February 7, 2025 • 31 mins
Free Yourself – Chris Boyd, Jeff Perry, and Russ Ball dig into the value of time and
when engaging a financial advisor can have a meaningful impact on free time as well as
your financial plan. The trio share commentary how handing over the reins of your
portfolio can reclaim precious hours, rediscover your passions, and live a life enriched by
experiences and moments that money alone cannot buy. The AMR Team is offering a
complimentary guidebook titled, “Unleashing your time: The unexpected freedom of
delegated investing.”
For more information or to reach Chris Boyd, Russ Ball or Jeff Perry, click the following
link: https://www.wealthenhancement.com/s/advisor-teams/amr
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd.
Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner practitioner
and senior vice president financial advisor at Wealth
Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest registered
investment advisors.
We call it Something More because we'd like
to talk not only about those important dollar
and cents issues, but also the quality of
life issues that make the money matters matter.
(00:22):
Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner
in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and
across the country.
Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd.
You know, we used to have a crowd
cheering when we started the show.
I kind of missed it, so I'm just
throwing that off there.
Anyway, welcome everybody.
I'm just playing around, glad to have you
(00:43):
with us for another segment of Something More.
I'm Chris Boyd.
I'm here with Jeff Perry and Russ Ball.
We are all of the AMR team at
Wealth Enhancement and our show today, we're talking
about freeing yourself.
Freeing yourself up in time and all kinds
of things when it comes to whether to
do things on your own or to get
(01:04):
some help in the process.
Jeff, where should we begin as we get
started today?
It's an interesting topic because it comes up
in almost every part of your life, right?
So do you want to paint that wall?
Do you want to paint that room?
It's going to make a mess.
(01:24):
Or do I do it?
It's tax season, right?
I remember you and I had this conversation
last year and I struggled with it last
year.
The listeners missed that episode last year.
I was like, I can do this myself.
I really think I can do this myself.
I know I have a good understanding of
it, but I'm not sure about this issue.
(01:45):
Should I do the research?
And I decided because time, you know, it's
tough to replace time.
I don't know anybody who can do it.
Most valuable of assets.
Valuable commodity or whatever the saying is.
So I decided, and I decided again this
year, Chris, to pay the money because that's
(02:06):
what you're giving up, right?
Everything that you have somebody else do costs
something usually.
So what do we want to do ourself?
What are we capable of doing ourself?
If I, you know, need a new outlet
cover on my electrical switch because it cracked,
I can do that.
But if I need a new electric circuit
(02:28):
panel, I don't think I should look at
YouTube to how to do that.
So what are we willing to give up?
And is it worth the cost?
And, you know, it's an individual question, but
you do, if you allow other people to
do things that they're experts at, it's usually
done better.
Yeah.
(02:50):
Oh, there's, yeah, that's a good point.
There's expertise.
Right.
And I think there's also maybe sometimes confidence,
you know, that that brings, right?
People feel a little more confident in the
outcome.
So I think medical things come to mind
(03:12):
as well.
Like, you know, you think some things you
could do yourself, but you wouldn't even think
about it when it comes to some of
the medical things.
You want to get the expert to give
you an opinion.
It usually, as a retired lawyer, quote unquote,
legal items, like so many people use legal
(03:36):
forms or one of the websites, simple things,
what they think of simple things, maybe a
simple will, or maybe a contract, or maybe
a lease, and everything's fine until it's not.
Yeah, because it's not as customized, as tailored
as it might be if you went somewhere
local.
And it's not written, it's not written for
(03:58):
your individual circumstances.
Right.
It's a template form.
It's a template form designed to be happy,
that everyone using it might be happy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For most circumstances, but not necessarily what you're
trying to do.
I saw several lease cases, tenant and landlord
cases where people just use the standard form
(04:18):
and things, you know, disputes came up.
And sometimes those subjects aren't even in the
lease.
Right.
So, you know, it's fine, you save some
money, you can do it yourself, but you're
probably not protecting yourself in the legal sense.
Or, you know, it's not accomplishing what you
intended it to do.
That's right.
(04:39):
And ultimately, it can cost you more money.
Well, and that's the case when it comes
to the kinds of things people deal with
when it comes to our profession as well.
Definitely.
We run into people routinely who are smart
people.
You know, they can they they're doing investing
on their own.
(04:59):
And sometimes people who really spend the time
and develop the skills of evaluating a company's
balance sheet or trying to evaluate why to
buy, why to sell a company, they can
do that effectively.
Sometimes more broadly, they look into which fund
(05:23):
to mutual fund or exchange traded fund they
might want to own.
And these are things that people can do.
It's not say you can't do it, but
you do it with the same kind of
time and energy.
Right.
There's a there's a value to the time.
(05:44):
One, freeing up that time to when you
deal with this day in, day out, are
the things you recognize and are there things
you learn that someone who does it on
the weekend doesn't necessarily have the opportunity to
do?
Let's talk about timing.
(06:05):
Right.
Sometimes we talk about not wanting to time
the market.
Right.
But that doesn't mean there aren't times when
we make some judgments.
About do we want to what's happening with
interest rates?
Oh, maybe we want to change a little
bit of the weight of where we have
emphasis in our portfolio on the duration, the
(06:27):
interest rate sensitivity of our portfolio.
There may be changes in the spread of
the credit spread of how much more benefit
am I getting by taking credit risk or
is it enough benefit to take that credit
risk?
In an example I came across recently, people
(06:49):
had their fixed income investments entirely in high
yield bonds.
Well, that's not really going to give you
the the uncorrelated experience you might be expecting
the bonds to play the role of being
less risk in the portfolio.
Right.
(07:09):
So, you know, these are that's just one
small example in thinking about like a fixed
income slice.
And there's like times when you say, yes,
I do want this and no, I don't.
Right.
Sometimes they're paying you for the risk, extra
risk, and sometimes they're not.
And it might be worth it.
Or in the same with the interest rate
sensitivity of, well, their interest rates expected to
(07:32):
be rising or falling.
That could have an impact on where I
want to position myself when it comes to
duration and what that would mean for the
consequence of price on my bonds, my existing
bonds.
So when it comes to stocks, you can
you can make similar analogies, right?
That there's there's times when you want a
(07:54):
little more of this, a little less of
that and why that might be right.
So we run into routinely, this is a
very common thing, how much international one owns
in their portfolio.
Over the last decade or so, it's been
(08:15):
advantageous to be overweight U.S. equities relative
to foreign stock.
All right.
And that won't always be the case, no
doubt.
And there will be times when things flip.
But if you are invested in a, say,
(08:36):
a target date fund or some blend of
indexes, a balanced fund that has different indexes,
you probably have a lot more international exposure
than what you might do if you were
designing things yourself.
So if you're kind of relying on the
(08:56):
experts when it comes to do it yourself
or offering, you know, a streamlined, simplified offering,
you may not get the nuance and the
judgment of how to position things.
If you're doing it yourself and trying to
say, well, what should I compare it to?
(09:17):
How much should I have?
You either might totally miss out on international
and not have some of the diversification effects
that there's reasons to have.
And at times we want more.
Right.
And at times we want less.
Or you might be inclined to just say,
well, what's the index?
And I'll have 40 percent of my equities
(09:38):
be international and 60 percent be domestic.
And in the process, you know, you might
be have been overweight over the last decade.
You follow my point.
I'm just coming to things that sometimes having
someone who's in it a little more in
the thick of it, they can bring some
judgment to this that you might not always
(10:00):
know.
Well, and then there's you don't know what
you don't know.
Right.
So, you know, that we do a very
thorough meeting.
Meeting number one, getting to know the client
and before we are suggesting anything.
And part of that is doing a risk
analysis, risk assessment.
And I don't think too many do it
(10:22):
yourselfers do a self or even, you know,
any structured risk assessment.
It's just they kind of have a feeling.
Right.
Which I think when you're just having a
feeling, you're either one or the other.
You're like, oh, I risk doesn't bother me.
I'm going to.
You know, develop a portfolio of individual high
tech stocks because I'm OK with risk or
(10:44):
risk really bothers me, I'm not doing anything
with the stock market, I don't know, I
can't handle that.
So I think that's something that do it
yourself is miss the opportunity to, you know,
do a proper risk assessment and develop a
portfolio that's in line with that risk assessment.
So many of them are maybe not taking
enough risk, excuse me, or they're taking too
(11:07):
much risk that they wake up in the
middle of the night.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think sometimes when, you know, this
you bring this topic up, not only are
they starting out at the right place of
what's the right allocation that they should have,
but there's also the notion of markets move
and create anxiety.
(11:28):
I'm missing out.
I should maybe I want more of that.
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
The market's dropped.
What the hell?
I don't want any of that.
Get me out.
Right.
And there's that overreaction.
We've seen a Dalbar study year upon year
upon year where the average investor invested in
(11:50):
a given fund has a drastically different performance
under performance relative to the performance of the
fund.
So what the fund posts as its returns.
The average investor typically gets far less than
that because they tend to buy it after
it's done well and sell it in a
(12:11):
year after it's done poorly and they move
on to another investment.
And in the process, the experience they had
is far different than the experience of the
fund itself.
That's right.
We've referred to the study from Vanguard that
they talk about the value of a good
(12:31):
financial advisor and that this can add as
much as three percent per year to a
portfolio because of all the things that advisors
can do, including paying attention to the risk
profile that you described, right, paying attention to
costs of the investments you own, when to
(12:53):
pull money, where do we draw from decisions
about asset location, you know, like which investments
go in, which tax status, all of these
considerations can add some incremental value.
The biggest thing they focus on is behavioral
coaching, which is to say, I'll give you
(13:14):
an example that's common these days.
My politics are X, therefore, I want more,
I want less, whatever it is I want
in or I want out.
And that's an example where behavioral coaching can
really add value because what we've seen year
(13:37):
after, you know, administration after administration is stocks
tend to rise.
It's not to say they always rise, but
they tend to rise over time.
And we're better to have exposure than to
not.
It's a question of that asset allocation decision,
how much is befitting your temperament for volatility,
(13:57):
your tolerance for risk.
We had Russ and I had a conversation
about this just yesterday with a client who
their risk tolerance on their questionnaire kind of
kind of landed them more like a conservative
investor.
But they've been really nervous and had a
lot of cash and didn't really feel comfortable
(14:18):
with markets.
So they were really underweighted.
So we said, all right, let's let's at
least incrementally enhance how much, you know, risk
you're taking.
So instead of it being an amount that
was in line with their appearance of risk
(14:41):
tolerance, we recognized that their actual risk tolerance
was far less.
But the fact that we're saying, hey, we're
going to do this in a measured way,
they're open to doing some, you know, more
than they otherwise would have.
And so I think long term, that'll help
them get better returns.
(15:01):
The other piece is, I think, especially around
politics, clients will come in and rather than
they might come in with a with a
stance of, oh, I want to sit on
the sidelines now or now I want to
get even more invested.
I think just having our take on what
the way we're seeing the market, what we're
seeing in the whole political atmosphere, you know,
our part of our full time job is
(15:23):
to keep abreast of all the information that's
out there and read these reports and assess
its impact.
And we're really in the weeds and we're
learning what the consensus is and we're building
our own views.
And that kind of dialogue with clients can
help them either decide to stay the course
or, you know, scale back risk, but maybe
not take everything out or put everything in
(15:45):
and make some kind of drastic decision there.
So let's go back to this this notion
of do it yourself.
I think sometimes we've talked to people and
they like doing some of this stuff.
You know, they have the enjoyment from it.
We've got a longtime client who has coined
(16:09):
the phrase, you know, he wanted to play
in a sandbox and we use that.
We've applied that to all of them, talking
about this notion.
And, you know, while he's interested and enjoying
it, he's doing some of it himself.
But what he's also said is, I don't
want to put all my money at this
kind of risk I'm willing to take when
(16:31):
I do this, because I'm not as an
individual.
He's not as focused on risk management.
He's looking at, oh, where do I think
there's opportunity?
So he's delegated to us to say, hey,
you do some of this stuff in a
way that's responsible and careful in an allocation
(16:51):
that's befitting our circumstances.
But I'm going to take these risks over
here and have some fun with it and
see what I can do.
Nice way to end that impulse, knowing that
he's taking more risk, willing to take the
risk because he thinks he can outperform.
But at the same time, maybe saying just
(17:13):
in case and the thing he's also really
focused on is I may not be here
forever or I may not have capacity forever.
If and when something happens that I'm not
able to do this, I want the team
in place with my estate plan, with my
financial plan, with my portfolio, with my insurance,
whatever it is, to be in a position
(17:35):
that others will be able to help my
spouse in his case, his wife, have confidence
and be in a position where things will
work out OK.
I think that's a big driver for people
when they do it themselves.
The reason they hire help, it's not because
they can't do it themselves.
(17:56):
It's because they recognize their mortality or the
risk of an incapacity as, you know, you
know, as time people age and sometimes get
less engaged in their portfolio, less attentive.
And the potential for incapacity or whatever that
they may not be bringing to it as
(18:16):
much of the judgment that they love now,
you know, someday they won't.
And so the idea of having the opportunity
to select the team, to build around them,
they think is a good plan for just
in case and and it gives them a
little bit of that.
I don't know what I don't know.
(18:37):
So this helps me to, you know, hedge
the risk.
Yeah.
Even though even the individuals who do who
are interested, whether it's in a sandbox or
they're managing their whole account and they, you
know, they're reading Barron's on Saturdays and they're
watching CNBC in the morning and they really
feel like they're putting the time in.
(18:58):
Yeah.
One of the things I see from even
the people who fit in that category is
they're not they either don't recognize it or
don't have the skills.
What you don't know is to put that
their investment, their their savings, their investments, their
IRAs, their 401ks, whatever it is, in the
context of a comprehensive financial plan and to
(19:22):
do proper forecasting.
Like so you can be really good at
and interested in investing and analyzing and think
you can pick the right funds.
But is this a plan that's actually going
to work for you in the decades to
come?
And is your you have goals, the goals
in line with your that you're investing in
(19:43):
your plan that you kind of have in
your head?
So I think I'm glad you brought it
up.
The idea that there is a difference in
investing and the overall personal finance picture.
And again, whether it's on the part of
the portfolio management where, you know, the depth
(20:05):
of resources may be different for an individual
than for someone who does it for lots
of people with, you know, hundreds of millions
of dollars or more, depending on who you're
working with.
And then.
The the same thing about when it comes
(20:25):
to financial planning, the kind of tools and
resources that might be at the disposal of
the professional can be really beneficial.
And it it's not say that people can't
do some spreadsheets and come up with some
similar kinds of resources, but.
(20:49):
You know, we go through these analysis with
people and I mean, the in an instant,
we can evaluate alternative scenarios.
What if what if the person one dies
at a young age?
(21:10):
Boom.
It affects all the pension numbers.
It affects spending numbers.
You know, we've we've got it all structured
in the way the program works that we
can then forecast, OK, the income is different.
You know, how does that play out?
Oh, it's good.
It's bad.
Whatever.
What's the reverse?
(21:30):
What if this person dies too soon and
that person lives long?
What if we have long term care events?
What if we change our Social Security timing?
What all these variables that we can kind
of.
Do assessment around in rapid succession, it it's
funny, we had a conversation recently with a
(21:52):
client and they were saying, hey, I want
to make sure we're dealing with I saw
this thing on TikTok, I think it was,
I don't know, whatever it was.
It was one of the social media somewhere
with that opening line.
It could be anything.
Well, no, it was social media was.
But anyway, they saw this this reel, you
know, and the guys talked about all these
pillars and he's like, are we dealing with
(22:12):
have we looked at all these pillars?
And it's like we don't talk about it
necessarily with the sizzle that they had from
the from from the presentation.
But it was like, yes, we've looked at
your income planning and your your portfolio design
and your tax strategies and, you know, whether
you should do a Roth conversion and what's
(22:34):
going to be the impact of health care
and estate planning and so forth.
It's all been done, but it's been done
in a way that we tried to jam
it into a communication very rapidly where we've
done all this work behind the scenes.
And then we have a one and a
half hour meeting trying to go through everything.
And, you know, a lot of times people
(22:55):
don't realize there's a lot of work that's
gone into this that's been done in the
background before they even came in.
You know, and then in the meeting, we're
going through a what if this and what
if that.
And if we wanted to change this, we
could, you know.
Yeah.
And and it's a peace of mind thing
as well.
And not just it's a time thing.
You know, obviously you're gaining time by having
(23:17):
someone else do these things for you.
But it's also equally it's a peace of
mind.
You have long term projections.
You have annual reviews, which I think are
just really key where you come in at
least once a year.
We encourage you sometimes more depending on what's
going on, but at least once a year
to come in and go through those projections
(23:38):
again.
Talk about did anything in your life change?
Good or bad?
That's exactly it.
Right.
That's the reason.
And even if they don't, circumstances change.
That's right.
You know, things around us change.
That's right.
And so, you know, you get these refreshers
and you can add in family as you
get older, you can add in family members
or and then these things come up like
(24:00):
you're you were mentioning, you know, like, oh,
my gran, my grandson is going to college.
Can I help him?
Right.
And you can meet with your advisor and
say, if I do this, if I do
ten thousand dollars a year, a hundred thousand
dollars a year, whatever your wealth is, what
does it mean to my likelihood of my
plan working until I'm ninety five or whatever
(24:22):
your target is?
Yeah, actually, Jeff, this unknowingly, we just had
that conversation with someone yesterday where he was
saying, you know, this year I think we're
going to take out some money.
Grandson's going to college and we might want
to help out.
(24:44):
And, you know, so we're like, oh, let's
dust off the plan.
Let's take a look.
And this was interesting.
This this client had been really had a
lot of forethought in when we remember back
when there was an opportunity for people to
convert to Roth and pay the tax over
a number of years.
Yeah, yeah.
(25:04):
I forget when that was because I don't
know.
But Ed Slott always brags that he did
it.
Whenever you listen to Ed Slott, he went
all in.
He converted everything.
Ed Slott.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So this guy did too.
Basically, he had he he basically took the
opportunity to do all that.
And so, you know, feeling feeling good about
(25:25):
that decision.
And it's, you know, it's worth bragging about
now.
It's brilliant.
Right.
You know, no tax.
Right.
So anyway, in any case, so we were
going through that kind of an assessment of
like, what if how much, you know, we
might want to do this.
So it's it's exactly that, you know, things
change and evolve.
(25:46):
And, you know, and you start thinking, well,
what's the impact?
How well, you know, the thing, you know,
if if one of us dies, maybe our
income is different considerably.
Do we still have enough?
You know, that kind of thing.
Right.
Make sure that there's resources to meet your
needs.
Yeah.
And then when you retire or if you're
(26:07):
retired already, what do you want to do
in your retirement?
Do you want to do it financially, you
know, being a financial analyst, or do you
want to do it or do you want
to unleash your time?
Right.
Yeah.
And so, right.
What do you want your focus to be
and how easy do you want the transition
to be as you get older?
And, you know, should something happen, it's a
(26:29):
gift to your to your loved ones to
have your situation organized and, you know, not
in chaos, which happens with some people as
they get older and lose their, you know,
their cognitive skills decline.
It's going to happen to all of us.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So well, I mean, that's the point about
time is such a great one.
I mean, none of us knows how long
(26:50):
we have.
Right.
And there's only an amount of time that
we can spend in whatever we want to
prioritize.
I'm laughing because there's a talk show host
that talks whenever she's talking about certain things
with the caller, she says, OK, between now
and dead, what do you want your life
to be?
(27:10):
What do you want to do?
Right.
Yeah.
You want to spend your time.
Doing because you get to pick that.
Well, and I'll tell you, for me, it's
not doing my tax return.
I guess I'm with it because I'm sure
that's a good example, you know.
But yeah, that's exactly it.
And for other people, we deal with people
all the time who, you know, they'll say,
(27:33):
well, I'm sure glad you like doing this
stuff.
And we do.
We love doing this stuff.
But not everyone does.
And that's perfect.
Hey, that's what makes an economy.
I'll do this for you.
You do something for someone else.
And we've got the we've got the economy
moving along.
You know what I mean?
Chris, we have a guidebook called Unleashing Your
(27:55):
Time, the Unexpected Freedom of Delegated Investing, that
if anyone's listening and they would like a
complimentary copy, just send us an email and
we'll just email it back to you.
It's no obligation, no sales, no salesperson will
call.
It's just a great opportunity.
And then, you know, obviously we're happy to
help if we can.
(28:15):
But Unleashing Your Time, is that what it
was?
Unleashing Your Time and its subtitle is the
Unexpected Freedom of Delegated Investing.
And I'll add in financial planning.
Yeah, because we'll definitely talk about that as
well.
If you if you were if you were
to inquire with us, take advantage of it.
(28:35):
It's a freebie.
It's not very long.
It's it's a nice little resource.
We'll send it either by email or in
print, whatever you'd prefer.
Let us know.
So to take advantage of that, there's a
few ways you can do that.
Let me pull up the the scroll.
So I have the right scroll here.
(28:57):
But you can well, I'll throw this one
up.
You can if you're watching us on video,
you can send us an email at amr
-info at wealthenhancement.com.
You can always give us a call as
well.
866-771-8901 is an easy way to
do that.
(29:18):
We would love to hear from you, not
only for this purpose.
So if you want the free, the complimentary
brochure, OK, whatever the right to refer this
book is what we guidebook.
Thank you.
Take advantage of it.
But if you want to tell us topics
you'd like to hear more of, if you'd
(29:39):
like to have a question, something going on
that you'd like us to talk about and
give some input on with, you know, just
from a distance, you can send us an
email.
We'd love to hear from you.
Amr-info at wealthenhancement.com.
And if you'd like to schedule anything with
us, of course, you can reach out to
us by phone either locally 508-771-8900
(30:03):
or toll free 866-771-8901.
Until next time, keep striving for something.
Thank you for listening to something more with
Chris Boyd.
Call us for help, whether it's for financial
planning or portfolio management, insurance concerns or those
quality of life issues that make the money
(30:23):
matters matter, whatever's on your mind.
Visit us at something more with chrisboyd.com
or call us toll free at 866-771
-8901 or send us your questions to amr
-info at wealthenhancement.com.
You're listening to something more with Chris Boyd,
financial talk show, wealth enhancement, advisory services and
(30:45):
Jay Christopher Boyd provide investment advice on an
individual basis to clients only proper advice depends
on a complete analysis of all facts and
circumstances.
The information given on this program is general
financial comments and cannot be relied upon as
pertaining to your specific situation.
Wealth Enhancement Group cannot guarantee that using the
information from this show will generate profits or
ensure freedom from loss.
Listeners should consult their own financial advisors or
(31:06):
conduct their own due diligence before making any
financial decisions.
Welcome to Something More with Chris Boyd.
Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner practitioner
and senior vice president financial advisor at Wealth
Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest registered
investment advisors.
We call it Something More because we'd like
to talk not only about those important dollar
and cents issues, but also the quality of
life issues that make the money matters matter.
(00:22):
Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner
in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and
across the country.
Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd.
You know, we used to have a crowd
cheering when we started the show.
I kind of missed it, so I'm just
throwing that off there.
Anyway, welcome everybody.
I'm just playing around, glad to have you
(00:43):
with us for another segment of Something More.
I'm Chris Boyd.
I'm here with Jeff Perry and Russ Ball.
We are all of the AMR team at
Wealth Enhancement and our show today, we're talking
about freeing yourself.
Freeing yourself up in time and all kinds
of things when it comes to whether to
do things on your own or to get
(01:04):
some help in the process.
Jeff, where should we begin as we get
started today?
It's an interesting topic because it comes up
in almost every part of your life, right?
So do you want to paint that wall?
Do you want to paint that room?
It's going to make a mess.
(01:24):
Or do I do it?
It's tax season, right?
I remember you and I had this conversation
last year and I struggled with it last
year.
The listeners missed that episode last year.
I was like, I can do this myself.
I really think I can do this myself.
I know I have a good understanding of
it, but I'm not sure about this issue.
(01:45):
Should I do the research?
And I decided because time, you know, it's
tough to replace time.
I don't know anybody who can do it.
Most valuable of assets.
Valuable commodity or whatever the saying is.
So I decided, and I decided again this
year, Chris, to pay the money because that's
(02:06):
what you're giving up, right?
Everything that you have somebody else do costs
something usually.
So what do we want to do ourself?
What are we capable of doing ourself?
If I, you know, need a new outlet
cover on my electrical switch because it cracked,
I can do that.
But if I need a new electric circuit
(02:28):
panel, I don't think I should look at
YouTube to how to do that.
So what are we willing to give up?
And is it worth the cost?
And, you know, it's an individual question, but
you do, if you allow other people to
do things that they're experts at, it's usually
done better.
Yeah.
(02:50):
Oh, there's, yeah, that's a good point.
There's expertise.
Right.
And I think there's also maybe sometimes confidence,
you know, that that brings, right?
People feel a little more confident in the
outcome.
So I think medical things come to mind
(03:12):
as well.
Like, you know, you think some things you
could do yourself, but you wouldn't even think
about it when it comes to some of
the medical things.
You want to get the expert to give
you an opinion.
It usually, as a retired lawyer, quote unquote,
legal items, like so many people use legal
(03:36):
forms or one of the websites, simple things,
what they think of simple things, maybe a
simple will, or maybe a contract, or maybe
a lease, and everything's fine until it's not.
Yeah, because it's not as customized, as tailored
as it might be if you went somewhere
local.
And it's not written, it's not written for
(03:58):
your individual circumstances.
Right.
It's a template form.
It's a template form designed to be happy,
that everyone using it might be happy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For most circumstances, but not necessarily what you're
trying to do.
I saw several lease cases, tenant and landlord
cases where people just use the standard form
(04:18):
and things, you know, disputes came up.
And sometimes those subjects aren't even in the
lease.
Right.
So, you know, it's fine, you save some
money, you can do it yourself, but you're
probably not protecting yourself in the legal sense.
Or, you know, it's not accomplishing what you
intended it to do.
That's right.
(04:39):
And ultimately, it can cost you more money.
Well, and that's the case when it comes
to the kinds of things people deal with
when it comes to our profession as well.
Definitely.
We run into people routinely who are smart
people.
You know, they can they they're doing investing
on their own.
(04:59):
And sometimes people who really spend the time
and develop the skills of evaluating a company's
balance sheet or trying to evaluate why to
buy, why to sell a company, they can
do that effectively.
Sometimes more broadly, they look into which fund
(05:23):
to mutual fund or exchange traded fund they
might want to own.
And these are things that people can do.
It's not say you can't do it, but
you do it with the same kind of
time and energy.
Right.
There's a there's a value to the time.
(05:44):
One, freeing up that time to when you
deal with this day in, day out, are
the things you recognize and are there things
you learn that someone who does it on
the weekend doesn't necessarily have the opportunity to
do?
Let's talk about timing.
(06:05):
Right.
Sometimes we talk about not wanting to time
the market.
Right.
But that doesn't mean there aren't times when
we make some judgments.
About do we want to what's happening with
interest rates?
Oh, maybe we want to change a little
bit of the weight of where we have
emphasis in our portfolio on the duration, the
(06:27):
interest rate sensitivity of our portfolio.
There may be changes in the spread of
the credit spread of how much more benefit
am I getting by taking credit risk or
is it enough benefit to take that credit
risk?
In an example I came across recently, people
(06:49):
had their fixed income investments entirely in high
yield bonds.
Well, that's not really going to give you
the the uncorrelated experience you might be expecting
the bonds to play the role of being
less risk in the portfolio.
Right.
(07:09):
So, you know, these are that's just one
small example in thinking about like a fixed
income slice.
And there's like times when you say, yes,
I do want this and no, I don't.
Right.
Sometimes they're paying you for the risk, extra
risk, and sometimes they're not.
And it might be worth it.
Or in the same with the interest rate
sensitivity of, well, their interest rates expected to
(07:32):
be rising or falling.
That could have an impact on where I
want to position myself when it comes to
duration and what that would mean for the
consequence of price on my bonds, my existing
bonds.
So when it comes to stocks, you can
you can make similar analogies, right?
That there's there's times when you want a
(07:54):
little more of this, a little less of
that and why that might be right.
So we run into routinely, this is a
very common thing, how much international one owns
in their portfolio.
Over the last decade or so, it's been
(08:15):
advantageous to be overweight U.S. equities relative
to foreign stock.
All right.
And that won't always be the case, no
doubt.
And there will be times when things flip.
But if you are invested in a, say,
(08:36):
a target date fund or some blend of
indexes, a balanced fund that has different indexes,
you probably have a lot more international exposure
than what you might do if you were
designing things yourself.
So if you're kind of relying on the
(08:56):
experts when it comes to do it yourself
or offering, you know, a streamlined, simplified offering,
you may not get the nuance and the
judgment of how to position things.
If you're doing it yourself and trying to
say, well, what should I compare it to?
(09:17):
How much should I have?
You either might totally miss out on international
and not have some of the diversification effects
that there's reasons to have.
And at times we want more.
Right.
And at times we want less.
Or you might be inclined to just say,
well, what's the index?
And I'll have 40 percent of my equities
(09:38):
be international and 60 percent be domestic.
And in the process, you know, you might
be have been overweight over the last decade.
You follow my point.
I'm just coming to things that sometimes having
someone who's in it a little more in
the thick of it, they can bring some
judgment to this that you might not always
(10:00):
know.
Well, and then there's you don't know what
you don't know.
Right.
So, you know, that we do a very
thorough meeting.
Meeting number one, getting to know the client
and before we are suggesting anything.
And part of that is doing a risk
analysis, risk assessment.
And I don't think too many do it
(10:22):
yourselfers do a self or even, you know,
any structured risk assessment.
It's just they kind of have a feeling.
Right.
Which I think when you're just having a
feeling, you're either one or the other.
You're like, oh, I risk doesn't bother me.
I'm going to.
You know, develop a portfolio of individual high
tech stocks because I'm OK with risk or
(10:44):
risk really bothers me, I'm not doing anything
with the stock market, I don't know, I
can't handle that.
So I think that's something that do it
yourself is miss the opportunity to, you know,
do a proper risk assessment and develop a
portfolio that's in line with that risk assessment.
So many of them are maybe not taking
enough risk, excuse me, or they're taking too
(11:07):
much risk that they wake up in the
middle of the night.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think sometimes when, you know, this
you bring this topic up, not only are
they starting out at the right place of
what's the right allocation that they should have,
but there's also the notion of markets move
and create anxiety.
(11:28):
I'm missing out.
I should maybe I want more of that.
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
The market's dropped.
What the hell?
I don't want any of that.
Get me out.
Right.
And there's that overreaction.
We've seen a Dalbar study year upon year
upon year where the average investor invested in
(11:50):
a given fund has a drastically different performance
under performance relative to the performance of the
fund.
So what the fund posts as its returns.
The average investor typically gets far less than
that because they tend to buy it after
it's done well and sell it in a
(12:11):
year after it's done poorly and they move
on to another investment.
And in the process, the experience they had
is far different than the experience of the
fund itself.
That's right.
We've referred to the study from Vanguard that
they talk about the value of a good
(12:31):
financial advisor and that this can add as
much as three percent per year to a
portfolio because of all the things that advisors
can do, including paying attention to the risk
profile that you described, right, paying attention to
costs of the investments you own, when to
(12:53):
pull money, where do we draw from decisions
about asset location, you know, like which investments
go in, which tax status, all of these
considerations can add some incremental value.
The biggest thing they focus on is behavioral
coaching, which is to say, I'll give you
(13:14):
an example that's common these days.
My politics are X, therefore, I want more,
I want less, whatever it is I want
in or I want out.
And that's an example where behavioral coaching can
really add value because what we've seen year
(13:37):
after, you know, administration after administration is stocks
tend to rise.
It's not to say they always rise, but
they tend to rise over time.
And we're better to have exposure than to
not.
It's a question of that asset allocation decision,
how much is befitting your temperament for volatility,
(13:57):
your tolerance for risk.
We had Russ and I had a conversation
about this just yesterday with a client who
their risk tolerance on their questionnaire kind of
kind of landed them more like a conservative
investor.
But they've been really nervous and had a
lot of cash and didn't really feel comfortable
(14:18):
with markets.
So they were really underweighted.
So we said, all right, let's let's at
least incrementally enhance how much, you know, risk
you're taking.
So instead of it being an amount that
was in line with their appearance of risk
(14:41):
tolerance, we recognized that their actual risk tolerance
was far less.
But the fact that we're saying, hey, we're
going to do this in a measured way,
they're open to doing some, you know, more
than they otherwise would have.
And so I think long term, that'll help
them get better returns.
(15:01):
The other piece is, I think, especially around
politics, clients will come in and rather than
they might come in with a with a
stance of, oh, I want to sit on
the sidelines now or now I want to
get even more invested.
I think just having our take on what
the way we're seeing the market, what we're
seeing in the whole political atmosphere, you know,
our part of our full time job is
(15:23):
to keep abreast of all the information that's
out there and read these reports and assess
its impact.
And we're really in the weeds and we're
learning what the consensus is and we're building
our own views.
And that kind of dialogue with clients can
help them either decide to stay the course
or, you know, scale back risk, but maybe
not take everything out or put everything in
(15:45):
and make some kind of drastic decision there.
So let's go back to this this notion
of do it yourself.
I think sometimes we've talked to people and
they like doing some of this stuff.
You know, they have the enjoyment from it.
We've got a longtime client who has coined
(16:09):
the phrase, you know, he wanted to play
in a sandbox and we use that.
We've applied that to all of them, talking
about this notion.
And, you know, while he's interested and enjoying
it, he's doing some of it himself.
But what he's also said is, I don't
want to put all my money at this
kind of risk I'm willing to take when
(16:31):
I do this, because I'm not as an
individual.
He's not as focused on risk management.
He's looking at, oh, where do I think
there's opportunity?
So he's delegated to us to say, hey,
you do some of this stuff in a
way that's responsible and careful in an allocation
(16:51):
that's befitting our circumstances.
But I'm going to take these risks over
here and have some fun with it and
see what I can do.
Nice way to end that impulse, knowing that
he's taking more risk, willing to take the
risk because he thinks he can outperform.
But at the same time, maybe saying just
(17:13):
in case and the thing he's also really
focused on is I may not be here
forever or I may not have capacity forever.
If and when something happens that I'm not
able to do this, I want the team
in place with my estate plan, with my
financial plan, with my portfolio, with my insurance,
whatever it is, to be in a position
(17:35):
that others will be able to help my
spouse in his case, his wife, have confidence
and be in a position where things will
work out OK.
I think that's a big driver for people
when they do it themselves.
The reason they hire help, it's not because
they can't do it themselves.
(17:56):
It's because they recognize their mortality or the
risk of an incapacity as, you know, you
know, as time people age and sometimes get
less engaged in their portfolio, less attentive.
And the potential for incapacity or whatever that
they may not be bringing to it as
(18:16):
much of the judgment that they love now,
you know, someday they won't.
And so the idea of having the opportunity
to select the team, to build around them,
they think is a good plan for just
in case and and it gives them a
little bit of that.
I don't know what I don't know.
(18:37):
So this helps me to, you know, hedge
the risk.
Yeah.
Even though even the individuals who do who
are interested, whether it's in a sandbox or
they're managing their whole account and they, you
know, they're reading Barron's on Saturdays and they're
watching CNBC in the morning and they really
feel like they're putting the time in.
(18:58):
Yeah.
One of the things I see from even
the people who fit in that category is
they're not they either don't recognize it or
don't have the skills.
What you don't know is to put that
their investment, their their savings, their investments, their
IRAs, their 401ks, whatever it is, in the
context of a comprehensive financial plan and to
(19:22):
do proper forecasting.
Like so you can be really good at
and interested in investing and analyzing and think
you can pick the right funds.
But is this a plan that's actually going
to work for you in the decades to
come?
And is your you have goals, the goals
in line with your that you're investing in
(19:43):
your plan that you kind of have in
your head?
So I think I'm glad you brought it
up.
The idea that there is a difference in
investing and the overall personal finance picture.
And again, whether it's on the part of
the portfolio management where, you know, the depth
(20:05):
of resources may be different for an individual
than for someone who does it for lots
of people with, you know, hundreds of millions
of dollars or more, depending on who you're
working with.
And then.
The the same thing about when it comes
(20:25):
to financial planning, the kind of tools and
resources that might be at the disposal of
the professional can be really beneficial.
And it it's not say that people can't
do some spreadsheets and come up with some
similar kinds of resources, but.
(20:49):
You know, we go through these analysis with
people and I mean, the in an instant,
we can evaluate alternative scenarios.
What if what if the person one dies
at a young age?
(21:10):
Boom.
It affects all the pension numbers.
It affects spending numbers.
You know, we've we've got it all structured
in the way the program works that we
can then forecast, OK, the income is different.
You know, how does that play out?
Oh, it's good.
It's bad.
Whatever.
What's the reverse?
(21:30):
What if this person dies too soon and
that person lives long?
What if we have long term care events?
What if we change our Social Security timing?
What all these variables that we can kind
of.
Do assessment around in rapid succession, it it's
funny, we had a conversation recently with a
(21:52):
client and they were saying, hey, I want
to make sure we're dealing with I saw
this thing on TikTok, I think it was,
I don't know, whatever it was.
It was one of the social media somewhere
with that opening line.
It could be anything.
Well, no, it was social media was.
But anyway, they saw this this reel, you
know, and the guys talked about all these
pillars and he's like, are we dealing with
(22:12):
have we looked at all these pillars?
And it's like we don't talk about it
necessarily with the sizzle that they had from
the from from the presentation.
But it was like, yes, we've looked at
your income planning and your your portfolio design
and your tax strategies and, you know, whether
you should do a Roth conversion and what's
(22:34):
going to be the impact of health care
and estate planning and so forth.
It's all been done, but it's been done
in a way that we tried to jam
it into a communication very rapidly where we've
done all this work behind the scenes.
And then we have a one and a
half hour meeting trying to go through everything.
And, you know, a lot of times people
(22:55):
don't realize there's a lot of work that's
gone into this that's been done in the
background before they even came in.
You know, and then in the meeting, we're
going through a what if this and what
if that.
And if we wanted to change this, we
could, you know.
Yeah.
And and it's a peace of mind thing
as well.
And not just it's a time thing.
You know, obviously you're gaining time by having
(23:17):
someone else do these things for you.
But it's also equally it's a peace of
mind.
You have long term projections.
You have annual reviews, which I think are
just really key where you come in at
least once a year.
We encourage you sometimes more depending on what's
going on, but at least once a year
to come in and go through those projections
(23:38):
again.
Talk about did anything in your life change?
Good or bad?
That's exactly it.
Right.
That's the reason.
And even if they don't, circumstances change.
That's right.
You know, things around us change.
That's right.
And so, you know, you get these refreshers
and you can add in family as you
get older, you can add in family members
or and then these things come up like
(24:00):
you're you were mentioning, you know, like, oh,
my gran, my grandson is going to college.
Can I help him?
Right.
And you can meet with your advisor and
say, if I do this, if I do
ten thousand dollars a year, a hundred thousand
dollars a year, whatever your wealth is, what
does it mean to my likelihood of my
plan working until I'm ninety five or whatever
(24:22):
your target is?
Yeah, actually, Jeff, this unknowingly, we just had
that conversation with someone yesterday where he was
saying, you know, this year I think we're
going to take out some money.
Grandson's going to college and we might want
to help out.
(24:44):
And, you know, so we're like, oh, let's
dust off the plan.
Let's take a look.
And this was interesting.
This this client had been really had a
lot of forethought in when we remember back
when there was an opportunity for people to
convert to Roth and pay the tax over
a number of years.
Yeah, yeah.
(25:04):
I forget when that was because I don't
know.
But Ed Slott always brags that he did
it.
Whenever you listen to Ed Slott, he went
all in.
He converted everything.
Ed Slott.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So this guy did too.
Basically, he had he he basically took the
opportunity to do all that.
And so, you know, feeling feeling good about
(25:25):
that decision.
And it's, you know, it's worth bragging about
now.
It's brilliant.
Right.
You know, no tax.
Right.
So anyway, in any case, so we were
going through that kind of an assessment of
like, what if how much, you know, we
might want to do this.
So it's it's exactly that, you know, things
change and evolve.
(25:46):
And, you know, and you start thinking, well,
what's the impact?
How well, you know, the thing, you know,
if if one of us dies, maybe our
income is different considerably.
Do we still have enough?
You know, that kind of thing.
Right.
Make sure that there's resources to meet your
needs.
Yeah.
And then when you retire or if you're
(26:07):
retired already, what do you want to do
in your retirement?
Do you want to do it financially, you
know, being a financial analyst, or do you
want to do it or do you want
to unleash your time?
Right.
Yeah.
And so, right.
What do you want your focus to be
and how easy do you want the transition
to be as you get older?
And, you know, should something happen, it's a
(26:29):
gift to your to your loved ones to
have your situation organized and, you know, not
in chaos, which happens with some people as
they get older and lose their, you know,
their cognitive skills decline.
It's going to happen to all of us.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So well, I mean, that's the point about
time is such a great one.
I mean, none of us knows how long
(26:50):
we have.
Right.
And there's only an amount of time that
we can spend in whatever we want to
prioritize.
I'm laughing because there's a talk show host
that talks whenever she's talking about certain things
with the caller, she says, OK, between now
and dead, what do you want your life
to be?
(27:10):
What do you want to do?
Right.
Yeah.
You want to spend your time.
Doing because you get to pick that.
Well, and I'll tell you, for me, it's
not doing my tax return.
I guess I'm with it because I'm sure
that's a good example, you know.
But yeah, that's exactly it.
And for other people, we deal with people
all the time who, you know, they'll say,
(27:33):
well, I'm sure glad you like doing this
stuff.
And we do.
We love doing this stuff.
But not everyone does.
And that's perfect.
Hey, that's what makes an economy.
I'll do this for you.
You do something for someone else.
And we've got the we've got the economy
moving along.
You know what I mean?
Chris, we have a guidebook called Unleashing Your
(27:55):
Time, the Unexpected Freedom of Delegated Investing, that
if anyone's listening and they would like a
complimentary copy, just send us an email and
we'll just email it back to you.
It's no obligation, no sales, no salesperson will
call.
It's just a great opportunity.
And then, you know, obviously we're happy to
help if we can.
(28:15):
But Unleashing Your Time, is that what it
was?
Unleashing Your Time and its subtitle is the
Unexpected Freedom of Delegated Investing.
And I'll add in financial planning.
Yeah, because we'll definitely talk about that as
well.
If you if you were if you were
to inquire with us, take advantage of it.
(28:35):
It's a freebie.
It's not very long.
It's it's a nice little resource.
We'll send it either by email or in
print, whatever you'd prefer.
Let us know.
So to take advantage of that, there's a
few ways you can do that.
Let me pull up the the scroll.
So I have the right scroll here.
(28:57):
But you can well, I'll throw this one
up.
You can if you're watching us on video,
you can send us an email at amr
-info at wealthenhancement.com.
You can always give us a call as
well.
866-771-8901 is an easy way to
do that.
(29:18):
We would love to hear from you, not
only for this purpose.
So if you want the free, the complimentary
brochure, OK, whatever the right to refer this
book is what we guidebook.
Thank you.
Take advantage of it.
But if you want to tell us topics
you'd like to hear more of, if you'd
(29:39):
like to have a question, something going on
that you'd like us to talk about and
give some input on with, you know, just
from a distance, you can send us an
email.
We'd love to hear from you.
Amr-info at wealthenhancement.com.
And if you'd like to schedule anything with
us, of course, you can reach out to
us by phone either locally 508-771-8900
(30:03):
or toll free 866-771-8901.
Until next time, keep striving for something.
Thank you for listening to something more with
Chris Boyd.
Call us for help, whether it's for financial
planning or portfolio management, insurance concerns or those
quality of life issues that make the money
(30:23):
matters matter, whatever's on your mind.
Visit us at something more with chrisboyd.com
or call us toll free at 866-771
-8901 or send us your questions to amr
-info at wealthenhancement.com.
You're listening to something more with Chris Boyd,
financial talk show, wealth enhancement, advisory services and
(30:45):
Jay Christopher Boyd provide investment advice on an
individual basis to clients only proper advice depends
on a complete analysis of all facts and
circumstances.
The information given on this program is general
financial comments and cannot be relied upon as
pertaining to your specific situation.
Wealth Enhancement Group cannot guarantee that using the
information from this show will generate profits or
ensure freedom from loss.
Listeners should consult their own financial advisors or
(31:06):
conduct their own due diligence before making any
financial decisions.
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