7 Surprising Ways a Financial Advisor Can Transform Your Life for the Better
Written by
Jordan Rosenfeld
Edited by
Cory Dudak
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Financial advisors may seem like professionals that only wealthy people hire, but that’s not truly the case. They can be especially helpful earlier in your career or life to help you set important goals and stay on track financially.
In addition to the obvious financial benefits, there are some surprising ways that financial advisors can help you transform your life for the better. Mike Salierno, founder and financial planner at Eterna Generational Planners, a Northwestern Mutual wealth management company, shared some of those lesser-known perks below.
Provide Global View of Your Finances
A financial advisor can serve a unique role that goes beyond mere investing advice or asset management, Salierno said. He advised looking for for someone who doesn’t take a “siloed approach,” but rather meets you where you are with your specific financial needs by looking at the entire picture of your finances and stage of life.
They can also help you look at the near-term of your finances. “We focus on things that are coming up for our clients and make sure that we’re meeting them where they are today,” Salierno said.
Help Figure Out Your Life Goals
Though financial advisors may appear to be focusing only on your finances, Salierno said they’re actually helping you to clarify your life’s ambitions. What are goals you have for your personal life? What trips do you want to take? What experiences do you want to share with family, and why? “A lot of times, we’re spending time with our clients on [these questions],” he said.
Explore the Psychology of Money
A big part of Salierno’s job, he said, is having important conversations about his clients’ relationship to money — not just now, but historically. “How has money for them growing up shaped their viewpoint on money today? We really want to know a lot about [the] psychological aspects of our clients versus just the financial aspects, and that all then goes into their plan,” he said.
Reframe Your Relationship With Money
Another important role that Salierno feels those in his profession play is helping people see money as the tool that it is. “Money is the tool to get from point A to point B. For a lot of our clients, I think a lot of people in general, money isn’t everything, so we can’t make it everything. The conversation has to be more around what do you want money to do for you?” he said.
Salierno’s ultimate goal is to help his clients figure out how to use money to focus on what is important in their lives, both now and in the future.
Tell You What You Need (But May Not Want) To Hear
Salierno described one of the hardest parts of a financial planner’s job (specifically when the financial planner is a fiduciary, which means essentially treating their clients’ dollars as their own) as “[telling] them what they need to hear and not always what they want to hear. That’s a hard thing to do.”
This is where a financial advisor’s role crosses over somewhat into a counseling role, he said. “Sometimes we just need to help clients understand the actions that you’re doing today are not in line with the financial plan or the goals that you had set out in our initial conversations.”
Act as a Sounding Board
Salierno has found that a sign of a successful relationship with his clients is when they’re reaching out to him for a variety of different reasons to make decisions. “For example, we have clients that will call us and say, ‘Hey, I’m at a car dealership. I’m about to make a decision on this vehicle. Do you mind looking over the deal? Do you mind making sure that this is something I should be doing?'” It’s these very conversations that help clients feel at ease and help validate their decisions now, as well as in the future.
Become a Trusted Friend
If enough trust has been built up, the relationship between clients and financial advisors can act much like a friendship, Salierno said. “We want to make sure that with our clients, we’re at that level where we can see each other at a public place and enjoy talking about non-financial things for 20 minutes together.” He and colleagues regularly invite their clients to non-financial planning related events to get to know them better.
“We want them to know us personally, as well, because when you do this the right way, it should be a 30-plus year relationship,” he explained.
Salierno stressed the importance of finding a financial advisor who is right for you, which might come best through a referral from a friend or family member.
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