Do you hate the thought of working past 55 or 60? Do you hate not being able to live the life you deserve today? Do you hate not knowing what your financial future looks like? It's time to stop doing what you hate, here's your host, Mr. Harold Green.
(00:20): Hello everybody. This is Harold Green of breakthrough financial. When it's time to stop doing what you hate, how's everybody doing today. I hope you are having a fantastic day. I'm feeling a little crappy myself and I'll get into it in a second. But something happened with me today and I'm really not too thrilled about how I reacted on the way to work this morning. You know, I got into a little bit of a situation and getting off the freeway and there's this one intersection when you get off the freeway where people, you know, they, they block it because they're trying to get into the lane. You know, they're coming from on the left side, they're coming in and trying to get into the lane so they can get on the freeway. So, you know, if they blocked the light and you know, your light is green and they're blocking the intersection, you, you can't get through.
(01:10): And so you could sit there and go through like three or four red lights with people blocking that intersection because they want to get on the freeway. And it's like 7 30, 8 o'clock in the morning. So, you know, I'm sitting behind this car and they see these people blocking the intersection and they don't do anything. They just, they just sit there. They just sit there and pretty soon I just honk them in. It's kind of like, okay, get your tail up there. And, you know, even if you're blocking the intersection, if you keep sitting here, we're going to sit here and go through like three or four lights and not even be able to get on the freeway. So I'm sitting here first time. I'm cool. About the second time. I'm like, no, you got to get through there. And so, you know, when we finally get through there, I pull up next to the guy who was blocking the intersection and I just honked my horn a couple of times at him.
(01:51): And I'm like, yo, you know, tons of people behind me wanting to get to where they go and like, you know, why do you feel so special that you got to sit here and block everybody's way? And you know, I, I thought about it and it's like, all right, you kinda know that there, you know, there's people that are going to do dumb stuff like that. It's just garbage. And what happened was I let the garbage that somebody else was putting out, get into me. And then I turned around and I put out garbage because, you know, for me, I, I'm not an evil person or, you know, I, I try not to, to do things stupid like that. And when I get frustrated and sometimes I do stupid stuff and a garbage in garbage out. So, you know, and that's going to be the title of my show today is when you allow garbage to get in, you're going to have, you're going to have garbage coming out, you know, garbage input.
(02:37): You're going to have faulty outputs. I want to get into some of the financial garbage that people are allowing into their financial plans and into their life and the problems that it's causing in our society today. So are you guys ready? All right. 1, 2, 3, let's get it. So I subscribe to different news, feeds different things like that, because I'm always, I always want to know what's going on out there in society. What people are thinking about finances and being me being a fiduciary advisor and caring about my clients. I always want to put them in the best possible situation that I can, but there are some obstacles to doing that. And I want to talk to you guys about some of those obstacles today and why people don't engage in hiring a financial planner and why they end up listening to garbage financial advice. And I'm going to be real honest with you guys.
(03:30): At one point, I think I was putting garbage financial advice and totality, you know? Yeah, I was right in certain aspects, but things don't stay the same all the time, things change. And so in my mind, I thought, Hey, this is the best thing for the client. This is what I'm doing for myself. It's working for me. But I was looking at it from a very selfish perspective. Instead of looking at, I got it from a view of, you know, totality w what happens if something changes, what happens if we need to make adjustments? And I have these clients in these fixed financial plans where we can't change a whole lot, there's no room for error. There's no margin, there's no room for real growth. We're just stuck. And I want to talk to you guys about that garbage financial advice and what fiduciary advisor and my eyes were open, you know, quite a while before that.
(04:24): But when I became a fiduciary advisor, I swore that I would give my clients advice that was in their absolute best interest, whether they wanted to hear it or not. Okay. And I also allow room for feedback from my clients because it's not my money. It's, it's their money. And if you're a current client, I want to say, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to serve you. And if you're a new client welcome aboard. And you know, I do have some new clients, Tori Watson, Nabil, thank you so much for coming on board. Thank you, Heidi, for referring Ren. And she's getting started young, you know, and my goal for the kids getting started young is for them to be able to walk away from their jobs and do something different by the time they're 50, if not sooner, but I was guilty of giving out advice before.
(05:07): And I'm so thankful that I've changed and now we're doing different things. So let's talk, talk about some of the things that I hear out there, and some of the things that you probably hear out there, and some of the things that people are saying to you, and let's come to the conclusion of whether or not that is right for you. So I'm scrolling through the feeds and you know, one of the things that I see people doing all the time is trying to get free advice, Ryan, to get free advice. That's garbage to me. That's, that's garbage. You get what you pay for. I don't think you're going to get real financial advice for free that's in your absolute best interests. Like that person sitting there giving you that advice. They have to sit there and go through all of the different scenarios with you before.
(05:50): They're really able to give you advice that's in your best interest, because anything that they tell you, it's just going to be, it's going to be simple. It's going to be, and it's going to be idealistic, you know, to say the least, then it's not going to be a comprehensive. So it's all this question from this lady. She said, you know, I, you know what worth them all four or $5 million. And all of our bills are paid for, and I feel guilty not working. You know, if I, if I don't work, I feel guilty. What, what should I do? You know, first of all, you're posting this question on a financial website. You know, I think it was market watch or something like that. My real question is this, why are you asking that question on the internet instead of hiring a financial advisor to assist you, if you're worth $5 million and you know, you're too cheap, or you you're too stingy, or you, I mean, or you just simply don't trust anybody, that's problematic because eventually you're going to get old.
(06:49): All right. And you're going to get to the point where you, you don't really know what's going on and you need people on your team. So my question is, is why would you not start the process to vet financial advisors and, or, you know, make sure you have the right people on your team and time and time and time. Again, also, when I have, you know, clients that are concerned about things, we want to talk about that, you know, what am I not doing? Right? If I'm not doing something right, I want you to tell me, what is your concern with what we're doing? And when people leave, it's painful for me, I've had clients leave before. And here's one of the things that I've found. One of the biggest reasons why people leave is because they think they're paying too much in fees, or somebody told them that they're paying too much in fees.
(07:36): What is too much right? What is too much? And I've heard someone telling me this before. He said, fees are only relevant in the absence of value. If you're not delivering value, then these are going to become an issue for some people. Now I've had clients talk to other financial advisors out there, or people who masquerade themselves as financial advisors. They're not fiduciaries, they're commissioned people. And I want to kind of get into something right now, these versus commissions. So I was interviewing somebody potentially to become a client. And we went through all of this process and ask them 10 billion questions about, you know, different things. And one of the things I always ask people is, do you currently have an advisor? And I said, yeah, yeah, we have somebody. And I said, yeah, how do you like him? And I, and they say, well, that person is great.
(08:25): Our question is, is if that person is so great, then why in the hell are you talking to me? If that person is so great and they're doing such a fantastic job, why are you wasting my time? What is it that you want with me? What are you hoping that I can do for you? Cause if you're not looking to hire me, you're simply wasting my time. I'll be real honest about that. There's better things that you can be doing. There's better things that, that I can be doing. So if you're a planner, so great, then why are you talking to me? And sometimes they'll say, well, you know, you do this a certain kind of way. And you know, I'm looking for that. Or, you know, w we've never heard, you know, no one's ever asked us to stuff that you've asked us before.
(09:05): And, you know, we, we need something different. And, and my response is that's great. And you know, so we, we get down to the thing of fees. Now, here's the thing. A lot of financial professionals out there are on commission. And that's not a bad thing, but you have to understand that if the only way they make money is by commissions or by selling you something in you, you have to think about that is what they presenting to me in my absolute best interest. I mean, you can dress this up any kind of way you want it. But if the only way they make money is by commissions. You have to ask yourself a simple question. Is this product going to meet my needs? Is it going to take care of me and my family? Not only today, but 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road is this product they're selling me in my absolute best interest.
(09:58): And a lot of times it's in part of the, your best interest, but it's not in your absolute, overall best interest because commission products are simply limited, right? You can only put so much money in them, or it can only take so much money out of them. They only grow at a certain rate. Sometimes they don't grow at all. And here's the thing that I see when I see clients replacing life insurance policies that I've put in place. And they've been there for a long time, or they're moving their investment accounts. It's usually because of fees or something like that or something where they're uncomfortable with the market. And my question is always this. Why are you moving your accounts from me to somebody else doing the same thing? And a lot of times it's simply fees because the commission people, here's the thing. I've seen some presentations where commissioning people are beating up on the stock market.
(10:47): And the first thing they point to is fees. So let's talk about that. You guys can go on my website and download my ADV. SCC. FINRA requires full disclosure from investment advisors in regards to what they charge. Everything is laid out in my ADV. Anybody out there can figure out how much money I make or roundabout, how much money I make by looking at my ATV. It's just full disclosure. I have to tell people what I make. I can't hide what I make like commission people do. And that's the honest truth. Commissioning people hide what they make. Some of them will be honest with you and tell you how much they're going to make. I'll give you an example. If you buy a million dollar annuity, okay. And the commission is 6%. Guess what insurance company is going to pay that agent $60,000, right? Or selling you a million dollar annuity?
(11:41): Is that a bad thing? No, but then what happens is there's surrender charges that you would have to pay if you leave that annuity contract early. So for example, if it's a 10 year product, then if you terminate that product within the first 10 years, you are going to pay a surrender charge and it's on a sliding scale. It can be 10% down to 1%. So if you leave in the first year with your million dollars, you're going to give up basically 10%, which is a hundred thousand dollars because the insurance companies have to recoup their costs. So one of the things they'll tell you is, yeah, you need to move that million dollars out of the stock market because your advisor is charging you 1%. Well, 1% of a million dollars is $10,000 a year. Now, if you have a very good fiduciary advisor or a very good money manager, they darn well better be making you more than $10,000 a year.
(12:34): If they are charging you basically 1%. Right? So to me, that's okay. But one of the things that they, you know, as long as you're, you're making your client money, that's great. But if you're not making your client money, then that's a whole different ball game. So I've seen these stories where, or these illustrations, where, you know, show the client what they're going to pay over 20 years. And they beat up on the market and say, you know, you're only going to average, maybe 5% a year. No, if your investment advisor is only get you 5% a year right now, I'm going to put this phrase out there. Investments do carry risk of loss. So has performance is no indicator of future results. You got to go do your due diligence. But if your investment advisor is only making you 5% a year and you're paying more than one or 2% of whatever that is, you need to, you need to move.
(13:18): But if they are doing their job, then you have to reconsider moving all over your monies from say the market into an annuity or a fixed product. Just because you're concerned about volatility. There's all different types of ways. People are selling life insurance policies. People are selling annuities, Kubota. You're not buying something you're being sold something. And I hate to see clients get taken advantage of because of the fear that they have, or, or the greed of someone trying to sell them something. And so to me, yeah, that is garbage financial planning, because you're not getting yourself involved in things that are in your absolute best interest. Again, these are only relative in the absence of value. And that's the big reason why I see people not hiring advisors because they're concerned about fees. So going back to the, the situation I had with bringing on potential clients, a lot of times we get down to the fees and I say, well, here's what I'm going to charge you coming on board for this.
(14:22): I'm going to charge you this. Here's what I charge for, you know, manage your funds, this, and this is what you're going to pay every single year. Right? And so sometimes they didn't get the, you know, they get kind of shell shocked and they say, well, you know, we've never paid fees before. And I'm like, like, heck you have, you just didn't know you were paying it. You're paying it one way or the other, you are paying fees. And a lot of times people are in commission products like annuities and life insurance and different things like that. You are paying fees, you are paying commissions. It's just that they're being paid a different way in a way that it's not accounted to your account. You can't, you know, they don't have to give you a statement showing exactly what you were paying in fees, right?
(15:07): Because it comes out of the backside and you normally don't see that. And it's not in your statements. Right. But there is a way you can break that down and figure out what you're paying. So I don't want you receiving garbage financial advice because you don't want to pay fees. As long as your accounts are performing. And as long as you're making money, and as long as your advisor is doing, what's in your absolute best interests, it's okay to pay fees. Right? Do not let that stop you. And don't let that hinder you from entering into a great relationship. That's going to serve you really well. It may take you one, two, maybe three advisors to find somebody that you, that you love, that, you know, you can, you can have a great relationship with you guys can go to lunch. You can hang out, you can do things together, right.
(15:50): That's how it should be. If it's not, it's just simply transactional. And you're going to be jumping from one person to the next looking or the lowest fee, which is an absolute at Bothell. So if you're out there and you don't have an advisor, or you have an advisor and you don't know if what they're doing is in your absolute best interest, I'm going to tell you right now, give me a shout out 8 0 8 5 2 1 4 4 0 1. And let's talk a little bit and make sure you are not receiving garbage financial advice. Let's make sure you are not receiving products when you should be doing planning. I'm going to say that again. Make sure you are not just buying products or being sold products instead of planning. So there it is. Thank you guys for letting me rant and rave a little bit out at you today until next time everybody. 1, 2, 3 less. Get it.
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