Getting Back on Track with My Investment Goals
We were waiting in the restaurant for our client to show up for her review.
When she arrived the first words out of her mouth were, “Let me tell you about the year I just had.” She sat down and started talking excitedly and as I listened I had this incredible sense of joy and thankfulness. Here was a woman pouring our her heart and soul to her financial advisors in a trusting and vulnerable way that most advisors, I would venture to say, will never experience.
To give a better perspective to this story it would help to go back to the beginning.
When we first met she had a myriad of questions about everything that she was doing. Thus began the long road to putting her back on track with her goals.
Betty became a client 10 years ago
She was a teacher who had been widowed in 2003 when her son and daughter were in their early 20ʼs. This is the time of life when the kids leave the nest and the husband and wife get to have their time, at least that was the plan.
Her former advisor had burned out in 2008. He had promoted leveraging to each and everyone of his clients. Many had taken him up on his offer. Betty was one of them, she was paying out more money than she was getting back from her leveraged investments. In addition, she had invested a significant amount of cash into a Universal Life policy that she didnʼt understand.
When we first met she had a myriad of questions about everything that she was doing. Thus began the long road to putting her back on track with her goals.
Here were her goals:
Retire at age 65 with sufficient income to cover her base monthly expenses
Fix the leverage program
Explain why her Universal life Policy had gone down in value by $200,000 in one year
Gift money to her children now rather than through insurance when she dies
Over the course of 3 to 4 years we worked together to get her to her goals.
- We tore apart the leveraging program and showed her the benefits of shutting it down versus hanging on.
- We listened to her tell us she wanted to be around to see her kids benefit from her money rather than wait until she died. As a result we went over the insurance policy until she determined in her own mind that it was best to close it down and gift the money to her kids now.
- We evaluated her investment portfolio and took it from 11 mutual funds down to 3 segregated funds that offered her guaranteed income in retirement.
We build relationships
Asking lots of questions until she was satisfied
Everything that we have done for her involved her asking lots of questions until she was satisfied we had clearly explained to her our decision making process. Eventually she ran out of things to ask questions about, so now when we get together we mostly spend time talking about things going on in her personal life.
We build relationships. We build trust and that gives us that incredible sense of how blessed we are to be in this business.
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Your retirement income specialists "Looking to your future"
Bruce and Bernie will work with you to create a financial strategy designed to provide you and your family with peace of mind.