Investing: Why Experience Matters

One of the treasures I own is a set of my grandmother’s cookbooks from the 1960s and 1970s. They are full of newspaper clippings with recipes and notations regarding whether she tried the recipe or not. They are very retro: the kind of books you would find in a thrift store that only sold vintage bell bottoms and butterfly-collared shirts. One of them– the Better Homes & Gardens Meat Cookbook (1967) (yes, there are …
We’ve written before about the often-cited Vanguard “Advisor’s Alpha” study. That research documents the data showing that a good financial advisor can add on average a full 3% in incremental return to a client’s investment portfolio annually. The study then breaks that 3% down into its component parts, showing that the biggest gains–a full 150 basis points–come from effective behavioral coaching that serves to prevent clients from engaging in detrimental investing behaviors (think buying high …
A hot topic in the financial advisory space—or maybe more accurately a sore subject—is the high rate of attrition of heirs when clients die and leave their managed wealth to beneficiaries. We have discussed this topic before, noting that a host of factors are at play including critical features like communication with the family-economic unit, relationship building, and personal differences resulting from a generational divide between the heirs and the advisor. But at the end …
Race through your work, and loudly proclaim you are finished. Such is the pattern of some elementary school students (and adults, by the way). You’ll undoubtedly see this tonight: kids racing up to a door, quickly getting their reward (and hopefully saying thank you…or at the least, “trick or treat”), and then they are off to the next task, the next house. A wise teacher in one of my children’s classes is teaching that in …
  If clients are to increase their likelihood of becoming wealthy, they have to understand and change how they behave with respect to areas that are, perhaps, a little more personal. Clients that focus intently on what others buy and consistently want the latest and greatest in possessions (such as technology or accessories) are less likely to build wealth over time. Social Indifference predicts net worth regardless of age, income, or how much wealth one …

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