Seeking Prudent Advice Archives - Page 5 of 23

Smart Questions Clients Ask

How much will your financial advisory services cost me, all-in?
What will the additional trading costs be, if any, to implement your strategy?
What are the internal expenses of the funds you use, if any?
What might the taxes on gains or income look like, on average?
Are there costs associated with our transactions that I may not see but will have an effect on my net returns?

These are the questions we get asked by the savviest people who inquire at our firm. Not everyone knows to ask these but we make sure to answer them anyway. Offering transparency around costs is important. If your financial advisor is not able to give you clear answers to these smart questions, you need to reconsider if your advisor has your best interests in mind.

Behind the Curtain: Pro vs. Amateur Advisors

For most people, it is very difficult to discern a truly good advisor from a lackluster hack — a professional versus an amateur. To help you recognize the difference, we want to highlight a deeply insightful article penned by Josh Brown, aka The Reformed Broker. Here is Josh’s wisdom reformatted and mildly edited for easy consumption:

Professionals take this opportunity to manage client expectations, pointing out that 2017’s returns were above average (by about triple) and unlikely to represent an average annual return going forward.	Amateurs use the returns of last year to raise more money. “I made you 18% in 2017, let’s talk about the assets you’re still holding away from me. And maybe some referrals.”
Professionals maintain allocations through the start of January, with perhaps some rebalancing.	Amateurs turn over positions, incurring commissions and possibly taxes, and start to talk about the “playbook” for the New Year.
Professionals point to the holdings that didn’t keep up with US and global stocks as a teachable moment and a reminder that for diversification to work, not everything can be going up at the same time.	Amateurs look for replacements for the holdings that are “disappointing” the clients, switch out managers based on last year’s performance and cut down exposure to asset classes that aren’t “working.”
Professionals review client financial plans and have uncomfortable but essential conversations with households that are falling short of their stated goals.	Amateurs traffic in “Five Hot Stocks for 2018” and send out three-year return charts for funds they want to add to portfolios.
Professionals talk to clients who are far outpacing their goals about enjoying life more now.	Amateurs talk to clients about adding new hedging strategies and more alternatives.
Professionals admit they don’t know what the new year will bring, and focus instead on the durability of what they’re doing.	Amateurs have year-end price targets and can’t-miss sector bets.
Professionals will keep clients focused on the important stuff and get the job done in 2018, come what may.	Amateurs will direct client attention to all the wrong metrics and inevitably fall short, which means more prospecting come 2019 to replace disenchanted and under-served clients.

Chasing Past Performance is Expensive

A rigorous study from Vanguard demonstrates that chasing the hot mutual fund is an inferior investing strategy compared to good, old-fashioned buy and hold.

Vanguard analyzed a decade of data ending December 31, 2013 across nine asset classes. In every case the investor would have been significantly better off just sticking with the index. On average the indexes generated 50% higher returns than the performance-chasing strategy!

Buy and hold may not be perfect, but it can be a lot better than flitting from mutual fund to mutual fund.

Regulators Urge Small Investors to Avoid Non-Traded REITs

REITs stands for Real Estate Investment Trusts. REITs sell like a stock on the major exchanges and invests in real estate directly, either through properties or mortgages. REITs receive special tax considerations and typically offer investors high yields, as well as a highly liquid method of investing in real estate.

Real Estate is historically a good performing asset class. Allocating approximately 10% of your stock portfolio is a generally prudent choice. However, state regulators are seeing more and more trouble with a certain type of real estate investment: non-traded REITs.

Non-Traded REITs
Unlike normal REITs, non-traded REITs do not trade on a securities exchange. They have several very significant issues:

1. Non-traded be can very illiquid.
2. They can be very difficult or impossible to price on a regular basis.
3. It can be difficult to exit the investment.

Front-end fees can be as much as 15% (much higher than traded REITs due to the limited secondary market)

Non-traded REITs buy office buildings, stores, and other properties. They are sold directly to private investors by financial advisors and brokers.

State Securities Regulators Worried
Regulators are concerned that small investors are not fully aware nor understand the risks associated with non-trade REITs. States are on the verge of adopting new restrictions to protect “mom and pop” investors including:

Limit how much an individual’s net worth could be put into any a single REIT
Limit the ability of REITs to pay dividends immediately after raising new money (to avoid a Ponzi-scheme like dynamic of paying old investors with new investors’ money)

The State of Massachusetts has brought enforcement actions against brokerages for improper sales of non-traded REITs including

LPL Financial
Ameriprise
Commonwealth Financial
Lincoln Financial

Source: WSJ

Equifax Data Breach: What You Need To Know

Late last week Equifax announced it was hacked and personal information for 143 million Americans was stolen. If you use credit of any kind (credit cards, home mortgages, student loans, etc.) as most people do, there’s a 50% chance your personal information is involved. Here’s a run down on what happened, the risks, and the options you should consider to mitigate the impact to your personal finances.

Who is Equifax?
Equifax is one of the big three credit reporting agencies in the United States. It collects large amounts of personal information about anyone who has received credit through credit cards, mortgages, car loans, and student loans. Companies use credit reports from Equifax (plus TransUnion and Experian) to extend credit to consumers and conduct background checks for employment and housing.

What happened?
Hackers broke into Equifax’s database and stole personal information for 143 million people. The breach lasted from mid-May through July 2017. Equifax revealed the data breach publicly on September 7, 2017. Stolen information includes people’s names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some cases, driver’s license numbers. Hackers also accessed credit card numbers for some 209,000 people and dispute resolution communications for about 182,000 people.

How could you be at risk?
Hackers have or will very likely sell this personal information to criminals who can then perpetrate identity theft. With that information, they can open bank accounts, new credit cards, or even drivers’ licenses in your name. Criminals could also file fraudulent claims for your tax refund or your Social Security benefits.

What steps should you consider?
Remember there’s a good chance that you’ve been exposed. To mitigate the potential damage, the Federal Trade Commission recommends you take immediate steps to protect your information from being misused:

Visit Equifax’s website, www.equifaxsecurity2017.com
Find out if your information was exposed. Click on the “Potential Impact” tab and enter your last name and the last six digits of your Social Security number. Your Social Security number is sensitive information, so make sure you’re on a secure computer and an encrypted network connection any time you enter it. The site will tell you if you’ve been affected by this breach.
Whether or not your information was exposed, U.S. consumers can get a year of free credit monitoring and other services. The site will give you a date when you can come back to enroll. Write down the date and come back to the site and click “Enroll” on that date. You have until November 21, 2017 to enroll.
You also can access frequently asked questions at the site.

Here are some other steps to take to help protect yourself after a data breach:

Check your credit reports from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — for free — by visiting annualcreditreport.com. Accounts or activity that you don’t recognize could indicate identity theft. Visit IdentityTheft.gov to find out what to do.
Consider placing a credit freeze on your files. A credit freeze makes it harder for someone to open a new account in your name. Keep in mind that a credit freeze won’t prevent a thief from making charges to your existing accounts.
Monitor your existing credit card and bank accounts closely for charges you don’t recognize.
If you decide against a credit freeze, consider placing a fraud alert on your files.A fraud alert warns creditors that you may be an identity theft victim and that they should verify that anyone seeking credit in your name really is you.
File your taxes early — as soon as you have the tax information you need, before a scammer can. Tax identity theft happens when someone uses your Social Security number to get a tax refund or a job. Respond right away to letters from the IRS.

Our CEO Chris Mullis visited Equifax’s website to determine if his family’s information was exposed. His information is not involved, but unfortunately his wife is not so lucky. Equifax immediately allowed Chris’ wife to enroll in its TrustedID Premier monitoring program. Their personal experience just underscores the fact that basically one of every two Americans is likely impacted by the Equifax data breach.

Please take steps to protect yourself from this data breach and share this alert with family and friends.

If you have any questions or need any help, please give us a call.

Student Debt Linked to Worse Health and Less Wealth

The negative effects of student debt are significant and persistent according to a Gallop poll. Those who borrowed more than $25,000 are less likely to enjoy work and are less financially and physically fit than their debt-free peers even 24 years after graduation.

Gallop examined five elements of well-being:

Purpose: liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals
Social: having supportive relationships and love in your life
Financial: managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security
Community: liking where you live, feeling safe, and having pride in your community
Physical: having good health and enough energy to get things done daily

Financial and physical well-being show the strongest relationship with student debt. Conversely, social well-being appears to have the weakest debt link.

“These results offer a new dimension of how college debt affects the rest of your life and it gives us more cause for concern,” said Brandon Busteed, executive director of Gallup Education.

Source: Gallup

What Kind of Investor Are You?

What kind of investor are you? According to author William Bernstein, there are three broad groups of investors segregated by behavior:

Group 1: The average small investor, who does not have a coherent asset-allocation strategy and who owns a chaotic mix of mutual funds and/or individual securities, often recommended to him or her by a broker or advisor. He or she tends to buy near bull market peaks and sell near bear market troughs.

Group 2: The more sophisticated investor, who does have a reasonable-seeming asset-allocation strategy and who will buy when prices fall a bit (“buying the dips”), but who falls victim to the aircraft simulator/actual crash paradigm, loses his or her nerve, and bails when real trouble roils the markets. You may not think you belong in this group, but unless you’ve tested yourself and passed during the 2008–2009 bear market, you really can’t tell.

Group 3: Those who do have a coherent strategy and can stick to it. Three things separate this group from Group 2: first, a realistic appraisal of their true, under-fire risk tolerance; second, an allocation to risky assets low enough, or a savings rate high enough, to allow them to financially and emotionally weather a severe downturn; and third, an appreciation of market history, particularly the carnage inflicted by the 1929–1932 bear market. In other words, this elite group possesses not only patience, cash, and courage, but also the historical knowledge informing them that at several points in their investing career, all three will prove necessary. Finally, they have the foresight to plan for those eventualities.

“Job one for the investor, then, is to learn as best she can, to ignore the day-to-day and year-to-year speculative return in order to earn the fundamental return.” – William Bernstein

Source: Rational Expectations: Asset Allocation for Investing Adults

Skin in the Game?

Would you eat at a restaurant where the chefs didn’t eat their own cooking? Would you have joined the Hair Club if the president weren’t also a client? Then why would you invest according to an advisor’s guidance if that advisor doesn’t follow his or her own advice?

Portfolio manager Mebane Faber suggests,

Next time you sit down with your advisor, ask him or her a simple question:

How do you invest your own money?

Don’t settle for a simple “well, uh, I have some stocks and bonds, and, umm, some CDs”…ask them specifically what their allocation percentages are, and what funds they use etc. Many find it very uncomfortable to disclose and many will refuse to do so!

As far as fund managers, many managers don’t even invest in their own funds. (Here are a few articles on how little managers invest in their own funds here, here, and here.)

In addition, many commentators are willing to provide you with plenty of advice but just try getting them to disclose how they invest their own money – impossible! How many commentators can you identify that invest in their own funds and are transparent with where they invest? They are happy to give you advice, but forbid they tell you how they invest!

We Eat Our Own Cooking!
The principals of NorthStar Capital Advisors place nearly all of their investable wealth in the same type of diversified stock and bond portfolios that we manage on behalf of our clients. We also inform and educate our clients on how we are cooking via this personal finance blog, quarterly performance reports, and around the clock access via phone and email.

So, next time you are talking with your advisor or broker, or hear someone giving lots of financial advice, ask them one simple question: “What do you do with your money?”

Money Lessons for Professional Athletes

“Many NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball players have a penchant for losing most or all of their money. It doesn’t matter how much they make. And the ways they blow it are strikingly similar.”
— Sports Illustrated

Barry Ritholtz gives a good run down on how professional athletes go broke:

Youth and inexperience: Most professionals see their salary gradually increase over the course of their career. By the time they are making the big bucks, age and experience has taught them (more or less) how to manage their finances.

Not so for the pro athlete. After being an unpaid student athlete in college, they suddenly have access to millions of dollars. I don’t know about you, but I am fairly certain that if someone gave me $2 million when I was 21, I would have died in a fiery Ferrari wreck or some other foolish thing. It is a simple formula: Youth plus inexperience with money equals bad outcomes.

Athletes have short careers: Injuries, trades and the sheer quality of competitive talent means a twenty-year sports career is the exception, not the rule. On the other hand, white-collar professionals enjoy careers that last 30, 40, even 50 years — more time to amass their wealth, as well as a much longer period to figure out how to manage it.

Young athletes spend too much money: Suffice it to say they spend lots and lots of money, often more than they actually have. Divorce, child support and the costs of an entourage all eat into the cash flow.

Dazzled by the lifestyles of veterans — whose longevity and endorsement deals put them way ahead of the average player in terms of income — these professional competitors may feel pressure to compete off the field. Trying to keep up is a recipe for disaster.

Everyone takes home much less than they realize: Holding aside the issue of unwise spending, let’s look at nondiscretionary spending. GQ analyzed the finances of the typical athlete making $5 million a year. Right off the top, Uncle Sam and the resident state where he plays takes a hefty share — about half for someone in that top tax bracket. Then you have the professional managers, lawyers, accountants, etc. The agent takes $250,000, while the manager may take up to twice that amount. Trainers, nutritionists, travel and courtesy tickets all eat into the net.

Before spending the first discretionary dollar, the typical $5 million player is already down about 70 percent of the gross, to $1.5 million. That sounds like a lot of money, but a naive kid who has a $5 million dollar budget in his head can quickly find himself way behind.

Barry’s five simple steps that athletes (and non-athletes!) can take to avoid financial crisis:

1 Be involved: It is important that a young investor becomes involved with financial planning from the beginning of a career. He should understand what his take-home pay is (after taxes and fees) — and know what he is spending money on.

Be aware of the other numbers involved: What your career expectancy is. How much you are likely to make. What it is going to cost to live a certain lifestyle.

2 Have a plan: A young athlete should plan for three phases of a career: rookie years, top earning years and the life after sports.

In the first part of a career, the emphasis should be on improving your game, and saving money. Don’t worry about indulging in luxuries; you have the rest of your life to do that. Once you enter your prime earning years, you can loosen up a touch and spend more — but always within your means.

The last part of athletes’ careers is often the longest: when they are no longer playing professional ball. Having enough saved to carry them for the next 40 years is important. So, too, is having a second career — whether as an entrepreneur or a color commentator on TV sports broadcasts or as a coach.

Mapping out a workable plan for these three phases is crucial to avoiding that “other” phase: Bankruptcy.

3 Keep your costs low early in your career: Investors learn that costs, taxes and excessive fees are a killer of portfolios over the long term. So, too, are all of the small costs that eat into a professional athlete’s financial pie.

It helps to find a more seasoned and experienced teammate to walk you through what you should and should not be paying for.

4 Avoid debt and leverage: Learning to live within your means is a crucial financial skill for anyone. It is especially valuable for someone earning big bucks for what is likely a few short seasons. Debt simply means you are living beyond your means, even at those big salaries.

The latest snare waiting to trip up the unwary and impatient young athlete is the payday loan. For a very large fee, professional athletes can get huge advances on their salaries. These loans can be usurious, with fees and interest adding up to annual rates of 25 percent or higher. These are to be avoided at all costs.

5 Keep your investments simple: What most people think is the hardest aspect of finance is in reality the simplest: Avoid complex (private placements) or expensive (hedge funds or private equity) investments. Don’t make loans to friends or family. Don’t back start-ups. Don’t invest in new technology. Never buy fancy financial “products.” And whatever you do, for God’s sake, don’t put money into a restaurant.

Instead, have a simple asset allocation model of broad indices (U.S. equities, emerging market stocks, corporate bonds and Treasuries). You are in your early 20s, so you should have a 40- to 50-year time horizon for these investments. Don’t waste your time stock-picking or timing, just let the markets work for you. Build a portfolio of high quality, tax-free municipal bonds (especially if you live in a high tax state). These will pay you an income as long as you hold them.

Source:
Barry Ritholtz / WP

Know More, Make More

A ground-breaking academic study finds that more financially knowledgeable people earn a higher return on their 401(k) retirement savings.

Dr Robert Clark (NC State University), Dr. Annamaria Lusardi (George Washington University), and Dr. Olivia Mitchell (University of Pennsylvania) analyzed a unique dataset that combined 401(k) performance data for 20,000 employees plus financial literacy data for the same workers.

Investors deemed to be more financially knowledgeable than peers enjoyed an estimated 1.3% higher annual return in their 401(k)s or other defined contribution plans than those with less knowledge.

According to the study’s authors:
“We show that more financially knowledgeable employees are also significantly more likely to hold stocks in their 401(k) plan portfolios. They can also anticipate significantly higher expected excess returns, which over a 30-year working career could build a retirement fund 25% larger than that of their less-knowledgeable peers.”

Financially savvy people tend to save more and are more likely to invest those savings in the stock market. But past studies haven’t clearly demonstrated that these people necessarily make better investment decisions. The authors look at patterns in 401(k) retirement accounts and find that more sophisticated investors do indeed get better returns on their savings.

Source: “Financial Knowledge and 401(k) Investment Performance”

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