The Wealth Consigliere

Rather than joining the 2021 predictions clogging your email box I will say goodbye to 2020 instead.  In 2020 we learned what doesn’t work, but we also learned a few items that worked well. This week we will stick to the positive. The positive doesn’t attract as many clicks, but 2020 taught us several items that will improve our wealth advisory businesses in the future.   Don’t fight the Fed This lesson has been around for years, but it now has a Hall of Fame worthy batting average. When the Fed shared that they would keep rates at zero for years we should have increased our equity allocation.     The other asset class that has benefited is residential real estate. Stock prices and home prices have increased during 2020. I missed this increase but  will keep this mantra on my laptop near my Apple sticker.  Platforms One of my smartest friends is always looking for platforms to buy. This year the platforms of Facebook, Google and Airbnb proved to be great i...

The pandemic has given us a chance to update our wealth advisory business starting with a clean sheet of paper. We will talk about unique areas that we should start from scratch. The pandemic was a stress test that has hurt people and proved many of our corporate policies like Just-In-Time inventory fail the test. The areas we hope you will consider post pandemic are ones we didn’t consider until we had time to think about their veracity.   Same Planet  Black Lives Matter and equal pay have dominated social media. There seems to be a consensus that racism and patriarchy are long in the tooth and need to be changed to meet our current beliefs. We are all from the same planet and should realize that there is no difference between black or white and men and women. The business facts prove this and many facts prove that clients prefer working with someone who thinks and looks like they look. We need to have the courage to embrace this reality. A clean sheet of paper will help...

  Our monthly podcast summary will adjust to meet the positive items surrounding the new vaccines.  The changes will be organized around our new normal.  New  Favorite Podcasts  Fight Night   https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-fight-night-72737532/ Prof G Show   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1E1SVcVyU3ntWMSQEp38Yw The Book Review   https://www.nytimes.com/column/book-review-podcast My daily Podcast Routine  (some repeats) Smartless   https://smartless.simplecast.com/ Science Vs   https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs Deep Background    https://www.pushkin.fm/show/deep-background/ Robinhood Snacks   https://snacks.robinhood.com/ I’m not an epidemiologist, but I choose to be optimistic with the 90% efficacy. 

  The pandemic has caused many of us to to hope things to will go back to the way it was before soon.  This week’s blog will summarize why our memories might be too selective. Our challenge is to identify which items should be left behind. Everything doesn’t need to be discarded, but we need to honestly assess what we need after the vaccine. We will share what isn’t as great as the marketing firms tell us. The three areas are essential items we need to identify as a reality or just selective recall? Memories   Our lizard brain remembers how to survive.  We need to understand that most of our memories are based on selective recall.  The memories either worked or the failed.  The pandemic has provided us time to consider items that might not have been as great as we remember.  Our list starts with office meetings and ends with conferences.  Most are not as bad or as great as we remember neither will kill us, but if we don’t evaluate them they might ...