Rattiner's Secrets of Financial Planning

CHAPTER 6Dispensing Advice on Investing

There are many issues that run through both planners' and clients' minds today concerning investing. The 2020s will not be like any decade we have seen previously. Part of that reasoning is that the world has changed so much that things are not on automatic pilot in the way that we had become accustomed to. There is too much impatience and people use shorter barometers for measurement than before. Further, at the beginning of this decade, with COVID playing a major disruptive role, and other future uncertainties, people are concerned about investment markets changing too rapidly. Unfortunately, people tend to be reactive rather than proactive. This chapter is not going to focus on investment types; there are plenty of great books and super class curriculums covering that. The concepts explained here will include the term investor more so than the client. This chapter will focus on those issues you need to have a handle on to counsel your clients through the investment planning process.

The problem with today's world is everyone acts a little too quickly, and based on social media news and other reports they may have heard, they wish to change their approaches even more rapidly instead of sticking with an appropriate strategy and making modifications where planned and where necessary.

So, if there is so much uncertainty in the world of investing, the question becomes, what do you do when a strategy performs poorly? We have generally had ...