My Personal Journey into Becoming a Financial Educator

July 23, 2010

Have you ever wandered into a new coffee shop or off the beaten path restaurant only to discover, “Hey, this place is incredible!” and have that place become your all time favorite?  That’s a bit like my path to Financial Finesse.

My first job after college was as a “financial consultant” at Merrill Lynch and I use quotation marks because really, in my early 20’s, could I have really been a consultant to anyone regarding financial matters?  I mean, I had never bought a house, raised a family, worked full time and my “life experience” was a bit thin at that point.  I did, though, have a budding interest in the financial world.  I paid my way through college with a combination of work and loans, and when I thought I was not going to be able to get a loan for a big chunk of my last year of school expenses, I worked 3 jobs over the summer and earned enough to pay for the whole year.  When the student loan request was approved and a check showed up in my mailbox, I decided to take my interest in the financial markets and use that check to buy my first stock.  I did a lot of research and eventually bought a stock.  It performed very well and I was able to sell it later at a profit and bought my 1st new car with the proceeds.  (Not the best decision ever, but I was young & the car was new!)

I soon realized that I was not the best fit for the role of financial consultant.  My style was to put as much thought into each client’s individual needs as I put into my own, and this didn’t necessarily translate into the highest revenue possible for the firm.  During a review of my sales production, my branch manager made a comment intended as an insult but taken as a legitimate thought.  He said “If you ever want to be a success in this business, you’ll spend less time with each client.  You’re being more like a financial planner than a stockbroker with the way you waste so much time getting to know your clients.”  I thought, “Hmmmmmmm. Financial planner?  Yeah, that sounds more like what I want to do.”  I had just accidentally stumbled upon the term for what I wanted to do for a living.  (At least for the next 15-20 years, since my dreams of being an NFL quarterback or Major League Baseball 3rd baseman were derailed by my absolute lack of athletic talent….)

So, I left Merrill Lynch, took a bunch of classes and exams, and became a Certified Financial Planner™ while working for a regional bank and learning how to actually give meaningful advice to people. Then I managed the Financial Planning department for a full service brokerage firm and helped a bunch of our stockbrokers do comprehensive financial planning rather than simply sell product solutions.  After that, I started a small financial planning and investment advisory firm, which was later sold to a competitor.  Along the way, I always provided advice and guidance to clients about almost every financial topic I could imagine.  But, something still was not totally right with the way I was compensated for that advice and it bugged me.  I gave advice only to clients who could afford to pay for it through a rather large fee or by having assets managed by the firms where I worked.  I thought that everyone, not just the wealthy, should be able to work with a Certified Financial Planner™.  In fact, many of my colleagues and I discussed how it seemed that we gave advice to people who most likely would have financial success with or without our advice.  We simply maximized their financial effectiveness. But, the people who needed it the most were the ones who could least afford it.  It was a paradox, and many of us volunteered our time to work pro-bono in some capacity, but it didn’t feel like that was going to ever be enough to matter.  Just as I was thinking about the differences between fee based financial planning & asset management based planning models vs. something different, like financial education or financial literacy, I learned about Financial Finesse.  We offer guidance and education—without a single product to sell you—through a team of CFP®s that I’m proud to call colleagues, mentors, friends.

In my blog posts, I’ll ramble on endlessly (at least that’s my kids’ take on it) about what it’s like to be a part of an amazing team, financial decisions & human behavior, thoughts about current events in the financial world, and anything else that makes me want to sit behind a keyboard and type.