By Daniel Cohen
You can change your life by hiring an experienced financial planner. One with the right kind of experience can immediately help fix common mistakes and improve your portfolio performance. Great long-term rewards can come as you enjoy the positive life changes than can result from well managed finances.
Successful business owners and executives know that hiring key people to fill important roles not only frees up time for them to focus on what they do best, but the person they hire can uncover opportunities and expose them to strategies they would likely not have considered on their own.
Minding Your Own Business
Keeping your personal and business finances in good order brings peace of mind. With that comfort, you can focus on running your business or building your career. Family time can be enjoyed more knowing you are doing all you can to optimize your financial position. An experienced Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) offers peace of mind by keeping their clients’ finances organized and up to date with tax laws.
Your financial planner becomes a dedicated resource to answer questions during turbulent markets, when tax rules or regulations change, or when family and life circumstances change. A CFP® is required to take regular continuing education courses to maintain their certification. Additionally, the experience they gain over time working with families and multiple generations cannot be learned simply from reading an online post or a book on financial topics.
Stress Less
A CFP® can help even the most successful people improve their lifestyle. An optimized financial plan taking advantage of long- and short-term tax savings opportunities and being positioned in assets with historically strong long-term performance is just a starting point.
The daily stress of managing your business or career, balanced with their home life of spouse and children, is challenging enough. Add to that highly volatile markets like we have experienced this year, and many will question their long-term financial plan. Sometimes changes are needed but staying the course is often the best strategy. Without guidance from an experienced financial advisor who has experience managing through past challenging periods, it’s easy to make a costly or poorly timed investment decision that cannot be corrected.
Staff to Stakeholder Opportunities
Your financial planner should help uncover ideas to free up more of your time and help unlock your earnings potential. A CFP® can coach clients on what’s possible beyond their current career positions. An experienced financial planner with an established book of business should have an idea of the earnings potential of one client by comparing with others holding similar career resumes and education levels. Rather than looking only at investment management, the real life changing opportunities often come in making changes such as getting a better paying position, or even better, going to work for a company that offers an equity position.
The greatest pathway to building wealth is to be an owner, and those executives who own equity in the companies they work for have opportunities to gain wealth not just with their salary but the growth of the business – the profits. Being a founder of a business and retaining all or majority ownership is the strongest position to be in, not just financially but by being in full control of your own career and company destiny. Great satisfaction is gained by being an owner whether a sole proprietor, majority shareholder or key stakeholder. A CFP® is often in a good position to help clients explore various avenues to business ownership.
Spending on the Priceless
More than offering opportunities for additional income, an experienced financial planner can guide you on spending decisions that create family memories while children are young and at home. This can bring enormous value. So many business owners and executives dedicate their lives to their careers and defer some of life’s best times to a future date, whether it be at the time of selling the business or retiring.
We find that the happiest clients are those on the path to saving and growing wealth who also have time and money to spend during life’s special moments. Those moments are lost if not experienced while you’re in good health and children are living at home. Our children inevitably grow up, and as adults, they will have their own careers and dreams to pursue.
Additionally, it’s important to recognize the close connection between health and wealth. Financial planners can give appropriate health and fitness related spending advice. There is no value in wealth without good health to enjoy your prosperity. Importantly, health decisions can’t be put off for a later date to be caught up during retirement. Good health decisions should be made throughout all of life. A financial planner can help you make decisions about getting the right help whether it’s a nutritionist to improve your diet or a qualified personal trainer to improve your fitness routine. And let’s not forget that feeling your best lets you perform at your best!
Finding a Keeper
Most people find the best financial planners in their community by referral from family or friends. If you are new to the area, it is best to seek out a CFP® who has experience working through multiple market cycles. Find one who is independent from banks and insurance companies to be sure their recommendations are free of conflict and is a fiduciary, which means they only act in your best interest.
One of the things I love about my profession is the chance to follow my own training and advice. It has worked wonderfully in my own family and many clients for over 25 years.
Cohen Investment Advisors was founded in New Hampshire almost a decade ago and is based in Bedford. We’re an independent registered investment advisor and a fiduciary. My wife Tiffany and I have lived in Bedford, NH over 14 years and are raising our four school-age children here. I proudly serve as board member of the Boys & Girls Club of Manchester and on their finance committee.
