Financial Advisors

Will ChatGPT Hurt Finacial Advisors

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AI versus financial advisors

ChatGPT AI for Financial Advisors The hot topic in many industries is ChatGPT and artificial intelligence (AI). Will ChatGPT hurt financial advisors or will ChatGPT help financial advisors? And, what about Google’s Bard and other AI platforms? Are they helpful or harmful? Are Index Funds and ETFs AI? An interesting argument can be made that the personal finance and investing world has been using AI for decades. It was crude, rudimentary AI for sure, but an ETF is nothing more than a computer investing your money without further input. This is the most basic of AI. You input $100, and a computer records, invests, and tracks your money autonomously making adjustments where necessary, all without human intervention. As these products got more complex, they resembled AI more and more. RoboAdvisors and AI Unlike many industries, financial planners have seen attempts to replace them before. First came the online trading and the discount brokerage invasion, pushing back on the paradigm that required a broker or financial advisor. Just as important, the financial world made room for the self-advised with lower available investment dollars by discarding the extra cost of buying less than a round lot, or 100 shares. This change may …

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Do I Need a Financial Advisor?

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which 529 plan is right

To read financial advice magazines and websites, you might think that anyone who uses a financial advisor is either dumb, or very rich. These money publications all say that with a little research and education, everyone should be able to do all financial planning and investing themselves to achieve financial independence. In the real world, however, real finance doesn’t always work that way. Getting Stuck Doing Finance Theoretically, getting your finances in order and investing can be a fairly simple process. However, it turns out that in reality, there are all of these places to get stuck. Once you get stuck, you lose all of your forward progress. Eventually, enough time passes and you have to start all over. As a financial advisor, I met with dozens of potential clients who walked out of my office without signing up to work with me. The vast majority never went forward with doing anything. Chances are, they met with a different advisor years later having done nothing in between. This all occurred to me while trying to work with fellow writers to set up their own online writing businesses. No matter how straightforward the instructions seemed, folks kept getting stuck. What struck …

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Can I Text My Financial Advisor?

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text broker financial planner advisor

When it comes to technology, the financial industry often moves slowly. Back when I was starting out as a financial planner and financial advisor, I was forbidden from having a website, or financial blog like this one for fear that it would constitute non-compliant advertising. The irony was that as someone a bit ahead of the curve on that, I likely could have built up the financial planning practice I wanted, without doing something I didn’t want, cold calling. These days, numerous financial advisory firms run websites and blogs exactly like the one I wanted to run a decade ago. It begs the question how it can be perfectly fine, and non-scary now, but not then. I also never understood how a person who feels good fast-talking strangers on the phone would be considered “more honest” than someone willing to put into writing what they were saying. But, rules are rules. Text Messaging Financial Professionals and Brokers Not long after I left financial planning, I wrote some articles about the SEC and FINRA slowly loosening rules on various forms of electronic financial communications, in particular releasing things like Quarterly Reports on a company website, instead of the, then current, default …

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Find the right financial advisor (in under 200 words)

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Once, in the USA Weekend  there was what may have been the shortest article I have ever seen on choosing the right financial advisor. This article is the perfect example of why I started the Finance Gourmet. The article is by Sharon Epperson who is the author of a book called The Big Payoff which I haven’t come across yet. Every word is true and accurate. But can you use it to find a financial advisor? Ms. Epperson offers three big steps to finding the right financial advisor. The first is to gather recommendations, for which she lists four places to look. The second big step is to dig deeper than websites and brochures.  Then, she suggests asking about certifications, naming specifically the CFP and the ChFC designations. She points out that firms should be registered with the SEC (and then throws in the confusing and/or state securities regulator), and even suggests requesting the firms’s full Form ADV. I’ll point out here that the Form ADV is one of the documents a firm is required to give you and have you sign it, so you can rest assured you will be getting one.  The question is will you read it (see …

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Who Needs a Financial Planner?

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financial planner helpful

Ask any financial advisor, and they’ll tell you that everyone (with money, at least) needs a financial planner or advisor. Ask any do it yourself financial planning type and they’ll tell you that no one need a financial advisor or planner. The answer, of course, is much more complicated than that. However, there are some people who are very likely to actually need a financial advisor. Big Money Quickly People who suddenly come into large amounts of money almost always benefit from a professional financial advisor. Unlike those who slowly grow into their fortunes, people who suddenly acquire wealth don’t have time to slowly build up experience with bigger finances. Consider someone who takes 5 years to grow into a $1 million net worth. That first year, they realize there are some tax things they need to consider. During the second year they find out other things, that maybe only really impact people with more than $500,000, and so on. But, when the money comes all at once, there is no time to build up that experience, and, unfortunately, many financial mistakes are irreversible. People who sell their company, or whose stock options finally come in, or otherwise come into a …

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Financial Planners and Financial Advisors an Introduction

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Listen to the book authors, newspaper and magazine columnists and many web sites, and you will hear that financial advisors or financial planners are nothing more than glorified snake oil salesmen out to separate you from your hard earned money. To listen to some in the finance industry and their champions, financial advisors and financial planners are bastions of righteousness steeped in knowledge about financial concepts so complex that no mere mortal could possibly hope to navigate the waters alone. The truth of course lies in between. In real life, many financial decisions are frighteningly complex and, unlike other decisions you may face in life, many of them are irreversible once a mistake has been made. More importantly, some of the biggest financial issues, like retirement, take years to accomplish, and you get one chance. If you try the latest fad diet for a couple of months only to find out it doesn’t work for you, you start over a little wiser and with a little more experience. You could try different diets hundreds of times in your life while figuring out what works for you. You could also talk to friends and family, each of whom has dozens of …

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Part 4 and Part 5 of Financial Advisor and Financial Planner Primer is up!

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Part 4 and Part 5 of the Primer about [tag]Financial Advisors[/tag] and [tag]Financial Planners[/tag] is now up. Find out about what certifications you need to understand, and why they matter. Don’t worry, it’s a way shorter list than you might think. Also, keep an eye out for TONS of new content once I get a chance to do final edits this weekend. Here is a sneak preview: Why You Need at Least TWO Credit Cards for a Good [tag]Credit Score[/tag] How to Choose A Financial Advisor- Finally the Details to All Those One Line Requirements You’ve Read Before Financial Advisor vs. Financial Planner – More Than Po-ta-to Po-tah-to The [tag]Stock Market[/tag] – It’s Is DUMBER Than You Think And More…

About

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About Finance Gourmet The person behind Finance Gourmet is a former real-life financial planner with real life clients. Why is this such a big deal? Because virtually no one else you are reading can say that. Those articles in the newspaper? Professional journalists. Those other websites? Professional writers and web designers. Those books? Professional speakers mostly, with some supposedly successful (or formerly successful) investors thrown in, and maybe a former financial advisor or two. Of course, it might all be ChatGPT financial advice these days. Why Am I Doing This? Have you ever noticed that the column in your Sunday paper business section each week always takes up the same amount of space? Do you really believe that all the financial issues out there take exactly the same amount of explanation? Are capital gains taxes and mutual fund expenses both completely understandable in the same number of words? (Wow! Sunday paper?! This page is OLD. I’m going to leave it though because the point still stands. I guess you spend 20 years as a professional in the finance industry, some of your stuff will age.) In real life, some topics are more complex than others. Some topics are understandable by …

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