WSJ: How to Build Your Financial Dream Team

[David S Meyers CFP]

>From the Dec 31, 2011 WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204296804577124662217267128.html

How to Build Your Financial Dream Team

Some good things in this article to review - for example, they point
out that "a good estate lawyer [] shoul dbe weighing whether you should
make moves to take advantage of the current $5 million gift-tax exclusion
-- which is scheduled to drop to $1 million in 2013 -- rather than
waiting until the end of 2012 to make recommendations."

[As an aside, that's a huge drop - and while it's easy to think that
anyone who's got enough money that this kind of thing is an issue
probably has folks like these attorneys on call - they don't - and
the $1 million exemption hits a *lot* more people.]

The article reiterates a point that I've made many times - that
just about anyone may call himself a "financial adviser" (which
is *not* the same thing as a "registered investment advisor") -
and that "insurance sales people, stockbrokers, accountants and
even lawyers might call themselves "financial advisers".

A couple of organizations mentioned in the article as places to
go to look for a good financial advisor include NAPFA, the CFP
Board, and the FPA.

Anyway, it's a nice article with some important points about
how to build a "team" - insurance, attorney, accountant, advisor.





--
David S. Meyers, CFP(R)
http://www.MeyersMoney.com
disclaimer: for educational purposes only. This is not financial advice.

[Don]

On Jan 4, 11:03 am, David S Meyers CFP <m...@meyersmoney.com> wrote:
> >From the Dec 31, 2011 WSJ:

> The article reiterates a point that I've made many times - that
> just about anyone may call himself a "financial adviser" (which
> is *not* the same thing as a "registered investment advisor") -
> and that "insurance sales people, stockbrokers, accountants and
> even lawyers might call themselves "financial advisers".

Does a financial advisor who selects his own portfolio have a fool for
a client?

[David S Meyers CFP]

Don <dwz...@telus.net> writes:
> On Jan 4, 11:03 am, David S Meyers CFP <m...@meyersmoney.com> wrote:

>> The article reiterates a point that I've made many times - that
>> just about anyone may call himself a "financial adviser" (which

> Does a financial advisor who selects his own portfolio have a fool for
> a client?

I'm not sure if you're kidding here or not. As I said, there
is no real unambiguous definition of "financial adviser". There
is a clear, regulated definition for "registered investment adviser"
(or "RIA") and representatives who work for/as an RIA, called
"investment adviser representatives". So I'm wary of any
discussion centered around the term "financial adviser".

That said, there's a certain expression about "eating one's
own cooking". By no means is it reasonable to expect that
the portfolio an adviser puts together for himself should be
the same as a portfolio he puts together for any particular
client, any more than any two clients should have the same
portfolios. If an adviser can be trusted to put together
a portfolio for his clients, I should hope that he's capable
of putting together a portfolio for himself.

As in many things, it often helps to have a third party
do a sanity check. But this is not generally like the
proverbial attorney who has a fool for a client, or like
a surgeon trying to operate on himself.