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Roger: Financial advisors are kind of like behavioral counselors to help make sure that when you make a decision…so like back in March, a lot of people panicked and sold. I had a client that I told to sell because they were so panic-stricken that they could not handle the volatility. They weren\’t sleeping and they had no business being in the market. That\’s another part of what we do. We help you understand how you feel about risk and the things that keep you up at night because money should help you to sleep better at night. It should not keep you awake.
Clark: You\’re listening to Retire Happy with Roger Gainer President of Gainer Financial and Insurance Services, Inc. Thanks for joining us. I\’m your host, Clark Buckner. In a market where anyone can legally call themselves a financial advisor, it can be difficult to know if you\’re working with the right one. So in today\’s episode, Roger explains how different types of advisors get paid and he shares some questions you can ask to make sure you\’re protecting yourself and your assets. Roger also describes the advantages that come from working with a good financial advisor, especially at a time when the economy is so volatile. For more content like this, head on over to gainerfinancial.com. Enjoy the show. Roger, how are you?
Roger: I\’m still in COVID world like most of our listeners.
Clark: Aren\’t we all? Aren\’t we all?
Roger: Yeah. You keep thinking it\’ll get less strange, but it just seems to get more strange. I don\’t know about you Clark or how are things in your neck of the woods?
Clark: Yeah, it only gets weirder. You\’re absolutely right.
Roger: So the weirder it gets, the harder it becomes to figure out, you know, what I should be doing. And I guess that\’s kind of what you wanted to talk about today. Right, Clark?
Clark: Right. Yeah. I know with more time on some people\’s hands and they\’re reevaluating, so many other things we\’ve talked about, you know, like the last episode was how much higher can the stock market go and what kind of changes? I feel like you were one of the first people I talked with when COVID started to hit. You were calling it pretty early on that this is something to take seriously because there are big implications of this.
So there\’s just been a lot of changes and impacts, and I would love to talk with you basically about how financial advisors are paid. There\’s a lot of people out there sharing all sorts of opinions on this, and I was hoping today we could sort of cut through some of the noise. And I just want to hear your perspective on that. Maybe we could just dive right in on that point.
Roger: Okay. Well, we can talk on that point. It\’s not exactly the question I wish more people would ask because I\’ll meet somebody new who gets referred to me, they\’ll say, \”Oh yeah, well, you\’re a fee-based financial planner, Roger. And that\’s really great. And I would work with you, but I already have a financial advisor.\” And I ask them, \”So what do they do for you?\” \”Oh, well they help me with my investments. They manage my portfolio.\” I say, \”Do they help you with taxes?\” \”Well, no.\” \”Have they helped you with estate planning?\” \”Well, no.\” \”Do they help you with figuring out how you\’re going to pay for college?\” \”Well, yeah, the guy told me to put a 529 plan in, so we got that one going on.\” And you can go down the list of questions. So really those people are investment advisors. They want to take your money and invest it.
So when you talk about how do we pay for investment advice, these days, it\’s usually as a percentage of the money that\’s being managed. So that\’s an advisory fee, and there\’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, I don\’t think you\’re gonna find much of any place that\’s going to help you invest money that isn\’t going to charge you something.
Now the real question is, is what I\’m being charged worth it? And that\’s something I want to dig into here a little bit later in our conversation, but I want to finish answering your question. So there\’s one model, which is transactional, which means every time I buy or sell, I pay a fee. That\’s the traditional Wall Street model. For years and years and years, you know, you worked with a broker. They said, \”Here, buy IBM. Oh, it\’s time to sell IBM, and let\’s move into American Airlines.\” And each one of those transactions generated a commission. So that\’s the traditional model for brokers and basically investment advisors.
Over the years, that has evolved as we\’ve seen companies like Charles Schwab or Fidelity come into the marketplace and reduce those transaction fees if you will. In fact, today you can open an account at Fidelity and trade for free. So obviously, for an advisor, that\’s not going to make them a living. You\’re not gonna be able to pay the rent, keep the mortgage going, pay for your utilities, send your kids off to school with clothes on, and stuff like that.
So then we\’ve evolved to this, we used to call them wrap fees, and basically it\’s just a percentage of your assets under management. I get approached every day about this. So you manage a portfolio. You really aren\’t talking about, \”Oh, let\’s buy this stock and sell that stock.\” What you\’re doing is you\’re managing a portfolio to a particular discipline or style.
So there\’s a way the portfolio manager decides to evaluate what they should be in or should not be in at any given time. They make the adjustments to the portfolio, and then every quarter there\’s a percentage deducted from your fees. And this is the most common method these days.
A lot of people say, \”I don\’t know what I\’m paying.\” Well, you\’d have to look at your quarterly statement that you get from the brokerage firm. Most advisors that do this work with what\’s called a custodian. I do this type of work as well, and my custodian is Fidelity. Some advisors use Schwab, some advisors use TD Ameritrade, and then there\’s some more obscure platforms out there but, you know, that\’s where your actual money sits and your securities.
Don\’t ever have your money sit with the advisor. First and foremost, you never write a check to an advisor. You never write a check to an advisor\’s name to make a deposit. This is just a consumer caveat. Just two months ago, here in Marine County, a gentleman died, a guy I\’ve been suspicious of for a very, very long time. You can look it up in the Marin IJ if you\’re interested, but he died and nobody could figure out where the money was because it turns out what he was running was a Ponzi scheme.
Clark: Oh, no.
Roger: So he was paying existing clients the money from new clients. So as long as he kept bringing people in, people were getting paid. He was promising 10%. Does this sound at all like Bernie Madoff?
Clark: Yep.
Roger: Because those people also wrote checks directly to Bernie Madoff. And this gentleman, I had known of him about 25 years ago because a prospective client that I was meeting with had invested 100% of his money with this guy.
Clark: All 100% of his money.
Roger: The guy was his accountant so he said, \”I just do what my accountant says and for 14 years I\’ve made the same investment. He just tells me how much to put in.\” And he was investing \”in real estate\” here in Marin County a great investment. However, who was doing the auditing? The accountant was.
Clark: Oh, boy.
Roger: Who was putting together the statements? The accountant was. Who was calculating the rates of return? The accountant was. And I looked at these statements. I said, \”You\’re not making this kind of money. There\’s nothing out here.\” \”Oh yes, I am. He told me I am.\” And I won\’t get into all of that. But he ended up losing his ability to do people\’s taxes because he was taking fraudulent deductions.
Then somehow over the years, he became very involved in the community, gave money to lots and lots of politicians around here both for state and federal as well as local elections. He volunteered a lot. He wrote checks to school districts and to different charities. He sat on boards, and he really created a very nice image of himself as being very, very active in the community. But he had no licensing or oversight from either FINRA or the Securities and Exchange Commission.
About three years ago, a very, very outstanding tax person that I know sent me an email and said, \”One of my clients wants to invest in this tremendous opportunity. They\’re paying 10%.\” And I saw the name and I said, you know, but you can\’t say anything bad about people unless you have the goods right in your hands.
So I sent back a list of questions. I said, \”Get these questions answered, and then you can make up your mind as to whether this is a good deal.\” And one of the questions is, \”Why don\’t you have an outside auditor and why don\’t you have an outside bookkeeper? And where is the money on deposit?\” These kinds of, you know, I think important questions. His response was, \”I\’m too busy to respond to these. I\’ve been doing this for 25 years. Either you want to invest with me or not because there\’s plenty of people who do.\” And to me, red flag city. Anyways, now the guy\’s dead. His wife, his kid…
Clark: They had no idea. Do they have do you think…? Oh, maybe we\’re going down a rabbit hole.
Roger: I think they had some idea.
Clark: It sounds like one of those TV shows.
Roger: But they have to deal with the fallout. And, you know, investors are going to get pennies back on the dollar. They\’re doing exactly what they did with Madoff, and they\’re going to people who had received, you know, the Ponzi scheme money for a number of years, and they\’re calling some of that money back from folks.
Most people are not gonna get their initial investment back and they might get, you know, pennies on the dollar. But the really hard thing is people were in retirement living on this money and now that\’s gone. In fact, some of them have to even pay part of it back. That\’s brutal. That\’s life upsetting. So, you know, these are the kinds of questions you always want to ask these advisors. When you work with me, you get a full disclosure document that is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
We are part of what\’s known as a Registered Investment Advisory and clients send me checks all the time. I have to send them back. You never write a check to me. You write a check to the entity that is being supervised by the Securities and Exchange Commission or the FINRA. And that\’s how you first and foremost how you cover your butt. Anyways, off that soapbox.
So what you\’re paying for is that investment expertise but the real question is, you know, and again, Susie Orman says, \”You don\’t need an advisor to do any of that kind of stuff. Just go out to Vanguard and buy index funds, you know, buy an index fund for bonds, buy an index fund for stocks and that\’s it. You don\’t need to pay anybody for this kind of thing.\”
Well, it\’s interesting. I\’m on a website called Investopedia, which I recommend to all of our listeners, anybody that wants to look up strategies. It\’s like Wikipedia except for money things. And there\’s some great articles in here, and here is a study. It\’s called the Vanguard study, Vanguard funds, who is totally into indexing and totally into low-cost funds and the ones that Susie Orman says you should be able to do on your own.
And they did a study called Advisor\’s Alpha, A-L-P-H-A. And the study estimates that clients who work with a good financial advisor will receive, on average, a 3% increase in the value of their portfolios each year. Now, it\’s not linear. Some years, they\’ll underperform based on fees, but this is over the long haul. Three percent is massive. When you look at how money grows, 3% over 20 or 30 years, you\’ll have a third more money getting that kind of return.
Clark: Because of the compounding. Is that right?
Roger: Because of the compounding. Exactly. That\’s very good. So they go on to say these studies ultimately show that financial advisors truly earn their fees by acting as behavioral coaches rather than money managers.
This notion is further buttressed by research from Aon Hewitt and managed accounts provider Financial Engines from 2006 to 2008. And it compared the returns of investors who worked with online managers or target-date funds or managed accounts of those who did it all by themselves. So they had professional management involved.
This study concluded that the group that used some form of money manager actually enjoyed returns that were 1.86% higher on average net of fees than their do-it-yourself counterparts. So now there are some years where not having an advisor would actually underperform, but this is really about over the long haul. In fact, it\’s markets like we\’re seeing now.
Yes, we\’ve set some new records here, but as we discussed in our last podcast and the blog posts that actually went out yesterday, what\’s it based on? It\’s in these kinds of difficult markets, volatility like we saw in March, this is where advisors really earn their money when everything\’s going up and you can literally just close your eyes.
We talked in a previous podcast about studies back in the \’80s where they had monkeys throw darts at the stock page. They had blindfolded people throw darts at the stock page to set up portfolios and they almost always beat the professional advisers because everything was just going up. And so you could literally buy darn near anything in the mid to late \’80s and into the \’90s, and lots of strange things were making money. So it\’s these tough situations like the early 2000s like 2007, 2008. And I would put it to our listeners 2020 and 2021 are going to prove to be very, very difficult investment environments.
So just from a purely investment standpoint, that\’s the number one place that investment advisors and certain financial advisors can add value because they can vet the managers you use. They can drill down. They have access to tools for analyzing portfolios and risk characteristics and what market conditions certain assets will perform better in and those kinds of tools that the average person just doesn\’t have access to.
I do have a couple of friends that are retired brokers and they do all that work on their own, but you know, some would say, \”Well, why do they want to spend two, three hours a day doing that kind of stuff when you\’re in retirement?\” Because they like it. I mean, there\’s the bottom line. So on the surface, this is one of the places that advisors add value. Does that make sense?
Clark: Right. You want to have somebody who even when times are good. I mean, the floating up in the air upward is not going to last, and having a strategy, having a plan, it makes sense. But it can also, I think there are barriers that might keep someone from doing it because we\’re hearing like the Sallys out there or the person you said…
Roger: Susie Orman.
Clark: Just make up a name. Susie Orman. Okay. Thank you.
Roger: Susie doesn\’t think we\’re worth the money, which is interesting because that\’s how she got her start in the industry. Now, she has no responsibility for anything she says because she carries no licenses. I have to worry about what I say. It has to be compliant and legal and not misleading.
Clark: So what would you suggest someone who\’s maybe feeling, I don\’t know, barriers or they\’re having doubts, you know, what\’s the why? Why work with a financial advisor? If you could put it in simple terms of just the suggestion, what would that be?
Roger: Sure. Two words, peace of mind and confidence. A lot of people they say, \”Oh, you know, I have a whole…\” We\’ve talked in previous podcasts about the thought organizer. And there\’s a bunch of questions in there. And people fill that out and say, \”Oh, I never thought about that. I never dealt with it. I don\’t think I need to.\” And so they\’ve left themselves incredibly vulnerable in certain areas. It might be in their insurance and how they protect their home or their car or their income or for older folks, whether or not they have a way to pay for unreimbursed healthcare costs and costs of longterm care and having a strategy in place.
I know in my practice, I specialize in the movement from your working world and the transition into retirement. And one of the hardest things to do to get people to understand is in retirement, it\’s not how much wealth you have. It\’s how much income you enjoy. We\’ve said this before many times.
I actually had a meeting just recently with a client who has been a client for about four years. He and his wife were so busy with their businesses. When they came to me, I said, \”Well, I really like to go through a planning process.\” And they said, \”Well, we don\’t really have time for all of that. We\’ll get to that, but we\’ve lost money and we don\’t want to lose any more money. We don\’t think that we can ever consider retiring if we have another loss like we just came through.\” So, you know, obviously, they got beat up pretty bad in 2008.
So I showed them some investment alternatives. And I said, you know, \”I\’m really not comfortable doing this outside of. So let\’s at least get the basics of what you want to accomplish and where you want to go with the money you already have invested.
And what they said is they didn\’t want any more losses. They couldn\’t handle volatility. They were so busy they didn\’t want to spend a lot of time talking to me about management. And their biggest concern was, \”Will I have enough income to retire on?\” So over the last number of years, from time to time, they\’ll give me a call and I\’ll say, \”Well, is it time to get together?\” \”No, I have to make my SEP contribution for this year. Where should I put it?\” \”Well, gee, you know, I\’d really like to…\” And we\’d have that brief conversation. They say, \”Yeah, yeah, we\’ll get to it.\”
So here we are four years down the road. And I had set up a strategy based on how little time they wanted to spend on managing their assets or meeting with me because if you have assets that go up and down in value, you really have to stay on top of these things.
You have to know when to cut your losses. It\’s very, very important. So we put some fail-safe items into the strategies to make sure that they couldn\’t take any significant losses, and it was an income-focused strategy. We can talk about some of these kinds of strategies maybe in a future podcast because they\’re becoming more important every day given what we\’re dealing with in the economy and in the markets in general.
So anyway, long story short, he said, \”I want to know what rate of return did I make in 2019? All my friends made so much money. All my friends made 20%, 30%, 40%.\” Well, first of all, they might\’ve had an investment that did that, but they didn\’t make that across the board. And second of all, unless they sold, they didn\’t make that at all. Their portfolio appreciated by that amount, but they didn\’t make it.
Clark: That\’s not cash in hand.
Roger: If you haven\’t taken profits, you didn\’t make that money. You just watched your portfolio appreciate. This is a concept a lot of people have a hard time with. And so we focused on the income generation that we set up and they realized they would have had to take a lot more risk, I mean, dramatically more risk to come anywhere near the income that they were going to enjoy at their desired retirement date.
So that\’s the kind of thing that, you know, makes a big difference. It took them a while to understand because they hadn\’t really been paying that much attention before, but now they\’re in a place and they see, \”Oh, yes. So I\’m going to have that much more income than I would have had had I just stayed in the kinds of funds,\” they were in when they came to me, especially if we have another market correction, which seems virtually inevitable to have one or two more before these folks retire and the resulting devastation and the problem with you can\’t time what the market\’s going to do when you need to pull your money out.
Now, let\’s talk about financial advisors or financial planners. Those are a couple of names that are grossly misunderstood for a variety of reasons. Number one, Clark, if tomorrow you wanted to call yourself a financial advisor and print up cards, you could do that. How about that?
Clark: Great.
Roger: You would have very limited things that you could do, but you could charge for advice.
Clark: Give my advice out for a fee.
Roger: Yeah. You could sell your advice for a fee. As long as you stayed away from talking about specific investments and stayed with just strategies, you could call yourself a financial advisor. That\’s one of the things that\’s hard for people to wrap their mind around.
I define a financial planner or a financial advisor as somebody who has information, tools, and expertise to help you deal with your entire financial life. And that means everything from, as I stated before, estate planning, how do I pay for my kids to go to college? What kind of insurance should I have? Do I have the right homeowners insurance, car insurance? Am I overpaying for those things? What kind of tax ramifications am I experiencing or am I setting up for myself in the future?
That\’s a huge one by the way. We could probably spend an entire podcast just on what\’s likely to happen to taxes in the future just based on what\’s happened in the past. I think a lot of people are ignoring this and it\’s going to hurt an awful lot of folks when they get to retirement in the next 5 to 10 years. And anybody that\’s getting to retirement, when you\’re getting to retirement, it\’s really going to be a problem for you. So we want to make sure that people understand that and can manage taxes.
So investment returns are a piece of the puzzle, no question about it, but where someone like myself adds value for our fee is in all of these other areas selecting the right tools. This study I was quoting from goes on to say, essentially, that financial advisors are kind of like behavioral counselors to help make sure that when you make a decision… So like back in March, a lot of people panicked and sold. I had a client that I told to sell because they were so panic-stricken that they could not handle the volatility. They weren\’t sleeping. They were starting to get physical ailments as a result.
Clark: Yikes.
Roger: And they had no business being in the market. Now, because everybody else around them said, \”Oh, you know, it\’s going to bounce back. It\’s going to bounce back,\” she was highly influenced by people she\’d known longer than me. And then I totally understand. Now, I\’m just afraid that when that occurs the next time it\’s going to be very difficult and she might have more lasting physical ailments as a result. So that\’s another part of what we do. We help you understand how you feel about risk, we talked about that last time, and the things that keep you up at night because I said this before, and I\’ll be saying it until I stop doing what I\’m doing. Money should help you to sleep better at night. It should not keep you awake. If it\’s keeping you awake, you\’re doing something wrong. And so that is just a critical element of your decisionmaking.
So when should you be looking to hire a financial advisor? That\’s another good question. Number one, every time there\’s a life change, you should be sitting down with a financial advisor because every time there\’s a life change, our financial life changes. So think about it.
When you got that first job, whether it was shoveling snow or cutting people\’s lawns or doing deliveries for the local pharmacy, all jobs I did when I was a teenager, I needed a bank account. I needed something to do with the money, the check that they gave me every week or two. I had to be able to cash that check. Actually, my first couple of jobs, they gave you a pay envelope and it had cash even pennies in there. That\’s how old I am.
Clark: Which gives you a good perspective. You\’ve seen a lot of things.
Roger: There you go. Then, you know, you go off to…say you\’ve gone off to college or you get your first job and now you got a whole new set of stuff. Maybe I want to go buy a car, and now I got to learn about car insurance or get ready to buy a house. And so when I do those of activities, take on a car loan, take on a mortgage, there\’s another change in my life and that requires adjustments. A great example is mortgages.
I probably save my clients hundreds of thousands of dollars in how they finance properties. I blogged about this. It is an area that I see more mistakes made than probably any other. More impactful mistakes I should say, mistakes that cost people tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars by making the wrong mortgage decision. And then they get faced with what I call the tough decision. That was one of my very first blog posts back in 2014.
And so, you know, these are the kinds of questions that can make or break. If you\’re making mistakes there, you\’re asking your investments to do an awful lot more. So when I charge a fee, I believe that\’s an investment on behalf of the client and they need to make at least a hundred percent rate of return on that investment, or I\’ll refund your money. Now, I have only done that once in 20 years of being fee-based and in my 32 years of being a financial advisor.
Clark: I would almost rather that be one instead of zero because in this case, you know it\’s real that you\’ll actually do it. You know what I mean?
Roger: Well, it was…we went through everything and I said, \”Look…\”
Clark: It happens.
Roger: \”You just…the stuff that you need, you don\’t need me for and I don\’t want your money so let me send it back.\” She happened to be unhappy that I couldn\’t help her beyond her current situation. And then there was one other person that we sat down for that first hour together and we went through everything. I asked them lots of questions and they had done such a good job I never had them write me a check in the first place. I told them, \”I can\’t add value here. You guys just keep doing what you\’re doing.\”
Clark: Wow.
Roger: So there are two out of hundreds and hundreds of people over my career. So that\’s really where a financial advisor adds value is in all these other things. How do I finance my car purchases?
You know, financing here in America, we finance everything we buy. Every product, everything that you consume is financed. And that\’s a concept that a lot of people don\’t understand. They\’ll say to me, \”Roger, what do you mean? I pay cash for everything. I\’m not financing.\” And the truth is yes, you are. You\’re financing because there\’s lost opportunity costs. If you go out and pay $30,000 for a car, and that money had been invested say in an account that was returning 3%, well, then your finance cost is 3%. And that\’s the true finance cost because that\’s interest that you\’re not earning. So you\’ve given that up.
And that\’s why, you know, when clients come and they say, \”I\’m buying that new car, but oh, Toyota is offering me 72 months at 0%,\” I tell them to take that and let\’s invest that 30,000 you would\’ve spent on the car. And even if we\’re getting you 2% or 3%, that\’s free money because you\’re using Toyota\’s money to drive your car and your money at the end you end up with all that extra interest. So it\’s things like that. It\’s techniques.
It\’s planning for a taxation in the future. I think especially your generation, Clark, is going to have a huge problem with taxation in the future. All you have to do is look at how much our deficit has grown just since the beginning of this year. We\’re up like $8 trillion in debt. In the last four years, the debt has gone up a ridiculous amount. And if we go back to the beginning of the recession, debt in this country, at least the admitted debt, is about double what it was back in 2007.
It\’s an issue that will be dealt with. So having a tax strategy going forward is going to be very, very important, but understanding the ins and the outs of the tax code. How you\’re going to pay medical bills? Can we do it on a tax advantage basis? Just being able to navigate and use the rules that are out there to your benefit, that alone.
I help people who are self-employed set up medical accounts that allow instead of paying for your medical bills with money that\’s already been taxed, you get to pay your medical bills with pretax money. I know a lot of people are saying, \”Well, I have an HSA.\” No, this is way more than an HSA. HSAs have limits. This is unlimited.
Clark: Wow.
Roger: If you have $100,000 worth of medical bills, you can pay those with pretax money. Just like in your business, I couldn\’t go into your studio and put together a nice-sounding podcast. I would look at all that equipment and I\’d just go, \”Huh?\” I couldn\’t walk into my doctor\’s office and give somebody a checkup. I don\’t have that expertise, but what I do all day long and every week and every year is I study this stuff.
I study markets. I study taxes. I study estate planning. I study risk management. I attend webinars. Like I told you, I was on a webinar for three hours of training this morning, learning techniques to help my clients reduce tax exposure when they get to retirement because that\’s when you\’re your most vulnerable to taxes is when you\’re retired, thanks to Ronald Reagan.
This is really where a financial advisor adds value. It\’s helping you understand what your options are, your opportunities. It\’s helping you understand how do I deliver my lifestyle more efficiently? There are… Insurance is an area I see people wasting a lot of money. I hear all the time, \”I feel insurance poor every time I write one of these premium checks.\” Well, we want to make sure your insurance is doing what it\’s supposed to be doing. So we do an insurance review and generally speaking, clients end up paying less and getting better insurance coverage. So these are value add areas that really this is how a true financial advisor earns their money.
Clark: I liked the examples. It definitely makes sense. So I liked also how you were saying the big why had to do with peace of mind and confidence, and ultimately you\’re helping people sleep better at night about their money. So that is I think a good spot for us to make sure to plug the thought organizers. So how can someone get that? What is that and how can they connect with you?
Roger: Sure. Well, you can connect with me through our website at www.gainerfinancial.com. That\’s G-A-I-N-E-R F-I-N-A-N-C-I-A-L.com, or you can call the office at 415-331-9030. Now, when you go to our website, the blog is there. The podcast is there. Every podcast has been transcribed. So if you just don\’t like listening in the car, and you don\’t have the time, you can scan and read the summary.
The thought organizer is exactly what it sounds like. It\’s there to organize your thoughts. I have a meeting with two new clients in their 30s this afternoon, and they sent their thought organizers over this morning and we\’re gonna have to do some reconciling. And that\’s part of what the tool is designed to help you understand is what\’s my relationship with risk versus peace of mind versus different kinds of asset classes and my expectations for investments.
Okay. When somebody comes to me and says they want to earn a 10% rate of return but I am uncomfortable losing any money on any portion or seeing any volatility at all, I know we\’re going to have to reconcile that because that\’s totally incompatible. The market hasn\’t returned anywhere near 10% on average over the long haul. We\’ve had periods of time, the last 10 years being one of those periods, where we\’ve beaten 10%. The last 20 years we\’ve been under 5% or right about 5%.
Some decades are better than others. Some years are better than others, but I\’d rather your expectations and your plans are built on more realistic assumptions. And so we go over, you know, exactly what you can expect from different asset classes and the type of volatility. So that is a really important use of the thought organizer. Plus the thought organizer helps you figure out what your priorities are. Why am I saving money? If you don\’t know why you\’re saving money, it\’s really hard to decide what are the best investments.
I mentioned the client earlier, they were saving specifically for retirement and the guy asked me what kind of rate of return was he getting. Rate of return has nothing to do with how much income you\’re going to have in retirement. There is a loose connection, yes. And if somebody wants to understand this better, just get ahold of me. In 15 minutes, we can set up a quick Zoom call and I can show you, just walk you through what I\’m talking about here. Just contact me through the website and say that you want to understand that concept right there.
Clark: Excellent.
Roger: So on that note, I think it\’s a good place to stop. Take advantage of downloading a free thought organizer. Make sure you understand why you\’re doing what you\’re doing, and that will also help you know if it\’s a good idea to work with a financial advisor.
Clark: Excellent. Roger, thank you as always. I really enjoyed it and I\’m looking forward to connecting with you again soon.
Roger: All right. Thank you. And I hope all our listeners have the opportunity to retire happy.
Clark: Roger L. Gainer, RICP, CHFC California insurance license number 0754849 is licensed to sell insurance and annuity products in California, Illinois, Arizona, and Nevada. Roger L. Gainer is an investment advisor representative providing advisory services through HFIS Inc., a registered investment advisor. Gainer Financial and Insurance Services Inc. is not owned by or affiliated with HFIS Inc. and operates independently.
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