all those decisions.

Lena Nebel [00:23:22]:
Absolutely.

Claudia Glover [00:23:22]:
All right, mistake number 5, and I think we’re all guilty of this one, at least at some point, putting off the I’ll get to it eventually stuff. So, you know, every time we have these webinars, I think we both kind of tend to think about our process, and I think as part of our financial plan, there’s always a list of the I’ll get to it eventually stuff. And there are people that tend to let them linger longer than they probably should. But we really should be better about taking care of these things because if something goes wrong, it makes things very difficult. So what we often see people pushing off are estate documents. You know, making sure that your estate documents, one, are completed. You know, that’s kind of our first one. But a lot of times if they were completed, you know, years ago when the kids were young, things were set up a certain way, and, and now they’re adults and they have kids of their own.

Claudia Glover [00:24:23]:
Well, we need to revisit and make sure that the estate documents and the estate plan still make sense, still make sure that they are in line with all of the new regulations and things that could have changed. And so not always the most fun part of financial planning, but extremely important, because if those aren’t done then somebody else is deciding how your assets are going to be diverse, you know, divvied up once, once you’re passed, and nobody really wants that. Along with that is beneficiary reviews. So in addition to having the estate documents done, all of the beneficiaries on retirement accounts, IRA accounts, if you have transfer-on-death accounts, you need to make sure that the beneficiaries are accurate. And make sure that they are the correct beneficiaries. And again, make sure you’re looking at it at least once a year. So we look at this every year in the reviews just to make sure that’s how you want things set up. Because again, you know, beneficiaries, once you pass, it’s an irrevocable decision.

Claudia Glover [00:25:28]:
And regardless of what you’ve listed in your estate documents, the beneficiary designation will supersede what’s in those estate documents. So Extremely important to make sure that they are the way that you want them to be. Insurance is another big one. So making sure that you have the right insurance in place, the right type of insurance, you know, the right death benefits, if that’s what you need. Make sure that the— even your home insurance, you know, I think we talked about like property casualty insurance. Do you have an umbrella policy? Do you need to cover yourself for excess liability? So we, when we talk about insurance, you know, this is, this is the moat around your castle. This, these are the things that are going to protect all of the assets that you’ve built and make sure that you and your family are protected. Along with insurance is our beneficiary reviews.

Claudia Glover [00:26:21]:
I don’t think I mentioned that, but make sure that the correct beneficiaries are on the right insurance. And with insurance, you know, if You maybe did something like a whole life policy or a universal life policy, you know, something, a more than term life insurance policy. Those need to be reviewed periodically as well to make sure that they’re still in good health depending on how these things were structured. Some people may not realize it, but you, you may have to pay premiums or you may have to make adjustments along the way. So that’s extremely important. And another big one is, and nobody’s really a fan of this one, but just organizing your accounts. If you have 8 different bank accounts, you know, that’s okay. But making sure that there’s either a joint owner or a beneficiary on those accounts, so that if something were to happen to you, that somebody could access what is typically, you know, the first place that they’re gonna go to for for liquidity in your account.

Claudia Glover [00:27:25]:
So, you know, these aren’t things that you have to fix in one day. But, but you do kind of need to keep working on them. You know, I always recommend people make a to-do list on our, on our financial plans. It’s, it’s literally a list of things that you have to do. You know, we, we like to joke and send out homework items to clients and make sure that they’re doing things. But in addition to that, Have accountability. And for us, that’s the check-in with your advisor. So we’ll start our first meetings and say, you know, here are the 5 things we were supposed to work on since the last meeting.

Claudia Glover [00:27:58]:
And if you only got to one, that’s okay. But that’s progress. And it helps to, you know, slowly check things off the list. So it’s okay to procrastinate a little bit, but these things are important, although they aren’t very exciting.

Lena Nebel [00:28:12]:
No, it’s definitely— I mean, nobody likes dealing with, you know, You know, your demise, basically. But, uh, I, I mean, I had— today’s Thursday— I had 2 client situations this week where this happened. Um, one client— and you and I, our last webinar we did had to deal with death and divorce— and, um, this particular client’s been divorced, uh, for a little over a year, has children, and she has estate documents, but it lists her now ex-husband as the person in charge of making her medical decisions, you know, making financial decisions if she’s still alive. And then of course, if she passes, who’s basically handling the money for the benefit of her kids. And, you know, so telling her that her ex-husband is the one that has the decision of pulling the plug was the motivation of, you know, I really hate to do this.

Claudia Glover [00:29:06]:
Yeah.

Lena Nebel [00:29:07]:
And then another situation that’s very common is you talked about insurance You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone who says, ooh, I wanna buy some insurance. Can you get me some of that? Nobody likes thinking about it that way. But long-term care insurance is an important piece of your overall financial puzzle. In the event that you need some type of assisted living, nursing home expenses, et cetera, you could insure for that type of cost if it made sense. And so this week had a situation where We had been talking about long-term care and it was, you know, I’m not ready yet. And there’s always a reason why. Well, on this particular call, they told us about some health issue that the gentleman had, ended up being cancer. He got it removed, et cetera, but he’s no longer qualified for any type of insurance.

Lena Nebel [00:29:59]:
Right.

Lena Nebel [00:29:59]:
Right? So, you know, as we continued to get older, You know, we have back issues, legs, et cetera. You got to go through the underwriting and do it when you’re healthy because that’s when it’s going to make the most sense. Because at some point, you may not even be able to qualify for it. So this is— I love how you said how we keep that to-do list and everything because it is, it’s front of mind, it holds everybody accountable, and there’s a reason that we put it on the list is because it’s important. Right.

Lena Nebel [00:30:30]:
Yep. Great points.

Lena Nebel [00:30:33]:
All right. Planning for your money, not for your life. So this is an interesting one because, you know, what we try to determine is what are you trying to accomplish with your money? You know, somebody says, I, you know, I got a bonus, you know, what do I want to do with it? Where should it go? Which account? And I’ll say, well, what’s kind of the goal of the money? You know, and so I think when we think about, you know, that retirement, it’s not just a number. It can be where you want to live. How you wanna spend your time. Do you wanna travel, volunteer, help children, you know, help your kids or grandkids? So the financial plan shouldn’t really— it should reflect the life that you want, not simply the accounts that you have. And sometimes this may not be centered around your decisions, but maybe other people in your world who are making decisions about your money. and not thinking about your life.

Lena Nebel [00:31:26]:
And an example of this, I would say, has to deal with accountants, with CPAs. What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to help you save money. And a lot of CPAs are very good at what they do, and they’re trying to help you save money today. And they’re not thinking about the impact that today can have in the future. And so a common one, a very simple common one is Making an IRA contribution versus a Roth contribution. So the CPA will say, well, you can make an IRA contribution and it’ll save you $400 as an example. But that IRA, it’s, you know, it’s pre-tax, it’s going to grow tax-deferred. But at some point you will pay taxes on that and you could be in a higher tax bracket at that point in time because the CPA doesn’t understand that there’s a pension down the road for you.

Lena Nebel [00:32:16]:
Or maybe that you have other retirement accounts, a healthy 401 that you’re going to have to draw from. So your distributions could be very high versus putting that money into the Roth account and letting that grow tax-free, which would give you some tax diversity in retirement. So that’s our job to kind of explore both of those scenarios. The CPA’s job is how do I help you save money today? But you have to think about at what cost, kind of going back to Claudia’s early slide. Earlier slide about the taxes, this goes hand in hand to it. So that’s, that’s one. CPAs sometimes will also talk about if you owe money, well, let’s just increase your withholdings. And if we increase your withholdings, then you won’t have to owe any more money.

Lena Nebel [00:33:00]:
Logically, that makes a lot of sense. But if a client tells me that their CPA said, well, I need to increase my withholdings because I owe taxes. If that client is not maxing out their 401 or taking advantage of maybe a health savings account that they have available to them or a dependent savings account, other things that will allow them to save money, but the money goes to them versus the IRS, that’s a win. So sometimes you don’t always need to follow the advice of the CPA. Ask your advisor, use it. And there’s things that you’re going to ask the CPA that the advisor says. If we say, hey, we think you should make a Roth conversion, you’re gonna wanna talk to your CPA. We’re gonna talk to your CPA of does this make the most sense? How much in taxes are we going to pay, et cetera? But do the same thing on the other side.

Lena Nebel [00:33:48]:
Look at what is that individual recommending and is there anything else I could be doing where the money’s actually going to me? Another example, I had a client, they’ve been a client for over 20 years now, and the reason that they, met me was because they were having this conversation with their estate attorney that their insurance agent had been recommending that they continue to put money into these whole life policies instead of their 401s and instead of 529s, because they can just max out these whole life policies. And that’s what will eventually be able to provide all these other benefits. to them. And the estate attorney’s, you know, radar immediately went off because these individuals are in a high tax bracket. Um, they had 401s they were not contributing to that actually had company matches. Um, but the insurance agent was just saying, put all your extra cash flow into these policies. Um, so it was the insurance agent who was basically redirecting, you know, their money based upon the money side versus, you know, their overall life situation and being able to fund for education and some of these other things. And not that that’s a bad recommendation to leverage some of these insurance policies, but it’s a recommendation that you have to make in context of everything else as well.

Lena Nebel [00:35:09]:
So again, we have seen situations where people are kind of focusing too much on the dollar side and not thinking about the impact that it’s going to have on their overall life as well.

Claudia Glover [00:35:21]:
Yeah, I think that goes back to, you know, all of the questions that we ask. understand who’s giving you the advice. I had a similar situation not too long ago where a client came to us with, you know, probably 25 different annuity policies and all in place for different reasons. It was extremely complicated. She couldn’t understand how she had all this money but couldn’t access it. And, you know, what happened was that the advisor who sold these policies, that’s really all they could sell. And so You know, I think, you know, that, that person is only looking, just like you said, just at the money, just at the dollar amount. So working with a financial planner, working with a fiduciary, working with people who are asking you the little questions about your family and your family tree, and, you know, what you like to do on your free time is, is important.

Claudia Glover [00:36:09]:
So it can all be tied together because at the end of the day, you know, the money is a tool, but it’s all about what You want your life to look like. Right. All right, I think we’re down to the last one.

Lena Nebel [00:36:24]:
Yeah, 7.

Claudia Glover [00:36:26]:
All right. Waiting until your next meeting to tell us. So this feels like it’s bringing into a lot of the things that we’ve talked about and tying it together. But yeah, definitely don’t wait until the next meeting to tell us. If something changes, don’t wait till your next review to bring it up. Shoot us an email, you know, however it is, just let us know what’s going on. The more information we get from you in between meetings, the more opportunity there are for us to think about different options, to review different strategies, or to, you know, maybe help push you in one direction or another. You know, I feel like sometimes clients don’t want to send stuff because maybe they feel like, you know, they’re bugging us or something and we don’t have time for it.

Claudia Glover [00:37:18]:
But, you know, we really do take all that information. We save it, we use it, and it helps to keep the conversations ongoing. So rather than just being there when it’s time to have the meeting, let us know what those things are, you know, whether it’s a job change or, you know, one of the kids decides where they’re going to go to college or your spouse decides to start a business. You know, whatever it is, it could be small. It could be health-related. You know, it could be a fun fact, but it really is helpful for us to have these things and to get them in between meetings. And we do. We love getting the emails.

Claudia Glover [00:37:58]:
We look at them all and we make sure that they’re all incorporated into the plan. And, you know, I would say the Along with this, another mistake that I see clients often make is maybe not waiting until the next meeting, but waiting until maybe like an hour before the next meeting and then sending us the 20 or 30 different life changes that happened and the 5 new goals that you want to talk about. So that doesn’t give us any time to process and think things through and give you the best recommendations. So the sooner the better. If it’s top of mind, I tell my clients just Send us the email. We’d love to hear from them.

Lena Nebel [00:38:41]:
I think we should reword this slide to, you know, waiting until your next meeting to tell us or 30 minutes right before the meeting.

Claudia Glover [00:38:50]:
Right before the meeting.

Lena Nebel [00:38:51]:
That’s right. I think one of the things that I definitely have an immense amount of pride within our team on what we do is the due diligence and preparation for a meeting. There’s hours spent in going through emails and notes and looking at everything to come up with what the portfolio should look like, what the recommendations should be. Are we planning on any income distributions? Well, let’s take a look at the taxes. And with all the efficiencies and technology and everything that can help to scrub all of that, we need that human element in place to understand who the client is, to understand what they’re comfortable with and the emotional side of things and their family and Helping with their financial decision-making. So when you tell us like 30 minutes before a meeting, by the way, we want to talk about all these things, and here’s a list of the things that we actually did or didn’t do, we then have to completely change everything that the team just worked on. So it is, it’s kind of one of those, we, we wish you could be a little bit better on the prep sometimes, but we also recognize life gets in the way. So.

Lena Nebel [00:39:59]:
It can happen. That’s right. So if we go on to the next slide, which is basically just kind of pointing to our library of Claudia and I and our other advisors and team, we have ebooks, webinars, podcasts, a whole bunch of great free resources. We want to be able to open it up for questions to allow for a few minutes of questions. Sarah’s been behind the scenes collecting those. So Sarah, if you want to, you know, give Claudia and I a few of those questions, we still have a few minutes that we can answer, and then Claudia and I will just kind of take each one.

Lena Nebel [00:40:39]:
Yeah, and if anyone has some last questions that they want to drop in the questions tab or even in the chat, feel free to do that. The first question, and this one, at least for me, is super relatable. Is there such thing as reaching out to your advisor Too much?

Lena Nebel [00:40:57]:
Uh, I’ll take this one, Claudia, and, you know, please chime in on any examples. Uh, I’d rather have too much than not enough, so it’s kind of careful what you wish for, but I would rather they reach out than be worried that they’re reaching out. Um, I always try to make it a point to tell people we don’t charge by the hour, you know, we don’t charge by how many emails you have. And there’s going to be some clients that are more needy than others, and that’s okay. Some, they’re in the beginning of the relationship, so they’re not sure kind of what the boundaries are, expectations. But I would absolutely rather they reach out before they make some type of irrevocable decision.

Claudia Glover [00:41:40]:
Yeah, I would agree. You know, there probably is a thing that’s too much. But the reality is, you know, we don’t mind. We’d like to hear from you. It’s important that we hear from you. And so I agree, it’s better to reach out than not, anytime.

Lena Nebel [00:41:56]:
Okay, next question. What type of financial decision would be like too small to warrant reaching out? Like something like planning a vacation or just getting a new credit card?

Claudia Glover [00:42:12]:
You know, I think this, it depends on the client. I mean, you don’t need to call us if if you’re, you know, buying extra paint at Home Depot for the home renovation or anything like that. But, you know, credit cards are important. We check in to see if there’s credit card debt. I would say, you know, if you’re— if you find that you are having to get a new credit card because your cash flow is not covering what it is you need to put on that credit card, then You know, that really is a decision that you should be pulling us into. So it’s not so much the act of opening a credit card because this one has better points than your Marriott card or whatever it is. But if it’s because, you know, you’re using that to cover needs that aren’t met, then, you know, we want to be a part of that phone call. But other than that, you know, vacations, anything is fair game.

Claudia Glover [00:43:07]:
Everybody’s life, as we were talking about, is a little bit different. And everybody likes to plan a little bit different.

Lena Nebel [00:43:12]:
Yeah.

Claudia Glover [00:43:13]:
I have clients that want to set aside X amount of dollars for vacation every year. I have clients that want to set money aside for self-care and mani-pedis, you know, and other clients, it’s really just the— I don’t need any of the details. It’s just the big picture. So whatever is important to you, I think, you know, again, err on the side of letting us know versus not letting us know.

Lena Nebel [00:43:38]:
Right.

Lena Nebel [00:43:39]:
And I think it’s our job too to educate the client on, thanks for updating me, this is great, but you have enough money and don’t feel like you have to call me when you’re at Home Depot, you know, in the middle of this decision. But yeah, I agree with Claudia. I think every client situation’s a little bit different on the spending.

Lena Nebel [00:44:02]:
This question, something you had said before, talk to a fiduciary. What does that mean?

Lena Nebel [00:44:09]:
So a fiduciary is somebody who’s looking out for your best interests. They are making decisions based on your needs and not their own. And that, you know, it’s, it’s amazing that we even have to bring that up in today’s world. But unfortunately, there’s advisors who will make decisions on certain types of investment products because they’re getting compensated heavier on one product versus another. It’s kind of like going to a restaurant and telling the waiter, Can you tell the chef not to spit in my food? Or can you tell the chef to wash their hands before they touch their food? You just assume that that’s happening. Just like when you meet with Claudia and I, you assume that we’re going to be doing things on your— on the best on your behalf. And so that’s why it’s really important for us, for any advisors in our office who are sitting in front of clients, they have to have the Certified Financial Planner designation. because there’s an extra care of duty surrounding that type of designation and everything.

Lena Nebel [00:45:13]:
So that’s a great question. That’s a great way to end it as well on this webinar. We appreciate everybody’s time in attending and listening. Claudia and I do these quarterly. So if you have some fun topics, if you have some timely topics that you would like us to chat about and educate you on, please let us know. Drop that information in there in the chat or send us an email. We like kind of figuring out each quarter what we’re going to do a little bit differently, and we like having it more from a conversation standpoint. So again, we— Claudia and I really appreciate your time this afternoon.