Fewer words than the last version, and all of them mine.
Why the firm exists
To be the advisor I would have wanted during the years my own financial life came apart and had to be rebuilt.
That means being useful during the transitions, when the decisions are largest and the judgment is worst. Retirement is a transition. Divorce is a transition. A physician’s first high-income decade is a transition. Those are the three places I do my best work.
Ten things I actually believe
- Money is a tool. It is not the objective.
- Financial advice should serve the client, not the advisor’s compensation model.
- Fees matter because costs compound in exactly the direction returns do, only against you.
- Complexity should be reduced wherever it can be.
- You deserve to know precisely how your advisor gets paid. Every way.
- Every advisor has conflicts. A fiduciary says what his are out loud.
- Good financial decisions require separating the signal from the emotional noise, which is hardest at the exact moments it matters most.
- Major life transitions are financial events and human events at the same time. Treating them as only one is how people get hurt.
- Educating clients does not threaten an advisor’s value. It produces better clients.
- An advisor’s value is judgment, perspective and coordination, not investment selection.
What I will not do
I will not sell you a product I get paid on, because there are none.
I will not take on more clients than I can know well.
I will not tell you what the market is going to do, because I do not know, and neither does the person who says he does.
I will not tell you a decision is safe when risk remains in it.
Start a conversation