Working With a Wealth Planner: The Basics

Genevieve Signoret

(Hay una versión en español de este artículo aquí.)

The key thing to remember if you’re working with a wealth planner is that you and your advisor are a team. Yes, your advisor carries a large portion of the planning responsibilities. But not the entire load.

A good planner will shoulder the following eight jobs:

1. An initial study. It should document, in addition to your financial objectives, your spiritual priorities. Your values. A good planner understands that money is only a means to your ends.
   The study should document, further, the composition of your balance sheet and your cashflows. And should analyze them, pointing out the good in your situation as well and the risks you face and your opportunities for growth.
2. A proposed lifetime financial Plan. The proposal should put forth ideas for mitigating risks and seizing opportunities. It must be informed by both the initial study and statistical modeling.
   Your advisor should have a process in place for gathering your feedback to these proposals, rendering the Plan yours.
   All objectives should be measurable, and metrics established. Baseline measures should taken and documented in a dashboard to be updated along the way.
3. Portfolio investment policies. Execution will require portfolio management. For your portfolio managers, your planner should help you clearly articulate investment objectives and, for each, an Investment Policy.
4. A structured process for follow-up, meaning Plan execution and systematic updating, whereby all team members are held accountable for promised contributions.
5. Introductions to crucial missing advisors. Wealth planners are not tax advisors, but good ones can help you find the right one for you. Likewise, an estate lawyer, a tax preparer, real estate and insurance brokers, and so on.
   An ethical wealth planner will not take commissions from these advisors but rather will choose them for you in freedom from conflict of interest.
6. Advisory team coordination. When your advisor brings you a proposal, said proposal should already have passed review by all other pertinent allied advisors and carry their signatures.
   Also, when your planner needs you to meet with one or more allied advisor, someone from the planning office, not you, should bear the burden of aligning everyone’s agendas to set that meeting up.
7. Expert ad hoc decision support. As new circumstances and opportunities arise, a good planner will provide data, modeling, and expert opinion.
8. Financial education. Finance is technical and vast. Your planner should be your guide and your teacher.

This sounds like a lot, I know. But it’s not all. Without your contributions, the process will flop. Your jobs are the following:

1. Commit to delving into yourself. Money is never the end but rather is solely the means. A good planner will ask probing questions. Work with him or her sincerely on the spiritual and emotional side of planning.
2. Tell the truth. If you do not divulge, your planner will be flying partly blind.
3. Be up-front about your family’s decision-making governance. Who is to be consulted on what? Who should be merely informed? Who has the final say?
4. Planners need data. It’s dull work, we know, but do please dig up any documents they ask for.
5. Keep your promises. You and your planning team are partners, so follow up. Be professional.
6. Commit to learning some basic finance. Ask questions. Say out loud what you’ve understood and ask to be corrected. Read the stuff they send you.
7. Set aside adequate time. We ask our clients for rare but dedicated chunks of their time: two solid hours at least, quarterly, and one large four-to-five-hour pow-wow annually.
   Zoom is fine if you live far away, but not for the annual review. Invite your advisor to visit you.
8. From time to time, bring your heirs into a meeting. Something unexpected could befall you. A prior relationship will soothe them and ease their way during that period.

We set out today hoping to empower you as a wealth planning client—and partner. We hope this guide has made a small step in that direction.