My reasons for becoming a personal financial advisor

Annette had very compelling and personal reasons for becoming a financial planner. My story is not as heart-wrenching but personal nonetheless.

I started my career in finance on the institutional side. I have an MBA in finance and am a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst). I began my investment career on the staff of a large pension fund which had substantial internal asset management. I then worked for a mutual fund company where I managed portfolios for pension funds and other institutions.

I first became interested in personal finance fifteen years ago when my husband and I went through the estate planning process. We used one of the most respected estate attorneys in our area and during the course of the planning the attorney spent a lot of time patiently explaining the estate plan and his recommendations. Even though I had spent many of my working years in finance and investments, and had the academic background, I remember being baffled by his explanations. I had no idea what he was talking about and why he was recommending that we purchase life insurance to fund an irrevocable life insurance trust for our children’s benefit.

When I asked the attorney who we should purchase insurance from, he gave us two referrals. The first agent sold fully loaded policies and the second a relatively new product – low-load whole life insurance. The attorney said he couldn’t make a recommendation on which policy was best for us and said we should go with the agent we felt comfortable with. This response instead of putting me at ease, made me very uncomfortable. I was baffled by the attorney’s reluctance to help us evaluate the relative merits of insurance policies and approaches. After all, he knew all the details of our family and financial situation! I really didn’t want to take the sole word of the insurance salesperson who was offering the policy. I realized that I would have to do the analysis as best as I could myself and dived into the illustrations and other material offered by the agents. I finally concluded that the low-load policy was the best for us and we went with it. At the time, I recall being surprised that we had no one to help us with this planning decision and realized that there was a need and gap to be filled.

My next brush with personal financial advisory was when I left the mutual fund company to join a small money manager who worked with individuals rather than institutions. During that stint I learned two things. First, that most of the clients at the firm were desperate for planning help and that many meetings were filled with questions from the clients on the topic of planning rather than investments. The second thing I learned was that no one at this small shop did serious detailed planning. There was some attempt to answer client questions, but the knowledge and tools available to a professional financial planner were missing. I soon left that firm and went into business for myself working with individuals and families. I was convinced at this juncture that clients needed both planning and asset management in order to best achieve their financial objectives. Although I had some basic planning insight I felt that I wanted to team up with an experienced planner to offer my clients expertise in both investments and planning. I was lucky enough to meet Annette and today in our practice we provide all our clients with planning help.

In finanical planning we say that as soon as the plan is printed it is out of date. And that's certainly true in my case. With the ending of our marriage in sight, all the estate planning we did is back on the table. Wills, medical powers of attorney and many other documents need to be re-thought and redone. The technical part of this is easy for me now. Harder is the emotional and personal arena that need to be probed.

Veena Kutler