'Some want solutions without effort’ says Limerick financial advisor

THERE's nothing that annoys me more than when people either turn up late or turn up unprepared, or both, to a planned meeting they are going to have with me.

And that’s exactly what happened a couple of months ago with two people I had planned to meet which was at their request by the way. They had a couple of other things in common as well. Both said their finances weren’t in a good place, which I guess was the reason they wanted to meet me, and the second thing they had in common was, there was no apology for being late.

Let’s get over the rudeness of the no apology because that didn’t bother me, but I would have thought that if they believed their finances weren’t in a good place they’d be waiting outside the meeting room well before the meeting was due to start so they could make best use of this opportunity and also to make best use of theirs and my time.

And you’d also think they’d be prepared and have all of their documents to hand and have the questions they’d want to ask me written down if they were serious about getting a handle on their finances. And more importantly you would think they would want to know what output they’d want delivered from their engagement with me.

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And these are not unusual things to ask of people and about 99% of the people I meet always come well prepared.

And as I’m writing this I just remembered that there was one other thing these two people had in common and that was both wanted a magic solution to their problems and they wanted someone else to deliver that solution for them. It seemed to me that both didn’t want to take any ownership or responsibility for how their finances got into the state they were in, and I’m not sure either would follow through and make the changes required.

And that’s just a hunch of mine, I actually have no evidence to back the claim up. Anyway, we were supposed to have a 30 minute meeting but they were each 10 minutes late so it only lasted 20 minutes because I had others to see. And the 20 minutes weren’t very productive because they had no information to hand.

One of them for example wanted to know if he could retire at 59. But he couldn’t tell me how much was in his current pension fund, he didn’t know how much he or his employer were contributing each month, he had no idea what the value of other pension funds he had previously accumulated were, and he had no idea of what his present monthly spending was.
How can anyone answer his question without knowing the answers to these questions. And the simple answer is you can’t.

And it wasn’t as if we hadn’t prepped him in advance of his meeting because we did. We sent out everyone a reminder email one week before their meeting asking them to provide high level information to us in advance of the meeting so that I could do my own prep work. We also ask them to share information or documents that they believe would be relevant to our meeting.

And if they can’t send them on in advance, at least have them with them on the day. And we also ask people to outline what output they wanted delivered from our meeting which again would help me with my pre work preparation so when we meet I’m hitting the ground running for them and I’m delivering the advice they want.

And when we do this what happens at the end of the meeting is, a call to action, which means they have to follow through on the advice I give them because if they do, then their objective of, for example, paying off their mortgage early or retiring with a certain income level, or paying off debt or planning for a future child’s education costs or planning to buy or build a property in the next 2 or 3 years or getting a better return on their savings, will happen.

Unfortunately my call to action for these two people wasn’t about having a concrete plan or listing what they have to do, it was a request to get information from them that they should have had already. And this request was a very simple one and really not difficult and both of them knew it.

And guess what? Two months on and I still haven’t heard from them. The day these two people were late and unprepared, I met eight others who were.

And let me tell you about one of them and how their outcome was so different. She had two very specific goals she wanted to achieve which she shared with me and they were: She wanted to become mortgage free in 11 years, when she was 55, and when she reaches 60 and if she decided not to work again, how can she make this happen without ever worrying about running out of money.

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She had her mortgage and pension and monthly budget documents with her, so we knew amounts outstanding, current values, monthly spending etc. which allowed us to put together a plan to achieve both of her stated goals.
I looked at her numbers and I identified what needed to be done and now she had absolute clarity about what she needed to do. She didn’t have to second guess the plan because she could see the logic behind it and more importantly she could see that if she followed through with it and did what I said, the outcomes she wanted to make happen would become a reality.

And yes, there were going to be trade-offs, but she was now laser focused and she was going to make it happen. She just needed someone to tell her what she needed to do, that’s all. She left our meeting feeling great.

So, what’s the moral of my story or probably my rant? Look, I absolutely understand that for some people, meeting with a financial adviser can be intimidating and people can get nervous because they think they’ll be judged about how their finances are and they may feel embarrassed and I get all of that but you’ve got to try see past these feelings if you have them.

And whether you arrange a meeting with a financial adviser or whether it’s a service provided by your employer and it’s something you think you would benefit from, then in preparation of that meeting here are some tips that I’d say you should take notice of, and they are:

Be on time
I was listening to a Tom Hanks interview recently and he was asked about advice he would give to aspiring young actors and one of the things he said he always did, was turn up on time. And when asked why that was so important, he said two things (a) it’s just good manners and (b) if he didn’t he wouldn’t get paid.

Think ahead about what you want to achieve from the meeting
What are your goals and what advice do you want to get from the adviser? These are questions you need to ask yourself before you meet with anyone. There’s nothing better for someone like me when someone comes in with specific goals because now we can see what needs to be done to achieve them.

Bring documents with you
Bring whatever documents with you that you think will help the adviser you are meeting. You want them to understand what you have and what you haven’t. So, bring whatever you think will help them understand your current situation and that could be bank statements, a loan agreement, a mortgage statement, a pension statement, insurance policies and so on.

Make a list of what questions you want to ask
Take some time out to list whatever questions you want answered and write them down so you don’t forget them. And if you have a partner ask them what questions they’d like to ask. And there’s never a stupid question and don’t think there ever is, so ask questions and it doesn’t matter if you think they are trivial, just ask. Don’t leave a meeting thinking I should have asked him or her that question. And if you don’t understand something the adviser says, ask them to explain it again to you.

Take notes
It’s really important that once the meeting is over, you leave feeling you’ve contributed to the meeting and you got the best out of it and all of your questions were answered. And some of the advice you receive may be very important to your financial future which is why I would strongly recommend you take notes so you know exactly what was said and what steps you need to take and what impact the advice could have on your finances.

So, write down some of the key learnings and the ‘to dos’ the adviser may have given you, so you are absolutely clear what was said and what needs to be done. If you don’t, over time it might be hard to recall what the adviser spoke about i.e. what amount they said I should be contributing to my pension, what mortgage provider has the best rates, what amount should be in my emergency fund and so on.

And I’d say send yourself an email of the notes you’ve taken so that it you mislaid your paper notes, you can find them on the email you send yourself. And be on time!

Liam Croke is MD of Harmonics Financial Ltd, based in Plassey. He can be contacted at liam@harmonics.ie or www.harmonics.ie