Thought for the day:

Before you build a better mousetrap, it helps to know if there are any mice out there.                           -unknown

If you will read no further:

Quality financial advice and planning is more than simply investing money and “managing the wealth”.  It’s about providing ways to guarantee results.  Westland deals in guaranteed results.  We love what we do and we are really good at it.

Thought for the week:

The story of Ralph and Alice…and Roger

Ralph & Alice have been retired for a couple of years and Ralph is soon turning 70.  Fortunately they were both still working when the 2008 recession hit and were not affected much other than to be scared almost to death by what they saw happening in their 401Ks.   Now they have substantially recovered and are trying to decide what to do going forward.  They’re looking for a financial advisor to assist them and have interviewed a couple of fee-based planners and a stock broker.  Alice thinks they are all very nice but can’t be sure how good they are.  The one thing that jumps out at her is that they all want to show her how good their past results have been…especially the last 4 years, but none of them will guarantee her that their future advice will work.

Ralph doesn’t particularly like any of them. He just thinks they want to get their hands on his money. Since he and Alice have about $750k in their 401k’s and he has a pension, these candidates  are all telling them that they can invest their money in stocks and bonds and will do their best to make sure it mostly goes up….over the long term.  What Alice really wants is to not have to be concerned about their money; and their only answer seems to be “trust them and they will take care of everything”.

But then they met Roger.  Roger was different because he suggested that they might want to set up their money such that it will provide guarantees that certain issues be addressed regardless of the uncertainties in the markets…and the world for that matter.  He suggested that they create a personal pension for Alice that, along with their social security and the Ralph’s pension, would guarantee to provide a monthly check for the rest of their lives to provide added certainty that they could always maintain their current lifestyle.

He also discussed the risk to their portfolio when one or the other of them were to suffer a debilitating illness or condition that would cause them to pay for long-term care…a highly likely situation eventually as over 60% of us ultimately do have such an event in our lives.  He suggested they structure their portfolio with 15% in cash placed in a life insurance policy that would leverage that value by about 400% if/when one of them needed care.  They wouldn’t have to give up control or access to that money but it would guarantee that an additional $6000 a month would be coming in to help pay the bills for care when needed for either of them.

They asked him what they should do with a couple of old insurance policies. The other guys suggested they didn’t need them anymore and that they should cash them in and invest the money with the rest of the portfolio.  Roger pointed out that “need” wasn’t really the issue.  Where they interested in leaving a legacy for their family eventually?  If so, “let’s take a look at those policies”, he said, “maybe we can even make them more valuable”.  What about the rest of the money in their 401k?  “Once we have the major issues addressed and solutions guaranteed, we can discuss options on how we should build the rest of your investment portfolio”.

Naturally, Ralph and Alice both felt comfortable with the advice Roger was providing and they selected him as their advisor.  They also referred some of their friends and their children who lived in town to him….something they would never have thought to do if it weren’t for all those solutions that were guaranteed to work.

I know this is all true, because Roger got all his ideas and the great products to put them into action from Westland Financial.  If you aren’t sure how Roger was able to do that, and/or would like some assistance becoming as successful as Roger, give us a call.  We love to help with this stuff.