I’m sitting here staring out the window and wishing I could go outside.
Why can’t I go outside?
I’ll tell you why I can’t go outside.
I’m sick.
As in… a cold.
I haven’t felt right since Thursday.
My head hurts. My body aches. I feel “swimmy.” If I walk more than a few feet, I feel worn out.
I couldn’t even make mashed potatoes without feeling nauseated.
I’m almost useless.
Almost.
In a way, this is how the entire financial planning industry looks at life insurance and life insurance advisors.
We are… well we are not looked up to like gods, let’s just put it that way.
Many years ago, I had the good fortune of meeting with a woman who was being courted by a very slick investment advisor.
I mean, his game was REALLY on-point.
Charts. Graphs. Pie charts.
Oh my god the pie charts.
You should have seen these things.
They did cool spinning things on the screen…
Anyway, the numbers looked amazing. This person clearly put in some wrench time.
I can’t even remember why this lady called me in to have a look at this stuff.
Everything was spic-n-span.
What did I do?
I took that beautiful financial plan… all 65 (digital) pages of it… I “flipped” through it all… I looked at all those amazing wonderful projections…
… and I burned that sucker to the ground (even the cool pie charts).
I didn’t even tell this lady I could do better. In fact, I’d probably do worse than those projections.
Still, she wanted in like Flynn.
All I had was this rinky dink 2-page summary that was printed out on paper (which also meant no spinning graphics).
She loved it.
Was she crazy?
No she was not.
Here is why:
This whole thing happened in 2006. She was heavily invested in the stock market.
Most of her savings (including retirement savings) was wrapped up in a neat and tidy little Wall Street bow.
Her other advisor had chops.
I mean, this guy was some kind of whiz or something. He had been making her a decent sum of money.
There was one teeny-tiny problem: she wasn’t happy.
A lot of the info in the financial plan was gobbledegook to her.
She was paying through the nose for advice…
And…
Her advisor only made sales booty calls (called her up when he wanted to sell her something and make money).
He never kept in touch otherwise except maybe a few times a year and maybe he sent her a birthday card or something.
But…
He never taught her how any of her investments worked, how much she was paying for this stuff, what the risks were, or what might affect her future retirement income.
He also never showed her how to… you know… ENJOY her money BEFORE retirement.
And she wanted out.
So I did something she asked me to do: I made everything much simpler.
Two years later, she had no regrets.
In fact, she took me out to lunch and told me she had sat down and figured out how much money I’d saved her…
Had she followed the whiz’s plan, her retirement would have been chopped in half…
… which is exactly what had happened to a lot of her friends during the financial crisis of 2008.
Now… to be fair… she could have stayed invested.
Had she lost all that money, she would have made it back if she was patient and waited about 6-10 years.
But…
She couldn’t wait that long.
Those 6-10 years would have gotten her back to even-Steven.
No gains.
And… at her age… that would have really put her behind (which is something almost NO financial advisor ever tells their client because it scares the crap out of them).
Look, I’m no soothsayer and I can’t predict when crashes will happen.
I can’t predict exactly how much money she would have made or lost and when… because… well… there are too many things that can change over time.
This is what I find amusing about conventional financial plans.
They pretend to give people a glimpse into the future.
Sure, there are a lot of “ifs” built into it…
… but many of these plans cost a lot of money.
And… at the end of the day… what are people really paying for?
Investment return assumptions… which can’t be predicted.
Cheap, expensive, it really doesn’t matter.
At the end of the day what DOES matter is…
Is the money there when the client needs it?
Most financial plans can’t promise that.
My insurance plans do.
Fact is… this is something I’ve ALWAYS been able to promise my clients.
And if you want the same, here’s where you can come get some: