Top 10 reasons financial planning clients get annoyed with me

Top 10 reasons financial planning clients get annoyed with me

I have many clients that ask me to review their portfolios and provide a “second opinion” on how they or their investment advisors are performing. I do that but find that some get annoyed at some of what I tell them. Here are the top 10 reasons for this.

1. I show them why they are not doing well and explain why
2. I show them how their investment managers are underperforming the market and explain why
3. I tell and show them how their asset allocation is not aligned with what they told me their long term goals are
4. I tell and show them how they are not diversified enough
5. I tell them that they need to better understand what they are investing in and how they could gain or lose on what they are doing
6. I tell them they are assuming too much risk based on their goals or how they told me they feel about risk
7. I tell and show them that they are not taking on enough risk based on the goals they want to achieve
8. I tell them that setting aside 10% of their investments to “play around” in the market is imprudent and that they need to approach investing in the most serious manner they can
9. I tell and show them how they are overpaying their investment managers (who they profess “love” for and who they don’t want to ever part with)
10. I tell and show them that a meaningful portion of their portfolio is in inappropriate assets
11. I tell and show them how they are overpaying taxes because they or their managers are not considering taxes in their investing activities

My best wishes are that I tell a client that everything is fine and on track and to keep up the good work they are doing or that they have a great investment manager and should tell them that I said this.

For those of you that noticed I provided 11 reasons rather than 10, I hope you are as diligent in measuring your investment performance.