What Do Women Want from Financial Advisors? 
(and is it really that different from what men want?)

Earlier this month, Ameriprise Financial® released the results of its New Retirement Mindscape II study examining gender differences in attitudes toward, and planning for, retirement. Of particular interest to All Financial Advisors: What women want in their financial advisors.

The study found that 46% of women have sought retirement advice from a financial advisor; only 38% of men have. And the more time their financial advisors take to educate them, the happier women are: 63% say that is a highly important attribute in a financial advisor, while only 52% of men say the same.

Even more women — 69% — want a financial advisor who “provides a knowledgeable point of view,” and 58% of women are looking for financial advisors who will coach them on reaching their goals for retirement. Finally, 55% of women want a financial advisor to tailor financial guidance specifically for them.

The portion of the Ameriprise Financial study dealing with attitudes toward financial planners seems to clearly indicate women want to work with comprehensive financial advisors — just like those you can find here at All Financial Advisors. A comprehensive financial advisor will typically take time to educate clients on financial matters pertaining to them, coach them on defining their retirement goals and on following a financial plan, and provide a customized plan of action.

How about you? What are you looking for in a financial advisor? It’s the perfect time of year to think about your financial goals — and to find the right financial planner for you! Start today. Find a financial advisor in your area and get ready to start the new year off right!

If you’re retired with little or no savings, mounting debts, and no financial advisor, you’re not alone.

According to the CESI Debt Solutions survey of over 200 retirees, the results of which were released yesterday, almost 40% of retired Americans have added to their credit-card debt since retiring. What’s more, they aren’t worried about paying it back before they die.

But even more sobering is the survey’s finding that over 50% of respondents have saved less than $50,000 (with many reporting that they have nothing in savings). Remember, these are retired folks!

CESI Executive Vice President Neil Ellington stated to CNBC that retirees who are accumulating debt likely feel like it’s too late to do anything about it, so they decide not to even try to get their credit cards paid off. He also observed that many retirees feel like they’ve earned some of the finer things in life, even if they have to put those things (travel, for instance) on credit cards. And finally, he explained that retirees who are in debt don’t know what to do about it, and they’re ashamed to ask for help.

All Financial Advisors thinks there’s a simple solution for those who are retired and in debt: Talk to a financial advisor. Comprehensive financial advisors are trained to help people reduce debt and build savings. And judging by the results of the CESI survey, that’s exactly what retirees need to do.

If you’re in this boat — retired, in debt, nothing saved and no financial advisor — there’s no need to be ashamed. Fee-only financial advisors know it’s not easy to bare your financial soul, but that’s what they’re there for. Only when your financial advisor knows everything about your financial life, including your debt, savings, insurance, estate plan, assets and more, can he or she come up with a plan you can use to actually pay off your debt, build your savings, and live out your golden years free of financial worry.

Has growing debt and dwindling savings made your retirement difficult? You can take the first steps toward changing your situation right now. Search for trustworthy financial advisors in your area. Interview two or three (if you’re not sure what questions to ask, check out our FAQs). See if one of the financial advisors you interview feels right to you, and hire that one. You can live out the rest of your life without the burden of financial stress. Let the financial advisors here at All Financial Advisors help.

Financial Life Stages: Just Starting Out

We’ve discussed how financial advisors can help anyone, regardless of income. Now let’s take a look at why you should consider hiring a financial advisor even if you’re just starting out in your financial life.

Maybe you just graduated from college; maybe you’re in your first real job in your chosen career field; maybe you’re newly married. In any case, you’re beginning your financial life - and maybe you’ve never thought about a financial advisor. But could you use the help of a professional financial counselor?

Absolutely. Whether you’re learning to live independently for the first time, considering participating in your employer’s retirement plan or jointly trying to manage two incomes, a financial advisor can help you avoid pitfalls and handle your finances the right way from the very beginning.

Financial advisors don’t just give investment advice or manage the portfolios of the very wealthy. They can also help you establish a budget, determine how to maximize your employee benefits, help you define your financial goals (and recommend savings and investing plans to meet those goals), and even give you expert guidance on setting up life insurance and other estate planning basics.

If you’re young and considering hiring a financial advisor, you have a golden opportunity to get your finances in order right from the get-go. In fact, by taking the time now to evaluate financial advisors and focus on your financial future, you’re setting yourself up for financial security later in life. As we noted in our post on the ING Retirement Research Institute survey, a combined 79% of Americans with financial advisors give themselves grades of “A” and “B” when asked how prepared they are for retirement. Those aren’t insignificant numbers, and they indicate that working with a financial professional can help you feel confident about the future.

Right now is the perfect time to get started, no matter where you are in life. Search the independent All Financial Advisors directory now to find financial advisors in your area. Choose two or three to talk with before you make your decision: Get a feel for whether you could use their services and see which one might be a good fit for you. We applaud you for taking control of your finances early in life!

How Many Americans Utilize Financial Advisors?  Only 25%…

On Friday, the ING Retirement Research Institute released results of a survey that questioned 1,000+ American workers about their retirement plans.

The survey’s findings reveal a whopping 76% of Americans participating in their employers’ retirement plans don’t have financial advisors.

And nearly as many — 73% — have no comprehensive financial plan for retirement (…perhaps because they’re not working with financial advisors…  hint hint).

At the same time, the ING survey found that 52% of people with financial advisors, when asked how they would grade the job they’re doing in preparing for retirement, gave themselves a “B,” while 27% of people working with financial advisors gave themselves an “A.”

Based on the results of the ING survey, it certainly appears that working with a financial advisor helps people feel more confident about their retirement plans and their financial future — and with good reason.

Financial advisors like those listed here on AllFinancialAdvisors.com have the knowledge and experience to help the rest of us manage and grow our money.  If more consumers knew exactly what financial advisors do, how they get paid, and how to choose a financial planner, we might see much higher percentages of Americans working with financial advisors.

That’s why AllFinancialAdvisors.com provides an extensive FAQ section, along with blog posts like this one focused on helping readers feel confident in hiring and working with financial advisors.  We want you to have access to the information you need to find the financial planner that’s right for you.

We firmly believe working with a financial advisor can help you reach your goals and have the financial future you dream of. Why not get started now?

The Time to Act is Now!  Search the AllFinancialAdvisors.com directory, fill out the simple, confidential, no-obligation form, and see what professional financial advice can do for you.

We hopes this helps!

Rebalancing Your Retirement Investments:

No one has been sheltered by the latest economic downturn, including your retirement portfolio.  This may be the opportunity of a lifetime to rebalance your investments to take advantage of the future upswing of a recover.

Rebalancing your portfolio should be done with a money manager, financial advisor and/or a financial planning professional, as it is truly a difficult task to accomplish on your own.

You can do most of the leg work first, however, by evaluating your existing investments and assets, then present them to your existing or your newly found financial advisor and discuss what you want to change, alter, or liquidate.

First, why do you need to rebalance?

Typically you need to rebalance your portfolio because of your age, your risk tolerance has changed for any number of reasons (see latest economic crisis), or the relative values in your portfolio have changed and no longer meet your desired asset and risk allocation.

Age
In your late 20’s, you were probably inclined to invest in high risk, high yield, but once you are closer to retirement age, converting most of your assets into more liquid forms will probably be your primary goal.  Deciding and weighing the risks and benefits of these type changes are best suited for a financial advisor who has a diverse client base and a varied background of experiences to draw from.

Risk Tolerance
Again, when you were younger and still had a long-term time frame to invest for retirement, you were willing to tolerate higher risk. On the other hand, an investor in their 50’s who is counting on using their retirement fund as a reliable source of income might not be comfortable with a large decline in their portfolio’s value, even for a short period of time. It’s time to lower the perceived risk.

Asset Allocation
There are really only two choices to rebalance your portfolio’s asset allocation: either make direct adjustments by reallocating funds from one asset class to another (as you grow closer to retirement age you may divert some of your stocks and properties into something more liquid), or add new stable investments (such as bonds or cash) to the portfolio.

Any number of high-quality money management advisors within our independent directory ( All Financial Advisors ) can help.  Maybe selecting 2-3 to talk with before you make your decision; will help you get a feel for each financial advisor’s experiences, background, credentials, client to advisor ratios, etc. 

We hope this helps!

Financial Advisors: Not Just for the Wealthy

If you’ve held off from hiring a financial advisor because you just don’t have any money for someone to help you manage, it might be time to change your perspective. In fact, a Fee-only financial advisor or RIA can help you set your financial goals, create a plan for actually achieving those goals in your lifetime, and implementing that plan.

The fact is, you’ll need to save the same amount of money to put a child through college as you would if you were bringing home a few hundred thousand a year. It might be easier to save if your monthly income was five figures, but it can still be done even if right now you’re struggling to get by.

And that’s exactly where a financial advisor can help get you on track. Whether you have children who will someday go to college or not, you DO have financial goals (even if you’ve never sat down to think about them). Retirement is a financial goal. So is a vacation, a new car, an emergency savings account or a job change. And they all require planning. If it seems like your income will never be high enough to afford any of those things, we could argue you need a financial advisor every bit as much as a wealthy person does–because a financial advisor can actually help you save, and grow your savings, to meet goals you might otherwise only dream of.

Let’s face it: If you knew a lot about saving, investing and managing money, you’d already be doing it. But many Americans aren’t, and, like them, you might have no idea where to start. A good Fee-only financial advisor will sit down with you, analyze where you are right now and where you want to go, and develop a solid plan to get you there (provided you follow the plan). He or she will follow up with you periodically to see where you are, talk about what’s changed in your financial status or goals, and adjust the plan if needed.

Those are services you can use whether you’re already wealthy or not. And your chances of becoming wealthy–or at least more comfortably well-off than you are right now–will be greater if you have a financial professional in your corner.

 * * * Many of our advisors are members of the Financial Planning Association (FPA) and also the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA: the nation’s leading organization promoting Fee-Only comprehensive financial planning). Using the services of a qualified financial advisor (to help you identify the strengths and weaknesses in your financial picture) will ensure you can retire comfortably! NOTE: Experts recommend contacting 2-3 financial advisory firms, so that one may compare/contrast each firm, thus making the best-qualified choice.

Grow Your Money Without Risk: CDs, Money Market Accounts etc.

If you’re new to investing, or if you’re getting close to meeting major financial goals like retirement, you may be looking for ways to invest without much–or any–risk of loss.  Good news: There are low-risk and risk-free investments readily available to you.  Check these options with your personal financial advisor first…  Some of the safest are:

• Certificates of Deposit.  CDs don’t give you a huge return on your investment, but you’re not likely to lose money on them unless the bank or credit union goes belly-up.  With a CD, you earn money through interest, just as you do with a regular savings account.  But CDs pay a higher interest rate because you agree to let the bank hold the money you’ve invested for a specific amount of time. The longer the term of the CD, the higher the interest you’ll earn.  Once the CD matures, the bank or credit union will automatically roll the money over into a new CD, unless you give instructions that it’s to be deposited into your savings or checking account or mailed directly to you. 

 
The drawback to a CD is that you’re tying your money up for the term of the CD. If you need to get your hands on it quickly before the CD matures, you can count on paying a penalty.  But if you know for sure you won’t need the money, a CD is a safe investment that can produce decent returns. 

• Money Market Accounts.  A money market account is a way to keep your cash safe and growing, but it is more readily accessible than a CD in case of an emergency. When you deposit funds into a money market account, the bank uses it to invest in fairly safe financial instruments like CDs and Treasury bills.  In exchange for the privilege of using your money to make its profitable investments, the bank pays you a higher interest rate (in the form of a dividend) than it would on a standard savings account.  But because of that higher rate of return, a money market account typically has a minimum balance requirement and a limit on the number of withdrawals you can make from it. As long as you open your money market account at a bank, it is FDIC insured. 

 
Our next Blog Post on AllFinancialAdvisors.com will focus on additional ways to conduct lower-risk investing.  An example Treasury Securities.  Make sure to ask your current financial advisor or financial planning professional what steps you should take to reduce your investment risks.  Thanks for checking back with us… Cheers.

If you are not currently working with a financial planner and would like to search for financial advisors with a specialization in Money Management  ENTER YOUR ZIPCODE in the Search Bar ABOVE.  Best wishes in finding the most qualified Financial Advisor in your area.

Obama Signs The Financial Reform Act Into Law

“I proposed a set of reforms to empower consumers and investors, to bring the shadowy deals that caused this crisis into the light of day, and to put a stop to taxpayer bailouts once and for all. Because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes.” -President Obama (Wednesday: July 21, 2010)

With those words, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law.

Most Americans and their financial advisors and/or financial planners would generally agree the American consumer’s taxes shouldn’t be used as a safety net by big business, but can we count on the new law to ensure Main Street never again has to pay for Wall Street’s risk-taking?  It appears so, although we won’t feel the effects of the law until it is put into practice—and that will have to wait until the creation of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).  Whoa… another federal “Bureau”.  Yikes.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, however, warned the new law could further weaken American businesses: “Such a broad, sweeping bill epitomizes a law with unintended consequences that creates more uncertainty for American businesses,” said Chamber President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue.

So let’s look at what we do know:  Under the new law, the government will have the ability to liquidate large financial institutions that fail, and other large institutions will pick up the tab.  From a consumer standpoint, that certainly sounds better than a taxpayer bailout.  Financial institutions that bundle mortgages and then sell them off will now have to keep a 5% interest in those bundles, which should discourage them from making and immediately dumping risky loans.  Maybe the percentage should have been 15-20% interest…

Finally, the new law creates a Financial Services Oversight Council (FSOC), a watchdog group composed of existing government officials…  Its primary job: to watch for gathering storm clouds on the horizon of the financial services marketplace, sound the alarm when regulatory gaps are identified, require supervision of non-bank financial companies whose imminent failure threatens U.S. financial stability, and shut down risky operations by large financial institutions.

We’ll keep the spotlight turned on the new financial reform law here on the AllFinancialAdvisors.com blog in the coming weeks and months, so bookmark us and check back to learn more about the law, all the palyers involved and its expected positive and negative effects.

NOTE: If you are already working with a financial advisor, wealth manager or financial planning professional – ask them what’s their take on this new law and its implications for your personal financial planning.   If you are not currently working with a money manager or financial advisory firm – you can start your search now — by entering your Zip Code at the top of our home page.   Best wishes in finding the best financial advisor for you.

Financial Reform and You:
Credit Card Changes

The new financial reform bill signed into law on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 cracks down on predatory lending practices and includes consumer protections when it comes to credit cards. If you use credit cards, these changes may save you money—and one of the new provisions might encourage you to stop using credit cards altogether.

Specifically, that’s the new rule prohibiting credit card companies for charging businesses extra “swipe fees” over and above the cost of processing credit and debit card transactions. Because businesses will have some cost savings as a result of that change, they’ll be allowed to offer discounts for cash transactions. It would create more work for businesses to charge different prices for different kinds of transactions, but some might just do it.
 
If you are not currently utilizing a financial advisor, we encourage you to search our comprehensive database of top financial advisors and financial planning professionals within All Financial Advisors.  They can help you to effectively invest for the future and decide how to best handle any outstanding debt on your credit cards that you might currently have.

The new law also allows privately owned stores to require a minimum sale of $10 for credit card transactions. So if you are used to paying for your $3 coffee with a credit card, you might want to consider paying with cash instead (or drinking a lot more coffee in one sitting).

Do you typically carry a balance on your credit card?  The new law will prohibit credit card companies from raising the rate on that balance. It will also require lenders to simplify contracts—meaning no more hidden fees and penalties.

It’s an unfortunate reality that there are plenty of folks who have been easy marks for predatory lenders.  The new financial reform law creates the Office of Financial Literacy, intended to educate Americans on saving and on the ins and outs of credit, loans, and other financial basics.  Within All Financial Advisors we will also provide on-going education and relevant articles pertaining to financial planning and how financial advisors work with consumer households.

Finally, the law allows state law to pre-empt Federal financial laws.  That’s good news if you live in a state whose consumer protection laws are tougher than Federal laws.

This post wraps up our series on how the new financial reform and consumer protection law will affect you.  Next week, we’ll hear from the other side and get reaction to the law from inside the banking industry.

Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act:
What Does it Mean for You?

On Wednesday July 21st, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (H.R. 4173) into law.  Today we’ll take a look at a few ways in which the Act could affect you.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (H.R. 4173), it’s sweeping legislation intended to overhaul financial regulations in the U.S.

According to OpenCongress.org, H.R. 4173 is “A bill to promote the financial stability of the United States by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end ‘too big to fail,’ to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts, to protect consumers from abusive financial services practices, and for other purposes.” If you’re ambitious, you can read the full text of the bill here.

Ignoring for now the murky “other purposes” referred to above, let’s dive right into the consumer protection provisions of H.R. 4173.

For starters, the Act will give you additional opportunities to get free access to your credit report.  If you apply for a loan and end up with a higher interest rate because of an adverse action (previously being denied a loan, for example) in your credit report, you’ll have the right to receive a free copy of your credit report.  Today, you can only receive that free credit report once a year (as well as each time you’re actually denied credit), so H.R. 4173 will extend the circumstances under which you can access your credit report for free.

H.R. 4173 extends to mortgages as well. Under H.R. 4173, mortgage companies will be required to fully document your income.  Stated income loans, with their corresponding higher interest rates, will likely be a thing of the past. And say goodbye to prepayment penalties.  Although you likely were avoiding loans with prepayment penalties all along, they’ll no longer be allowed, which will enable more consumers to refinance without getting gouged.  Unfortunately, some experts are predicting H.R. 4173 will result in higher mortgage rates and down payments (those lenders have to make money somehow) and make it harder to qualify for a home loan.

It may not be perfect, but the intentions behind H.R. 4173 are to ensure all Americans are protected from predatory and dishonest financial practices.

That, at least, is a noble goal—no matter which side of the aisle you’re on.

Come back to AllFinancialAdvisors.com later, when we’ll look at how the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will take on the big credit card companies.