Is Your Portfolio Aligned With Your Life

Last week Tony and D kicked off a two part series on four areas your advisor should have on their radar to help maximize your growth. In part two they cover the next two and get very practical about what real planning looks like when your life changes fast.

First they talk about alignment. Your portfolio should match your lifestyle, your income needs, and your real world transitions, especially if you are a business owner selling a company, changing jobs, or moving into retirement. They explain why a plan cannot be rigid, why returns are not linear, and why you want someone you can treat like a personal CFO to help take emotion out and run the numbers when big decisions show up.

Then they close with a simple question. Is your advisor a specialist or a generalist. If the advice feels generic, the investments look like a one size fits all model, or the answers sound like they are going in circles, that is a signal to ask better questions and demand a strategy built around your situation.

Transcript

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Last week we started our two-part series of the four areas your advisors should have on their radar to help maximize your growth. Today we're going to talk about the next two. All right, Tony, welcome back to part two. How are you doing? Good, man. Good, good. Just getting through the holidays, baby. Another week in the books. Almost made it to 2026. I feel like I'm just going to sew a Santa hat on top of my head and walk around that way for about a good week and a half. All right, we got episode two here about what might have got you here in your financial life might not get you there to the next level, to the more sophistication as you accumulate more money or figure out what you want to do with your money as your money has been growing over the last few years in the stock market. So last week we talked about having your advisor ignoring the big picture, whether that's taxes, estate, business strategies, taxes, legacy planning. There's a lot of check marks there to have a holistic plan outside of just your investments because it's more than that. And then the next one was there's no strategy for any major events, whether they're themes happening in the stock market or economic events. What's the game plan? What happened? What did you do when this happened? What did you do for your clients? Those are good questions to ask them to know, hey, were they prepared and were they active? So this week, while we're going to finish up the next two and the next topic we're going to talk about is your advisor isn't aligning your portfolio with your life and your lifestyle. So whether you're a business owner, think about that. I have a business. I'm ready to hang up my hat and liquidate my business. Well, there's a lot that comes along with that. Taxes, how do you navigate through that? Are there tax strategies to mitigate the big tax bill that would come along with getting a big check from liquidating a business? What about what happens when you get the money? What's the strategy to put that money to work? And because it might be a lot more money than you've ever had, you know, as you're a business owner, you know, you might be cashflow rich, but you didn't have asset rich, right? There's a, there's a now, now there's a new different level. And then lifestyle, man, like you were used to going to work and building a business. Like there might be a time where like, Hey, you have to email yourself because you ain't getting any more emails, right? Can you, can you handle the transition from being a business owner to being retired or moving on or doing something, you know, a little bit less, um, you know, like less involved as being a business owner. So that's just one area could be changing jobs, family dynamic, but what do you, what do you think, D? Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's, um, you know, like we talked about last week, uh, everyone's situation is different. So just building, uh, a cookie cutter portfolio where, you know, it, it may or may not be taking into account everything that's going on in your life. Um, it is an issue, you know, I I've seen that a lot with, with people, uh, you know, um, that I'm just talking to for the first time, kind of just coming in with, you know, the old, you know, 60, 40 type portfolio, you know, even though their, their age might not be appropriate for that, or they might, uh, need an income stream or whatever the case may be. Um, you know, it's, it's imperative that you have not only your income set up for retirement, but also your longterm asset planning. Um, like we talked about last week, there are, there are things that can pop up in the market that maybe no one's expecting that can cause it to, to, you know, go off the rails. And the last thing that you want in retirement is to have to adjust your lifestyle because the stock market went down. Right. Um, I, I've been, I haven't necessarily been having that conversation with a lot of clients, but, um, just reminding them that the market doesn't go up by 20% every year. Um, so, you know, obviously all the plans have been looking great. They've all been, you know, increasing their, their Monte Carlo scores. Um, so everything's going well. Um, but just kind of reminding people, Hey, it doesn't always go like this. Um, so, you know, it's great that we're ahead. Um, but you know, maybe we take a few chips off the table and move it here. Yeah. I mean, it's like you ever, you ever been on a bridge and you're like, Oh my God, it's moving, right? It's heaving. Like, Oh my God, things going to snap. It's going to snap in half, you know, you know, as a, an ex engineer of some sort, but, uh, like things, things cannot be completely rigid, right? No, you don't build a financial plan with it, just giving you a 7% rate of return and watch it go straight up. Like it's not, it's not a linear event. It's, it's, it's dynamic. So, you know, if, even if we have a negative year, we have to look back and be like, Hey, the last three years, like it needs to heap. It needs to let off steam. It needs to recalibrate to move forward. So we have to understand that. But honestly, at the end of the day, I keep on, I say this a lot to a lot of clients is that when you're working with me, I am now your personal CFO. You can run any financial question by me, whether you're going to buy a house. How do we, how do I structure this? I got an existing house. I want to buy a new house or build a house. How does the dynamic of the money work? And there are several ideas that I've worked with over the last several years for clients to navigate this so that we mitigate taxes. We keep expenses low and bridge the gap between moving from that old house to the new house. Right. I just had a, I've just had a conversation with a client, you know, the other day where it's like, Hey, you know, my current job, I'm not looking to change a job, but the way they structure it, they're, they're locking me in Tony. They're, they're giving me restricted stock units and they don't vest for two years. And my commissions, they give me 70, 20, 10, like they over, you know, 70, the first year, 20, the next and 10. Like I have all, like, I felt like even if I got a new job offer, I don't know if I could or should take it. And I'm like, that's a good, that is a good problem to have, to have that opportunity. But that's why I'm also here. Let's sit down, crank numbers. Let's figure out, Hey, what do you leave? What would you be leaving on the table in, you know, stock units or commissions? What's the new place offering? Like, like I'm like, that's, you don't have to go through this decision tree by yourself, you know, bring in the outside perspective who doesn't have a, what's the word I want to use? I don't have, I have a, I have, I taking a little bit of the emotion out of the equation, right? I'm, I'm going to be more numerical about unbiased, but also like factual and numerical about it. Like, here's the numbers. And like, Hey, if you're comfortable leaving these, this, these numbers, you know, these, this amount of money on the table, but there's nothing, no reason why I don't see not to do it. Right. So that that's just an example, right? So again, aligning to make sure they're with your lifestyle. And that's why when you work, somebody view them as their, as your personal CFO. Yep. All right. For sure. Next one. Last one. Your advisor is a generalist and not a specialist. So think of it this way. Like, you know, I'm, you know, for anyone that works at the bank or whatever, I'm just going to use an example. I'm not pointing fingers, but you know, if, you know, I, I, if, if it's funny, anytime a, you know, a certain amount of money lands in my checking account, I start getting calls from my bank. I'm like, Hey, just let you know, we're here. We can help you or whatever. And I'm like, okay, cool. You know, obviously they don't know what my occupation is, but that's fine. And they're doing what they're supposed to do. But the, the, the things that I see when I work with somebody who has just been working with the bank, it's like, man, it's just ETFs, mostly mutual funds. There's no planning behind it. Like they're a generalist, like, Hey, you need this money. Let's get it to work and have it do something rather than earn, you know, a half a, you know, fraction of a percent in your checking account. I get that. But do they still, what's, what are they, do they know anything else about you? Right. They're being, just making general recommendations and not being special about the recommendations that might be significant to you and impactful for you. Just an example. Yeah. That's, you know, again, unfortunately for the people who are working at the bank. And it's, it's not a bad thing, but that, that is the perfect example, right. It's just someone who has limited information about you, knows how much money you have at that bank. And then they're going to, you know, put you in some, some more, you know, higher level generalized investments as well. And kind of call it a day, you know, that, that is, that is fine. You know, as you're, you know, in the accumulation phase and, you know, maybe that's only 5% of your money and, you know, you don't, you don't want to, you know, spend a lot of time on it now, but as time moves on, you know, that, that money and those investments, they need to be more specific to your situation. Especially as you're getting towards retirement or even in retirement, all those assets have to work in different ways and they're all specific to your situation. Yeah. If you, if you're, you know, interviewing somebody or working with somebody who's just doing investments, again, they might be more of a generalist because there's actually a lot more things going on in your lifestyle than just your investments. We talked about that a couple of times already. So here's one other thing. When something happens or something, something, you have a question about your finances, figure, listen to how they respond. Right. You know, are they confident in their solution or their answer? Or are they talking in circles? Right. Like how, how do they respond to your, you know, like to your question or your situation or whatever you bring to the table? That is key too. Right. And that is something that I, you know, I, I always tell people, and this is kind of, you know, little bit off the beaten path, but you know, when we're working with somebody and they're retiring, we got to do the rollover calls to move their 401k to an IRA. And, and, you know, we'll make those phone calls to, you know, the custodian fidelity or whatever. And you know how many times I've like got through the call and I'm like, okay, we have enough information. The reason I hung up on them and didn't complete the tax or the task of moving any money while the client's on the line is because I didn't believe, I didn't trust who I was talking to. Like something didn't sound right. It doesn't, I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. I got to hang up and stop talking to Bob and I need to talk to Sue. Right. Like I need to talk to, I just hope Bob doesn't answer the phone again. Right. That's, but that's what I'm talking about. Like if something doesn't make sense, it's time to, you know, ask different questions or ask those questions to somebody else. Yeah. If you're talking to your advisor and he sounds like a Kevin Stefanski in a post game conference, you know, you're in trouble. Yes. No, no, no. Well, we got it taken care of. Glad you asked that. Moving on. Yeah. I'm not going to get into specifics right now, but your money's safe. Man, that'd be funny. Like, Hey, spit out an answer that Stefanski would do at a press conference about your money. Holy cow. That dude wouldn't have a job yet. He still has one for the Browns. Imagine that. Of course, Stefanski, he's been through it here in Cleveland. Everyone has been through it here. Yep. All right, man. All right. Take us home, D. All right. Well, you know, hope everyone out there has a happy new year. We'll be back next week, as always. But thank you for listening this year and to this episode. If you guys, you know, continue to send in those comments, ideas for a show, shoot them over to info at swpconnect.com and we'll talk to you next week. The opinions expressed in the podcast are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any investment, legal, financial, or tax strategy. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. Please consult a qualified professional about your individual needs.