{"id":2584,"date":"2019-08-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/2019\/08\/19\/10-reasons-someone-actually-seeks-out-financial-advice"},"modified":"2022-07-20T13:36:46","modified_gmt":"2022-07-20T20:36:46","slug":"10-reasons-someone-actually-seeks-out-financial-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/2019\/08\/19\/10-reasons-someone-actually-seeks-out-financial-advice","title":{"rendered":"10 Reasons Someone Actually Seeks Out (Financial) Advice"},"content":{"rendered":"
    \n
  1. To Reduce Complexity<\/li>\n
  2. To Take Action<\/li>\n
  3. To Help Make Better Tradeoffs<\/li>\n
  4. To Increase Confidence<\/li>\n
  5. To Feel Safer<\/li>\n
  6. To Offload Unpleasantness<\/li>\n
  7. To Have Someone To Blame<\/li>\n
  8. To Make Someone ELSE Happy<\/li>\n
  9. To Receive Encouragement<\/li>\n
  10. To Save Time<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    1) To Reduce Complexity.<\/b> While there\u2019s a virtually never-ending availability of information<\/i> on the internet, having <\/i>the information doesn\u2019t mean consumers know what to do <\/i>with it, especially in a domain as complex as finance (or health) where it\u2019s hard to distinguish the meaningful from the irrelevant or the occasional pure bunk. An advisor helps to highlight which information actually matters the most.<\/p>\n

    2) To Take Action. <\/b>A corollary challenge to the sheer volume of information available at our fingertips today is that not only can it be difficult to separate the signal from the noise, but that the flood of information may be so overwhelming it causes an \u201canalysis paralysis\u201d as the overwhelming number of choices results in inaction. An advisor can help someone take decisive action to actually get going.<\/p>\n

    3) To Help Make Better Tradeoffs. <\/b>Simple financial trade-offs are simple to evaluate (e.g., a CD yielding 2% is better than a savings account yielding 0.50% if you don\u2019t need the money anyway), but complex trade-offs are much more complex to evaluate (e.g., is it better to retain the flexibility of the portfolio but also the risk, or annuitize assets for a lifetime stream of income that also eliminates any possibility of things getting better than they are today?). An advisor can help people rationally evaluate trade-offs (despite a whole host of behavioral biases), and provide the insight and wisdom that comes from the experience of having seen the same situation many times before.<\/p>\n

    4) To Increase Confidence. <\/b>Sometimes even after doing all the homework, and making a choice on the path forward, a second opinion is still valuable to help ensure that nothing important was overlooked. Because even if the decision and outcome don\u2019t change, and the second opinion simply reaffirms the originally chosen path, it\u2019s still reaffirming to get the confirmation. An advisor can provide confidence-building validation as an informed second opinion.<\/p>\n

    5) To Feel Safer. <\/b>Because stressful financial decisions are just that \u2013 stressful \u2013 often it\u2019s just outright mentally relieving to know that there\u2019s an expert to rely upon, as our brains literally offload the \u201cwork\u201d of the decision-making process<\/a> when an expert is involved, saving the mental toll of even trying to figure out what the best path forward should be and the worry that it may be the wrong one. \u00a0An advisor can relieve the mental stress of wondering if the decision being made is the \u201cright\u201d path to take.<\/p>\n

    6) To Offload Unpleasantness. <\/b>In some cases, the blocking point for someone to do their own research and analysis to come up with the answer isn\u2019t that they don\u2019t have the skills, or the time, or the mental fortitude to handle the stress of the decision, but simply that they don\u2019t like <\/i>or want <\/i>to do it, and would rather do something else with <\/i>their available time. An advisor can step in to handle the tasks that people don\u2019t want to spend their time on, so they can spend their time in ways that they\u2019ll enjoy more.<\/p>\n

    7) To Have Someone To Blame. <\/b>It is common for many couples to delegate financial responsibility to one member or the other\u2026 which, for some, is incredibly stressful knowing that if their financial situation takes a turn for the worse, they must personally face the wrath of an unhappy spouse or other family members. Delegating at least partial responsibility to an advisor can help reduce how often couples blame each other for their financial woes.<\/p>\n

    8) To Make Someone ELSE Happy. <\/b>While most of the time, individuals seek out advice for themselves, sometimes the purpose of meeting an advisor is for someone else\u2026 either because they\u2019re seeking advice on behalf of someone else, or simply because someone else has demanded that <\/i>they seek help (e.g., a parent who says \u201cyou need to find an advisor because you can\u2019t handle this inheritance by yourself). An advisor often supports relationships that go beyond just the client themselves.<\/p>\n

    9) To Receive Encouragement. <\/b>For most people, money is a taboo subject, more so even than religion, politics, or sex. Which makes it especially difficult to find words of support and encouragement from friends and even family in the midst of making difficult financial decisions or changes. An advisor can provide the emotional support and encouragement, serving as someone to talk to about financial challenges that can\u2019t be talked about with anyone else.<\/p>\n

    10) To Save Time. <\/b>Even in the best of circumstances, a consumer who can both sift through the voluminous information to separate the signal from the noise and <\/i>determine the best decisive course of action will still likely take a lot of time <\/i>to go through the process\u2026 time that not everyone has. Even if the individual was going to arrive at the \u201cright\u201d answer on their own, an advisor can help someone save a lot of time going through the process.<\/p>\n

    The reason these reasons-for-seeking-advice are so important is that it highlights how the intention of an advice-seeker is often not <\/i>actually about the advice-answer itself! Which in turn, helps to explain why<\/i> clients don\u2019t necessarily follow through on \u201cthe answer\u201d when the recommendation is provided to them!<\/p>\n

    Because if the real reason for meeting with the advisor was to make someone else<\/i> happy, the client\u2019s goal might have been accomplished by just showing up, not by following through! Alternatively, if the client\u2019s intention was actually to offload unpleasantness or have someone to blame, or simply to save time, the client may not have wanted<\/i> a recommendation of what to do, and instead actually wanted the advisor to do it <\/i>for them<\/a>!<\/p>\n

    Simply put, if the advisor doesn\u2019t consider the true reason for why a prospective client is seeking out their advice, it\u2019s hard to figure out why they do or don\u2019t implement the subsequent recommendations (or whether they ever actually were going to in the first place!)<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    1) To Reduce Complexity. While there\u2019s a virtually never-ending availability of information on the internet, having the information doesn\u2019t mean consumers know what to do with it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":2334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"post_statement":"","post_description":"","post_cta":"","post_button":"Read More","post_button_url":"","footnotes":"","compliance_id":"","post_disclaimer":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2585,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584\/revisions\/2585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrisonlazarus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}