Who is Responsible for Making or Losing Me Money?

Often we hear people complain that their broker, advisor, planner, or manager lost them money. However, this is rarely the case. A broker typically gives you an opinion of what you should do with your money, introduces you to the investments, and sells you a financial solution.

A wealth manager oversees the criteria for selecting investments, hiring and firing the individual managers of each of your investments. The criteria are predetermined so your portfolio is accountable to the design.

However, the real people responsible for your profits and losses are people you have never met. The executives of a company you own stock in, the fund manager who is in charge of choosing the investments inside your mutual funds, or the head of an organization which is issuing bonds are the people who make and lose you money each and every day. They are the ones that need to be held accountable to their duties.

To hear the Smart Money Radio Show segment focused on this topic, Please Click Here! (about 7 minutes long)


To hear the full Smart Money Radio Show where Bruce discusses this topic and more, Please Click Here! (about 25 minutes long)

Money Management Does Not Need to Be Complex

With an open mind, some common sense, and advice that puts your interests ahead of everyone else's, managing your money does not have to be difficult.

Unfortunately, finding advice that puts YOU first is often the hardest ingredient to find. There is so much information available to you, but most of it is either speculative opinions or slanted toward someone else's goals and not yours!

You can call up one of the big firms like Fidelity or Charles Schwab (we see their commercials so much today) and ask for advice. They are often seen as an alternative to paying for advice from an expensive broker. Their recommendations maximize benefits to their company and oftentimes are mediocre at best. YOU are still making a final decision based on their professional but biased advice.

Vanguard, popularized because of their low fees, is another common company we see investors use. However, certain categories of their funds do not perform well. You are taking the risk of a category and paying lower fees, but the net return may be better in a fund with higher fees with the same risk.

To hear the Smart Money Radio Show segment focused on this topic, Please Click Here! (about 7 minutes long)



To hear the full Smart Money Radio Show where Bruce discusses this topic and more, Please Click Here! (about 25 minutes long)

Choosing Investments

When we talk to people about the universe of investments that are available (over 25,000 mutual funds alone!), they often ask we go about choosing specific investments for our clients. Like Coke, KFC, and Bush's Baked beans, we aren't going to tell you the whole formula, but we do like to give a little bit of insight into our process.

If we are looking to fulfill a growth portion of your portfolio, we filter the 25,000 available funds down to the 7,200 that are suitable for that. Next, we get rid of any fund that is less than 3 years old. We found this timeline gives us enough data to evaluate the fund. Now, we are down to roughly 2,000 funds that are suitable for growth. We continue this filtering process over 26 different points of data, totaling over 3 million pieces, and finally boil the list from 25,000 funds to around 150 choices.

This search allows us to identify funds that do well in both up markets and down markets. They CONSISTENTLY earn respectable returns in up markets and minimize losses in down markets. They have the highest quality of management in their category.

None of these funds are exclusive to our clients, but you typically cannot get some of them from a broker. They have minimums ranging from $25 to $5 million, but in many cases the minimum is waived for a private wealth manager.

Since we do not get paid a commission, a mutual fund with a sales charge is useless to us. However, we do not throw funds with a sale charge out during our filtering process. We are searching for funds with the highest net performance for our clients. The high charge funds typically eliminate themselves with lower net performances.

To hear the Smart Money Radio Show segment focused on this topic, Please Click Here! (about 7 minutes long)


To hear the full Smart Money Radio Show where Bruce discusses this topic and more, Please Click Here! (about 25 minutes long)

I Need Help!!!

Many factors can lead you to the decision that you need help with your investments. You may not have enough time. You may lack certain necessary skills. Maybe you can't filter out what really applies to you. Or, like many of our clients, you want to focus on other parts of your life.

First, notice we said help. Management must be a team effort and you still need to be involved in your investments to find the best fit.

How do you find an advisor or manager to help you? Well, it's a lot like looking for a doctor who specializes in your particular ailment. My wife had a back problem and needed surgery. All of our friends (and clients) recommended their doctor that did their back surgery. They told us how much they liked their doctor. So we interviewed several before we decided on would do her surgery.

Financial professionals, like doctors, have many different paths to choose form for treatment of a problem. You want the doctor who can produce the expected results, not the doctor who is most popular.

The first person you talk to may not be the best, but they get chosen just so you can get it out of the way. Then, you may never revisit that choice even if you have suffered significant losses or mediocre returns.

If you had a serious illness, you would take a genuine interest in finding the best choice to treat you. WealthKare is as important as your healthcare. You need to choose a person or group that give you simple, clear, and solid solutions.

To hear the Smart Money Radio Show segment focused on this topic, Please Click Here! (about 7 minutes long)



To hear the full Smart Money Radio Show where Bruce discusses this topic and more, Please Click Here! (about 25 minutes long)

Crystal Balls, Market Timing, and Predicting the Future

As the markets continue their cycle, we are hearing two questions over and over again from you. They are "is it time to get back into the market" or "are we near another crash". While they may seem like similar questions, they are actually very different with different answers.

The first question relates to an investment strategy those in the business refer to as market timing. The belief is that you should be in the market during good times and get out of the market before the market begins a down cycle. What's more is the average investor expects their financial broker to make these moves for them. Many brokers believe you never need to make moves because your investments are long-term!

Market timing sounds great and looks good in theory. Who wouldn't want to enjoy the market going up and get out before it goes down? In reality, it just doesn't happen. If these programs and systems worked, we would see trillionaires instead of the billionaires we have in our society. When these programs and systems don't work, it's YOUR money that is lost, not theirs.

The second question, 'are we near another crash', ties into that, but the underlying question goes deeper. People want to know if we are near a crash or what do we think the market is going to do going forward. The talking heads of TV debate whether we are in a bull market (going up) or a bear market (going down). You will hear them going back and forth about previous market events and use that to prove what will happen going forward.

The true answer to the question is NO ONE has a crystal ball, so how can they predict the future. Don't worry about a crash or a raging bull market. You need to be sure that your portfolio properly reflects how much risk you can tolerate.

To hear the Smart Money Radio Show segment focused on this topic, Please Click Here! (about 7 minutes long)




To hear the full Smart Money Radio Show where Bruce discusses this topic and more, Please Click Here! (about 25 minutes long)

The Television, Internet, and Your Money

With the satellite companies and cable companies, and more people accessing the internet, the TV and the world wide web are the frontiers of valuable information sources. Right?

Wrong. When it comes to wealth management, most of these provide little to no valuable information. As a manager, it is very important to monitor the investments and make decision based on new information. By the time it is REPORTED on the internet or TV, it is old news that has already affected your investments.

The primary function of television is advertising, not information or entertainment. Without sufficient advertising, any channel will go off the air. Their job is to draw you to their channel so you see the advertisements (that companies have spent millions on to get you to see their product).

The information, especially in today's turbulent markets, is creating an emotional response about investing, and financial decisions should never be based on emotion!

To hear the Smart Money Radio Show segment where Bruce discusses the influence of media on investors in today's market, Click Here! (about 7 minutes long)



To hear the full Smart Money Radio Show where Bruce discusses Private Wealth Management, Click Here! (about 25 minutes long)

What is Your Biggest Problem Inside Your Portfolio?

You are taking on too much risk. Most of the losses in people's accounts over the last few years can be attributed to risk. If your losses upset you, then there is a good chance that the risks in your account are much greater than your tolerance. Too many brokers overlook the significance of risk in designing your portfolio.

You are placing your trust in someone to choose investments that are suited correctly for you. If they make the wrong choices, it is your money that will be lost—not theirs. If you are unhappy with results, then YOU have to take actions to correct the matters.

One of the limitations of brokers or planners is the lack of flexibility in the investments they sell you. If the choice was not a good fit, it requires you to sell out of one investment and purchase another. Truth be told, it is almost impossible to assess someone's risk tolerance and make the best possible recommendation from one or two office visits.

As a private wealth manager, we assume from the beginning of our relationship with a client that we are going to have to make adjustments. We learn more about them, they will learn more about us. It is our job to manage the assets and allow for a better fit as a time goes on. We use the same principles that wealthy people demand—flexibility. When you have investments that have no sales charges, you can move within a universe of literally thousands of choices without any additional cost to you. It's like having a tailor made suit or dress that comes with free unlimited alterations!

To hear the Smart Money Radio Show segment where Bruce discusses possible pitfalls inside your portfolio, Click Here! (about 7 minutes long



To hear the full Smart Money Radio Show where Bruce discusses Private Wealth Management, Click Here! (about 25 minutes long)