Nerd's Eye View blog

#FASuccess Ep 094: Crafting Your Optimal Solo Practice By Simply Charging What You’re Worth With James Osborne

October 16, 2018 07:03 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 94th episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

This week's guest is James Osborne. James is the founder of Bason Asset Management, a solo advisory firm based in the Denver suburbs that oversees more than $225 million of assets under management.

What's unique about James, though, is the unusual way that he structured his advisory business, with a simple flat fee of $4,800 per client regardless of their assets, which has allowed him to build a high-margin solo practice with just 80 clients generating nearly $400,000 of revenue for the firm at the age of just 35 years old.

In this episode, we talk in depth about why James decided to structure his firm using this flat fee approach in lieu of the AUM model. How the design of his business model makes it possible for him to generate a target of his exact income potential as he reaches client capacity, the way he handles situations where his flat fee would be substantially lower than what another advisor's AUM fee might be for prospective clients with a lot of assets and net worth, and the reason that he chose to deliberately build a business model that fits his personal lifestyle and family goals.

We also talk about what it really means to reach personal capacity as a financial advisor. The challenging trade-offs that start to emerge as advisory firms try to grow beyond the individual capacity of the founder, why it is that beyond a certain point, doubling the number of clients and revenue at the practice has almost no impact on the take-home compensation of an advisor, and the reason that so many solo advisory firms will actually generate far more value for their founders by staying small even if the practice is never sold.

And be certain to listen to the end, where James talks about how he's adjusting the way he meets with and takes on prospective clients as he approaches his personal capacity, and what he plans to do to maintain his high-income lifestyle practice once he reaches that threshold.

So, whether you're interested in learning about some of the benefits of a flat-fee structure, how James approaches investment management, or why most advisors are scaling their practices all wrong, then we hope you enjoy this episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast.

The 16 Best Conferences For Financial Advisors To Choose From In 2019

October 15, 2018 07:05 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Conferences

The need to engage in continuous learning is a simple reality for anyone in professional services. As a profession’s body of knowledge grows and evolves with ongoing research and discoveries, new products and solutions, and emerging best practices, even the best practitioners have to update their knowledge and skills from time to time. You want your surgeon to be up to speed on the latest surgical techniques that speed recovery time and reduce scarring. You want your lawyer to know the latest laws and regulations that might adversely impact your business to reduce the risk of regulatory or legal hassles. And consumers want their professional financial advisors to be up to date as well.

And the reality is that while you can get a lot of this continuing professional education directly from the comfort of your own office, in a technology-driven world with an ever-growing number of webinars and reading opportunities – including in the Members Section of this blog! – it’s still important at least once a year to take a break from the office and get away from it all. Both to give yourself the opportunity to really immerse in your education without the inevitable drumbeat of distractions in the office. And because mentally, you really can better focus on your education and thinking about steps to improve your business when you get away from it for a few days.

The caveat, however, is that these days, there is an overwhelming number of financial advisor conferences to choose from. Because while the good news is that for most successful advisory firms, it just takes one good takeaway from a conference that can be implemented in the business to make the whole trip worthwhile… the bad news is if you don’t find a conference that’s the right fit for your needs and business, you aren’t likely to find even that one good takeaway. Which makes both the expense of the conference, and the lost time out of the office, very costly indeed.

As someone that has been speaking at nearly 70 conferences a year for almost a decade myself, I’ve seen the good and bad of our various industry events, which are spread across membership associations, broker-dealers and insurance companies and RIA custodians, product manufacturers, trade publications, private events, and more. And as a result, am often asked for my own suggestions of what, really, are the industry’s “Best” conferences to attend.

Yet the reality is that what conference is “best” really depends on what you, personally, are looking for. Some advisors are focused more on broad-based technical educational content, while others want to go deep into a niche. Some advisors want practice management advice as business owners, while others need help with their personal career development as employee advisors instead. Some want to talk about innovating technology, while others want to innovate new business models.

Accordingly, back in 2012 I started to craft my own annual list of “best-in-class” top conferences for financial advisors in various categories (to allow advisors to match the available conference specialties to their own needs), and have updated it every year since in what has become one of our most popular annual articles.

And so now, I’m excited to present my newest list of “Top Financial Advisor Conferences” for the upcoming 2019 year, from practice management to technology to career development and deep-dive educational content, and a special focus on the rise of “niche” financial advisor conferences aiming to serve the growing number of financial advisors who themselves are focusing more and more into niches to differentiate themselves in today’s competitive environment.

So, I hope you find this year’s 2019 conferences list to be helpful as a guide in planning your own conference budget and schedule for next year, and be certain to take advantage of the special discount codes that several conferences have offered to all of you as Nerd’s Eye View readers!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Oct 13-14)

October 12, 2018 02:52 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that New Jersey is about to launch its own version of a fiduciary rule for advisors, driven not by New Jersey legislators but directly from the New Jersey state regulators, as a state-level fiduciary movement appears poised to surge again in the face of federal regulators failing to address the fiduciary gap.

From there, we have a number of additional articles of notable industry news, including: the SEC's ongoing hiring freeze is threatening to reverse its recent increase in the examination rate, as by 2019 it's projected there will only be 1 SEC staff member for every 20 RIAs the regulator oversees; state securities regulators continue to step up on regulation and enforcement, with actions against unregistered individuals reaching a new record in past year (likely as a result of the surge of fraudulent cryptocurrency offerings); the College for Financial Planning has partnered with US SIF to launch a new sustainable, responsible, and impact investing designation (the Chartered SRI Counselor, or CSRIC); and the CFP Board's Center for Financial Planning is partnering with Wharton on a new course in Client Psychology.

We also have several practice management articles this week, from a look at how hybrid robo-advisors and their salaried employee advisor jobs are providing a new career track alternative for financial advisors, to the importance of getting good at retention of existing advisor employees (given the incredibly high cost of turnover for experienced employees), a deep-dive look at what it really means to "manage" a client relationship, and an exploration of whether financial advisors should be learning more "conflict resolution" skills to help clients (especially couples and families) navigate their money conflicts.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of recognizing that we must sometimes embrace imperfection: the first is a powerful reminder that going beyond about 80% of the way on "surface shine" is rarely about actually improving the outcome and more about just satisfying ourselves; the second discusses how we often look to experts and their habits to figure out an optimal approach to something new when the truth is that we really need to just get started (because the "optimal" is rarely necessary to start!); and the last explores how the key to improving over time is to recognize that failures will happen, and those who improve the most are the ones who are willing to actually talk about them, and avoid the natural tendency to just sweep the embarrassment under the rug and move on before we have a chance to actually learn from the experience.

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Qualifying For The Section 199A Deduction As A Hybrid Insurance Producer

October 11, 2018 02:09 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

Included with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, was a new 20% tax deduction for “Qualified Business Income” (QBI) for pass-through entities, which was intended to give a tax break to small business owners and encourage them to hire more employees. The caveat, however, was that Congress also made sure that the deduction didn’t extend to high-income professionals whose primary source of income was from their own personal labors.

Accordingly, Congress carved out a new group of professionals in certain “Specified Service Trade or Businesses” (SSTB) whose qualification for the QBI deduction would be phased out above certain income levels.

Unfortunately, businesses in the financial services industry were included in the definition of SSTBs, particularly financial services, brokerage services, as well as “any trade or business which involves the performance of services that consist of investing and investment management, trading, or dealing in securities.”

Interestingly, however, Congress seems to have gone out of their way to specifically exclude from that list insurance producers, brokers, and agents, who are treated as being in the business of selling their company’s products, rather than their personal services.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1 PM EST broadcast via Periscope and guest hosted this week by Jeff Levine, we examine questions surrounding the QBI deduction for professionals who sell insurance products and want to retain the benefits of the QBI deduction, but are also involved in brokerage services and/or are RIA owners with SSTB income not eligible, and explore when/whether it’s better to run multiple businesses to preserve the deduction where permitted… and if so, at what cost?

The strategy of separating out QBI-eligible insurance business from non-QBI-eligible brokerage commissions and advisory fees is complicated by the fact that, in recent proposed regulations on the QBI deduction, the IRS declared that single businesses with multiple business lines and total revenues under $25 million, the entire business is considered to be a specified service trade or business if more than 10% of their income results from investment-related activities. Which means, for instance, that for someone with 89% of their income from their insurance-related activities and the rest from investment-related activities, their entire business will be considered an SSTB if they operate it as a single business (which means none of their 89%-of-revenue insurance commissions would be eligible for the deduction)!

Accordingly, the question then becomes: “When/how would it be better to split out the insurance production into a different business line, and effectively run multiple businesses?” Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer, because not only does running multiple businesses create a whole new layer of complexity and expense due to the potential need to keep separate books and records, but it also requires the business owner to allocate how much of their overhead costs apply to both the QBI-eligible insurance revenue and non-QBI-eligible other revenue. Which in turn raises the specter of potential IRS audits, since the business owner might be tempted to attribute as much expense as possible to the (not-QBI-eligible) financial services business income (which is SSTB income), while trying to minimize the expenses (and maximize the income) derived from the non-SSTB (QBI-eligible) insurance business line.

Ultimately, the good news is that it is theoretically possible to separate out and preserve the QBI deduction for insurance commissions, even for advisory firm business owners with a mixture of insurance and non-insurance business. But the aggregation rules of the recent QBI regulations mean that doing so will require a whole new layer of complexity for financial advisors to actually run two bona fide separate businesses, one for their insurance income (and expenses), and a second one for everything else. Which is a challenge because in the process of splitting up the business lines in order to qualify for the QBI deduction, the reality is that, after you factor in all the added expense and work involved, it just may not be worth it in the end unless there is a substantial amount of insurance commissions on the table!

Using Qualified Opportunity (Zone) Funds To Minimize Capital Gains

October 10, 2018 07:09 am 6 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

Real estate investors have long enjoyed a number of unique tax benefits, from the tax deductibility of depreciation, to the ability to defer capital gains with a like-kind 1031 exchange. And beyond these core tax benefits of real estate investing itself, Congress has, from time to time over the years, provided additional tax incentives for particular types of real estate development opportunities, as a way to further guide where real estate developers may direct their capital. The latest version, created under the recent Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017, is the so-called Qualified Opportunity Fund (QOF), which offers some especially unique tax benefits for those who are willing to invest in certain low-income areas designated as "Qualified Opportunity Zones".

Specifically, investing into a QOF offers the ability to defer tax on capital gains from the sale of existing property that are reinvested within 180 days into a QOF (including not only a rollover of real estate proceeds akin to a 1031 exchange, but even allowing the rollover of capital gains from intangible assets like stocks), subsequent basis increases on deferred capital gains reinvested into a QOF after five years (and again after seven years), and the complete elimination of capital gains tax on growth attributable to gain reinvested in a QOF (if the QOF is held for at least 10 years).

The caveat, however, is that, in order to receive the full array of QOF benefits, the latest date (according to the current tax code) that gains on the sale of assets can be invested into a QOF is December 31, 2019. Past that date, investors will begin to at least partially lose out on basis increases and, thanks to what’s widely assumed to be poor drafting, potentially lose out on other future tax benefits as well. Furthermore, the deferral of the gains on the funds used in the initial investment isn’t perpetual. Gains timely reinvested into a QOF will become taxable (except for any basis increases received after years 5 and 7) at the end of 2026 (or when the QOF is sold, if sooner).

Meanwhile, despite the attractive tax benefits, advisors should exercise caution and perform their normal investment due diligence before jumping in with both feet. Bad investments with good tax attributes are, at the end of the day, still bad investments. Questions such as “What are the management team's qualifications?”, “What are the expenses to investors of the fund?” and “What sort of assets (which, by their very nature, are illiquid) will the fund be targeting?” are all essential to answer. Not to mention the actual merits and growth or income opportunity of the particular real estate investment itself.

Nonetheless, investors who have sold appreciated assets within the past 180 days, or plan to do so in the near future, should evaluate the merits of investing into a QOF. However, the reality is that many investors’ tax planning needs will be better served by using existing strategies, including 1031 exchanges, charitable trusts, and simply holding on to existing assets – all of which may provide tax benefits, including indefinite tax deferral, and the opportunity for a future step-up in basis at death that a QOF does not provide.

#FASuccess Ep 093: Building A High-Income Lifestyle Practice Efficiently By Running It Like A Real Business with Sunit Bhalla

October 9, 2018 07:07 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 93rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

This week's guest is Sunit Bhalla. Sunit is the founder of OakTree Financial Planning, a highly efficient solo advisory firm based in Colorado that oversees more than $40 million in assets under management.

What's unique about Sunit though is the way he's been able to build to nearly $300,000 in revenue with a whopping 85% profit margin as a career changer who works with just 17 affluent clients in a hyper-targeted niche of engineers, as a former engineer himself. In this episode we talk in-depth about how Sunit has built his hyper-efficient solo practice with the relentless focus on staying focused: The technology tools he uses to stay efficient in delivering services to clients, his simple fee structure to keep even his billing process simple and efficient, and why he offers all of his prospective clients one and only one comprehensive financial planning and investment management service that they can either take or leave.

We also talk about Sunit's unique financial planning process with clients, the key questions he asks at the beginning of each client relationship to really understand their needs, the six meaning process he uses that starts with a discussion about goals and exploring possibilities, even before gathering all the client's data. And how he ultimately delivers the financial planning results to his sophisticated engineer clients, not by producing and printing out detailed financial projections for them, but using his planning software interactively to model their various what-if scenarios live on the spot.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Sunit talks about how he went about building his unique lifestyle practice the way that he did, the way he very deliberately manages his lifestyle practice as a business, and why he isn't concerned at all that his advisory firm may not necessarily have any salable value at the end.

So whether you're interested in learning about building a lifestyle practice, how to make sure you're only working with your ideal clients, or about maintaining a healthy work-life balance, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.

Student Loan Planning Software Solutions: Comparing The 8 Leading Tools For Financial Advisors

October 8, 2018 07:03 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

As a wave of next-generation clients starts to seek out help managing their finances, one of the most common challenges that they face is a high level of student loan debt. Unfortunately, advisors are generally ill-equipped to provide student loan analysis and planning, because, unlike traditional debt, student loans - and federal loans in particular - are subject to a dizzying array of repayment options (each of which can result in significantly different outcomes for borrowers) and forgiveness programs, which in and of themselves, are stunningly difficult to navigate. And, in a world where interest rates are rising quickly, the “easy” solution of refinancing older loans at a lower rate isn’t providing the same bang for the buck it once did, not to mention the fact that refinancing won’t make any sense for borrowers that recently took out loans while rates were at historic lows. Which means that a strong working knowledge of the various options for repaying federal student loans will increasingly be an important tool for advisors in coming years.

Fortunately, there is a growing number of tools to help advisors analyze their clients’ student loans, and in this guest post from Ryan Frailich, founder of Deliberate Finances, (a fee-only financial planning practice that specializes in working with couples in their 30's, as well as educators and nonprofit workers) provides comprehensive reviews and ratings for 8 student loan planning tools, including offerings from CSLA, RightCapital, the VIN Foundation, Loan Buddy, and Pay For ED (among others), and shares his thoughts on everything from features and flexibility, to their ease of use and usefulness of output.

Because the fact is that, often, those clients who come in with the highest level of debt, including doctors and lawyers who are just starting out, also happen to be ideal long-term clients, and having the knowledge and ability to potentially help them save a significant amount of money over the life of their loans is a great way to build long-term loyalty. And even for advisors who work primarily with Baby Boomers, the ability to help their children navigate the student loan landscape can assist in introducing you to your next generation of clients.

While not all the solutions that Ryan examines are targeted specifically at advisors and there’s still plenty of room for improvement with all of them, the good news is that FinTech developers are recognizing the importance of putting tools in advisors’ hands that will help clients with student debt navigate what is often the first (and most challenging!) aspect of their young financial lives. So, whether you have clients with questions about how best to manage and repay their student loans, are looking for ways to gain and develop expertise in this important area, or are simply interested in staying up-to-date on this rapidly evolving area of financial planning and FinTech, then we hope you find this amazingly comprehensive guest post from Ryan to be helpful!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Oct 6-7)

October 5, 2018 02:54 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with a beautiful write-up of the winners of the Invest In Others foundation awards, which recognizes financial advisors who have not only been successful in their advisory firms but also in giving back to their communities in various charitable and non-profit endeavors... an inspiration to any/all advisors that the helping profession of financial planning can extend beyond just the work we do directly with clients (and in fact, many financial advisors' community giving efforts extend far beyond the financial services industry altogether).

From there, we have several articles around spending and savings advice, from a study that shows the popular "spend money on experiences, not goods" happiness research may only apply for those with above-average socioeconomic status (and that for the rest, there really is happiness to be derived from spending on good, solid, useful material goods), to another study that finds our tendencies with money towards being either a "tightwad" or a "spendthrift" may be evident as early as age 5 (when, in theory, new/healthier habits can still be learned), a discussion of how some of the most successful wealth creators ostensibly begin the process as a means to provide for their families (during life and as an inheritance after death) but then never stop to re-assess their motives once their wealth compounds beyond a "prudent" inheritance, and an interesting look at some of the most "undervalued" financial advice (which is less about spending tips like being frugal and cutting back on lattes, and more about getting off the hedonic treadmill and simply learning better gratitude for what we already have).

We also have a number of practice management articles this week, including: the "wobble" theory of growing an advisory firm (that advisory firms grow in stages, and the key to success is not navigating each phase, but the transition moments when the firm begins to "wobble" and has to evolve to the next stage); how despite the "uncertainty" about smaller advisory firms in today's environment, a look at the established professions of law and accounting suggests that small firms will survive and thrive far longer than commonly believed; a study on the benefits of outsourcing back-office tasks to more easily scale an advisory firm; and the rise of "virtual" advisory firms that leverage technology (especially screen-sharing and video conferencing tools) to build a location-independent advisory firm.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of leveraging the benefits of compounding (not just in a portfolio, but in your personal/business life as well): the first explores how long-term compounding takes a strong base, but once the foundation is laid, it's mostly a function of compounding (as evidenced by the fact that $80.7B of Warren Buffett's $81B net worth came after he was 50 years old!); the second raises the simple question of considering what, exactly, you're doing (even in a tiny way) to contribute to the compounding growth of an asset every day; and the last provides a powerful reminder that while we tend to celebrate the business leaders who are "consistently heroic" in taking big bold leaps to move their firms forward, for most the key to success is being "heroically consistent" instead, making small efforts every day and week and simply allowing time to compounding them in your favor!

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Transitioning Part-Time Into Financial Planning As A Career Changer

October 4, 2018 02:30 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

Notwithstanding all the the talk in recent years about the challenges facing the financial planning industry, from including rising competition to “robo” fee compression, the financial advisor career path remains quite appealing. Not only can advisors make meaningful, life-changing impacts on their clients’ lives, but with experienced advisors making 2-3X or more than the median household income in the US, it’s also a potentially lucrative career choice as well. And, with a possible shortage of new talent to replace the wave of ageing advisors who are expected to start retiring in droves in the next decade or so, it’s little wonder why the profession holds so much appeal, particularly for those who are mid-career and looking for a more rewarding opportunity. The caveat, however, is that it still takes a lot of time to succeed and grow your income as a financial advisor, which presents a major roadblock for those who want to career-change into the industry and just don’t have a lot of “income flexibility” to take a pay cut in order to get their proverbial foot in the door. Which leads many to wonder if it’s possible to transition into a career as a financial advisor on a part-time basis.

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we look at the challenges facing the part-time transition for career changers, discuss why many consider simply opening their own RIA given the lack of part-time job opportunities, and offer some practical ideas for transitioning into the industry as a career-changer without going the (not-actually-recommended) part-time route.

Notably, the challenge of finding good part-time work to grow and develop as a financial advisor is a relatively recent phenomenon. Historically, there wasn’t much need for new “advisors” to have much professional knowledge or experience because, in reality, they weren’t providing actual advice, but were rather being paid to sell insurance or investment products (which simply requires some product and sales training). For career changers, it was often quite feasible to make the transition into such a sales role on a part-time basis, soliciting their existing friends and family and former co-workers for product sales for a few hours a week. However, for those who want to provide comprehensive advice, and get paid for it on an ongoing basis, the reality is that it’s really hard to gain the requisite experience in anything but a full-time setting.

Which is why there just aren’t many part-time job opportunities with real financial planning firms in the first place. As an alternative, some career-changers explore the option of simply launching their own RIA, which on the surface makes sense, because the raw startup costs to create your own advisory firm are very low, and it’s very possible to be up and running in a few months’ time on a shoestring budget. Unfortunately, the problem remains that giving people advice about how to handle their life savings is a sacred duty, so just because you can hang your shingle and open your own financial planning practice doesn’t mean that it’s the responsible thing to do! Not to mention the fact that it’s really hard to gain credibility as a professional, to be paid for your advice services, if you’re part-time anyway.

Accordingly, for career-changers who are looking for a practical (and responsible) path to a career as a financial advisor, the best thing to do on a part-time basis is start your education to become a CFP certificant. Because, by taking and passing the CFP exam, you’ll be in a much better position to get a better paying full-time job at a real financial planning firm. The next best thing to do is to take the Series 65, because while most states offer a waiver for the Series 65 exam for CFP certificants, the reality is that you’ll still need to meet the experience requirement before you can earn your marks. Also, start building your professional network by joining your local FPA chapter or NAPFA study group, because at some point, you’ll be looking for a full-time opportunity, and it’s a good idea to get in front of the folks who might someday hire you. Finally, simply recognize the fact that you are changing careers and that it’s just not realistic to think that you can do that without taking a step down in salary in order to (literally) pay your dues. So make yourself your first financial planning client, and figure out how to build up the savings necessary to take one step back in the short-term, so you can take two big steps forward in your new financial advisor career in the long run.

The bottom line, though, is simply that there are some very real challenges when transitioning into a career as a financial advisor on a part-time basis. However, those who are willing to do hard work of studying for (and passing!) the CFP exam, getting the Series 65 license, and building a professional network will have the best options. But rather than trying to be a financial advisor on a part-time basis, do those things on a part-time basis instead… which also allows you to stay in your current job a little longer in order to save up enough so that, when the time is right, you can make the transition to a full-time role as a financial advisor in a way that makes sense financially and professionally!

How Birth Year Shapes A Generational Experience In Stock Market Investing

October 3, 2018 07:03 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Investments

One of the fundamental principles of long-term investing is the recognition that, while markets may go up and down and be volatile in the short-term, eventually the volatility tends to average out into favorable long-term growth rates. Accordingly, the conventional wisdom in the face of market volatility is simply to keep invested and stay the course. Of course, those who are approaching or transitioning into retirement need to be cognizant not to draw down the portfolio too much waiting for those returns to average out – a phenomenon known as sequence of return risk – but as long as investors stay a little flexible on their retirement goals, and spend reasonably conservatively, that sequence of return risk can generally be managed.

However, the fact that investors will for the most part simply have to accept whatever returns the market gives – and in whatever sequence it provides them – means that different generations of investors may have substantively different experiences with long-term investing simply based on whatever happens to occur during their particular investment sequence and the "investment cards" they're dealt.

In turn, this effect is further amplified by the fact that early investment experiences often shape a lifetime of investment behavior – from Baby Boomers that experienced favorable market returns coinciding with the rise of the 401(k) and have stuck with markets during their difficult years, to late Gen X’ers and Millennials who have had to wait as much as a decade or more simply to see the markets recover to where they started when they first begin investing (hearkening back to the experience of a Lost Generation of investors after the Great Depression who never returned to stocks after the scarring experience of the crash of 1929 and its slow recovery during the Great Depression). And in fact, a growing volume of data on investor behavior is suggesting that younger investors are indeed far more skeptical of stock markets and long-term investing… a challenge that may not necessarily reverse itself even as the market improves (just as the bull market of the 1950s and 60s didn’t necessarily win back Depression-era investors).

The fact that the generational timing of young adulthood – and the market returns that coincide with it – may have such a long-term behavioral influence notably also extends to financial advisors themselves, as Baby Boomer advisors in their early 60s today saw a raging bull market for the first 20 years of building their careers, while younger Gen X and older Millennial advisors have had to wait 10-15 years just to see the markets recover to where they invested their first clients! Which raises the question of whether advisor attitudes about the value of providing investment management, and the active vs. passive debate, may also be heavily shaped by the advisor’s generational experience and the timing of when they happened to launch their advisor career?

Ultimately, though, the key point is simply to recognize that mere birth year may actually be responsible for a far more outsized portion of our lifetime investment behavior and experience than is commonly acknowledged. As even if a long-term portfolio can mathematically recover from almost any sequence of returns, it doesn’t mean that certain generations of investors – and advisors – will behaviorally do so themselves, based on whatever early-years' experience the market happens to give them during their formative years?