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Individual Investors Should Treat Obtaining Financial Advice Like Buying a New Car

29 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by wmosconi in asset allocation, behavioral finance, Consumer Finance, financial advice, financial advisor fees, financial advisory fees, financial goals, financial markets, financial planning, financial planning books, financial services industry, Income Taxes, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing information, investing tips, investment advice, investment advisory fees, investments, personal finance, reasonable fees, reasonable fees for financial advisor, reasonable fees for investment advice, reasonable financial advisor fees, risk tolerance, stock market, Stock Market Returns, stock prices

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I had a long conversation with a friend and business associate about how I think individual investors approach obtaining financial advice.  We went back and forth for almost 30 minutes.  However, I found myself stumbling upon the analogy of purchasing a new vehicle.  This analogy encapsulates how individual investors might want to think about building their investment portfolios, setting financial goals and how to obtain them, establishing their risk tolerance, and addressing any special situations that might pertain to their specific situation (e.g. caring for an elderly parent in their house).  I should state at the outset that, if you have more than $1 million in investable assets (i.e. an accredited investor), the size of your portfolio demands special attention.  If you have not amassed $1 million, please read on to the rest of this article.

First, I would like to lay out the typical new vehicle purchase scenario and then turn to its applicability in the case of financial advice.  Most people start off the process by doing a good deal of research on the available options.  After considering his/her situation, the individual will go to the vehicle dealership.  For the purposes of this particular example, let’s suppose that the vehicle dealership offers a number of different car manufacturers as options and then the various models associated with them.  Luckily today, there is a lot less haggling (well at least upfront in the process) and the vehicles’ prices are normally right around the MSRP.  However, you as a consumer need to select the car make and also the specific model.

Usually a salesperson will assist you with the process.  Even though you can do a lot of homework prior to picking out a new vehicle, it still does not fully capture actually looking at the vehicle.  Of course, you also need to sit in it and take a test drive.  The salesperson is able to translate what your needs are to try to select the best option.  For example, do you need to transport the kids to basketball practice?  What if you take turns carpooling and pick up an extra 3-6 kids?  How big should your SUV be?  What if you drive a lot of highway miles and a lease option may not work for you?  Do you like to have a decent amount of horsepower to be able to merge onto highway traffic?  What about the manufacturer’s warranty?  Does the dealership service the vehicles onsite?  What about financing options (i.e. buy or lease)?  The list of questions could go on and on.

Given the entire list of questions you might ask, the salesperson is an integral part of the vehicle buying, or leasing, process.  After the salesperson has finally answered all of your questions, let’s say you decide on a price, the financing options, and the color/options/model.  If you make the purchase, the salesperson will earn a commission.  Once you leave the dealership’s parking lot, you are then responsible for the maintenance of the vehicle.  Fingers crossed, you should only need to take car of oil changes and normal maintenance (e.g. changing the air filter, flushing the transmission fluid, etc.).  What would you do if the salesperson came over to your house and wanted to check if you were still pleased with the vehicle you selected in the second year?  Does it fit your needs and perform as expected?  Wow, that experience would be one of pretty good customer services.  But now, the salesperson’s next utterance is that you own him/her $500.  What?  Well, he/she responds that he/she helped you out and things are going according to plan.  My guess is that you would be dumbfounded and refuse to pay another commission to the salesperson in year two of ownership.

What in the world does this have to do with financial advice?  I would argue that the analogy fits quite well with the normal way financial advice is given to individual investors.  When you first sit down with a Financial Planner, Financial Advisor, or Registered Investment Advisor, he or she really walks through your entire life situation.  Additionally, that person will assess your tolerance for risk which is not always as easy as it sounds.  Usually most financial professionals will include questions that relate to your behavior under certain instances of financial market conditions.  So, you cannot simply ask only objective yes/no questions.  Other big thing that may come up are any insurance, tax planning, or estate planning needs that you have.  Another significant area is trying to find out if you might have any special circumstances.  The caring of an elderly parent was provided above.  But there are myriad other situations that might require special planning considerations unique to your family.

The vast majority of financial professionals no longer charge commissions.  Rather, they will charge a fee based upon the total asset in your portfolio of stocks, bonds, other assets, and cash.  The financial services industry calls this an AUM (assets under management) fee in the jargon, and a very typical fee that one will see is 1%.  What does that mean?  Well, to use round numbers, let’s say you have $1 million dollars in your account of financial assets.  You would then pay a fee of $10,000 ($1 million * 1%).  To be technical though, the fee is normally prorated over four quarters throughout the year and not in one lump sum.  Given all the assistance that I listed in the previous paragraph, there is no doubt that the financial professional earns his or his AUM fee.  But what happens when year two of your financial relationship begins?

For illustrative purposes, I am going to assume that your life situation does not change at all.  In the first year of your relationship with the financial professional, he or she is likely to have prepared an asset allocation for at least the next five years.  One would expect a long-term investing plan.  Of course, he or she may recommend that based, upon the price movement in the financial markets, you should reallocate your investments to either the same target allocation in year one or slightly different percentages.  He or she may even recommend that you sell a particular investment and replace it with what he or she deems to be a better performing investment vehicle for the future.  Well, to keep using round numbers, if your investment portfolio stays constant, you would pay another $10,000 (again $1 million * 1%).

The year two situation is akin to car maintenance in year two of your ownership of that vehicle from my car vehicle purchase analogy.  Now, if you blew a head gasket in your car’s engine, you would want to take the vehicle back to the dealership or go to a trusted mechanic.  The latter represents a major change in your life situation, financial goals, income tax ramifications, and other major events.  Otherwise, we have a situation where you are paying the car salesperson another commission in year two.  Now my analogy may not be entirely “apples to apples” (as my business associate said during our discussion).  However, it is close enough to get to the point that I am trying to make in terms of financial advice.  You need to be very cautious with how much money you pay in expenses for financial advice.  Why?  It really eats into the investment performance returns you will realize.  I am all for paying for financial advice when there is a complicated situation, but, if nothing of import changes, it can be hard to justify.

So, what can you do if my analogy resonates with you?  Well, there are two options that I will provide.  However, there are other avenues to proceed down.  I will discuss each in turn.

First, you can select a financial professional that charges a fee-only amount or one that charges by the hour.  The fee-only financial professional will charge you a set amount per year for financial advice, and, in almost all cases, it is significantly lower than the $10,000 in our example.  The hourly financial professional is just as it sounds.  In the second year, you might require 10 hours of financial advice throughout the year, some of which might include just coaching you through the inevitable volatility in financial markets.  Depending on the area that you reside in, you can expect to pay anywhere between $250 to $500 per hour.  Using the 10-hour amount, you would be paying anywhere from $2,500 ($250 * 10 hours) and $5,000 ($500 * 10 hours).  Using either type of financial professional with a different fee structure will lower your overall investment fees.  Note that the quality of financial advice usually does not decrease in most cases.  And yes, there are certain cases where the quality will increase markedly.

Second, you can use an external investment account at the beginning of your relationship with a financial professional that charges a percentage of assets under management (AUM).  What does this mean?  The vast majority of asset managers are large and sophisticated enough to handle this arrangement at the outset.  For example, you would establish an investment account where your financial professional is located.  Next, you would establish an investment account with another brokerage firm and allow your financial professional to have access to the investment portfolio you maintain.  Note that the access is only for purposes of preparing reports for you and not to execute actual trades of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or any other financial asset.  For instance, you might keep 50% with the financial professional’s firm and another 50% in the external account.  You would just maintain the portfolio allocation that your financial professional would like you to have in the external account.  In order to ensure that you do not deviate from his or her investment recommendations, your monthly or quarterly investment performance reports would lump together the assets at the financial professional’s firm and your external account.

In regard to the second option, just because asset managers can easily do this reporting for you, does not mean that they will not push back.  Some asset managers and financial professionals get even confrontational.  It is understandable since the more assets you maintain at their firm the larger the investment advice fee.  But this response can be very informative for you.  If your financial professional does not handle your request of this potential option diplomatically, this may be a cue to seek financial advice elsewhere.

So, have I successfully convinced you that buying investment advice is just like buying or leasing a new vehicle?  My guess would be that you think the analogy is not a perfect one.  I will readily admit that it is not and really is not meant to be.  Rather, I wanted to get you thinking about the financial advice you receive and investment fees from another viewpoint.  Investment fees have an outsized effect on the returns that you will experience over time.

Their impact is even greater if you take into account the “opportunity cost” of investment fees.  However, that is another topic entirely that I will not delve into.  If you would like more information on the idea of “opportunity cost” and investment fees, you can refer to a previous article that I wrote.  Here is the link:

https://latticeworkwealth.com/2014/02/26/what-is-the-800-pound-gorilla-in-the-room-for-retirees-it-is-12-5/

How to Rebalance Your Investment Portfolio – Part 1 of 3

16 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by wmosconi in asset allocation, bonds, Consumer Finance, finance, financial advice, financial goals, financial markets, financial planning, Individual Investing, individual investors, investing, investing advice, investing tips, investments, personal finance, rebalancing, rebalancing investment portfolio, risk, risk tolerance, stock market, stocks

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The first and foremost decisions for an individual investor is to determine his or her financial goals, assess his or her risk tolerance, and then develop an investment portfolio to allow one to reach those financial goals. Financial goals might be saving for retirement, a child’s college education, disbursing income while in retirement, or most any other thing that requires money to be paid in the future. Risk tolerance involves an individual investor’s willingness to take on volatility and variability in the performance returns of financial or real assets. Some investors are fine with the sometimes wild gyrations of the stock market. They might be able to withstand a 20% decline in the value of their investment portfolio and still not panic and sell. Other investors are more risk averse and do not want to see so much volatility in their investment portfolios. However, they may know they need the growth in their investment portfolio, so they reduce their exposure to stocks. Lastly, some investors may be nearing their financial goal and need to ratchet down risk in order to have enough money by not losing principal. The final step is to construct an investment portfolio that brings the two together. The financial goals can be reached but within the parameters of the investor’s risk tolerance. Note that risk tolerance in a general sense refers to the volatility of assets in one’s investment portfolio. For instance, US Treasury bills are much less volatile than stocks.

Now the financial markets will change over time as prices go up and down. Therefore, the original allocation (percentages) to stocks, bonds, cash, or other assets in the investment portfolio will be different than the one after one year goes by. It would be markedly different after five or ten years go by. That is where rebalancing your investment portfolio comes in. In this first part of this three-part discussion, I will focus on the easiest way to rebalance an individual investor’s portfolio. In the next two parts, I will expand the notion of rebalancing. In its simplest definition, rebalancing one’s investment portfolio refers to the periodic changes made to bring the investment portfolio back to the original allocation to the various investment selections. Let’s explore why this should be done.

Due to the natural ups and downs of the financial markets, an individual investor’s investment portfolio will change in composition. Remember that an investment portfolio is initially set up to allow the individual investor to reach his or his financial goals while still adhering to the amount of risk that he or she is willing to take. Well, after a year goes by, the chances are very good that the amount of money invested in stocks, bonds, cash, etc. will have changed. Thus, the investment portfolio may be more risky or less risky than intended. Moreover, the investment portfolio may not be on track to allow the individual investor to achieve his or her financial goals which is the overall goal to begin with. Additionally, rebalancing allows the individual investor to “sell high and buy low” in general. Stocks and bonds have a way of getting too expensive or too cheap as time goes by. However, the individual investor can sell the asset class that has gone up and use those funds to buy the asset class that has gone down. The technical term that you might hear is reversion to the mean. That means that over long periods of time, financial assets tend to produce an average rate of return. Hence, a rate of return much higher than the average for several years is normally followed by a period of lower returns than the average. Now let’s turn to an example with actual numbers to make things much clearer.

We can take the following scenario with various assumptions. They are as follows: the individual investor has a portfolio of $1 million at the beginning of the year, the asset allocation is 60% stocks ($600,000), 30% bonds ($300,000), and 10% cash ($100,000), during the year the stocks gain 10% ($60,000), the bonds lose 2% ($6,000) and the cash earns no interest, and, finally, the individual investor is committed to rebalancing the investment portfolio at the end of every year.

Here is the scenario:

1) Investment Portfolio at the Beginning of the Year
Type of Asset Dollar Amount Percentage
Stocks $             600,000 60.0%
Bonds                300,000 30.0%
Cash                100,000 10.0%
Total $         1,000,000 100.0%
2) Investment Portfolio at the End of the Year
Type of Asset Dollar Amount Percentage
Stocks $             660,000 62.6%
Bonds                294,000 27.9%
Cash                100,000 9.5%
Total $         1,054,000 100.0%
3) Investment Portfolio After Rebalancing
Type of Asset Dollar Amount Percentage
Stocks $             632,400 60.0%
Bonds                316,200 30.0%
Cash                105,400 10.0%
Total $         1,054,000 100.0%

As you will note above, the investment portfolio starts out with the intended asset allocation for this individual investor. However, at the end of the year in accordance with the rate of return assumptions, the investment portfolio is quite different. In fact, the percentages for each asset class have changed. In the scenario detailed above, the investment portfolio at the end of the year is more risky than at the start of the year. That is where the rebalancing comes into play. In order to get the investment portfolio back to the original asset allocation, stocks need to be sold and the proceeds invested in bonds and cash. It is fairly easy to come up with the necessary purchases and sales by multiplying the total balance at the end of the year by the desired percentage for the investment portfolio for each asset class. That step will show how much should be bought or sold in order to restore the investment portfolio to harmony.

Please note that the $1 million and asset allocation types and percentages were selected for the purposes of illustrating the concept of rebalancing. The scenario listed above will work with any investment portfolio dollar amount. In addition, there is no reason why more specific asset classes cannot be added to the investment portfolio to match your individual investment portfolio (e.g. large cap stocks, international stocks, emerging market bonds, etc.). As long as you have the desired percentages for your portfolio, you can go through the same process in the example above in order to rebalance your portfolio.

In summary, rebalancing on a periodic basis is a way to ensure that the individual investor is on track to achieve his or her financial goals while not taking on too much or too little risk to get there. It is a way to stay on the path to one’s financial plan. Normally individual investors will rebalance their investment portfolios once a year, typically at the end of the calendar year. However, there is no reason why the length and/or time of the year cannot be altered. For the purposes of simplicity, a hard and fast rule of each year at the end of the year is usually the best rule of thumb when it comes to rebalancing for most novice individual investors. One of the other benefits is that rebalancing allows individual investors to not try and time the market or stay with a certain type of investment too long. As a personal anecdote, I have an uncle who got caught up in the Internet Bubble of the late 1990s into 2001. He devoted more and more of his retirement portfolio to technology stocks. When the bubble burst, his investment portfolio was devastated. Unfortunately, he had to delay his retirement by nearly ten years due to this mishap. Adherence to a strict schedule and rebalancing plan acts a buffer against occurrences like this. It really helps to take much of the emotion, which most investors of all types struggle with, out of investing.

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