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1. Harnessing the Power of Testimonials for Financial Advisors
Client testimonials have long been powerful tools for businesses, providing genuine feedback and validating services. While the financial sector has been restricted in using this tactic, the times are changing. — Maribeth Kuzmenski
2. Unlocking Organic Growth Opportunities: Held-Away Cash
Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) have historically been focused on achieving organic growth through various means. However, recent trends suggest that organic growth has slowed down over the past year, falling below 4%, a significant decrease from the previous year’s rate of over 8%. The 2023 Fidelity RIA Benchmarking Study highlights this shift in the industry landscape. To supplement organic growth goals, we explore a strategy employed by RIAs to augment their growth prospects by helping clients to seamlessly increase yields on their cash while eliminating principal and credit risk. — Frank Bonanno
3. Recessionary Indicators Update. Soft Landing or Worse?
I previously discussed a slate of recessionary indicators with high correlations to recessionary onsets. However, as we head into 2024, many Wall Street economists predict a “soft landing” or “no recession” outcome for the economy. Are these recessionary indicators with near-flawless track records wrong this time? Will it be a soft landing in the economy or something worse? — Lance Roberts
4. The Costly Consequences of Blank Beneficiary Forms With Chris Price
Chris Price is the Assistant Vice President of Advanced Sales at Lincoln Financial Group, a firm that has been helping millions of people plan, protect, and retire for over a century. In this episode, Chris introduces and breaks down an overlooked aspect of financial planning, beneficiary designations: the strategy that influences virtually everything a client owns. — Power Your Advice
5. Maximizing Tax Benefits by “Bunching” Charitable Contributions
The standard deduction has more than doubled since enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, with a major increase between 2023 and 2024 just announced by the IRS. Because of these increases, many clients who historically itemized deductions may find it advantageous to take the standard deduction in the future. — Caleb Lund and Hayden Adams
6. R.I.P. To Some Accepted Wisdom for Growing a Practice
In good times growing a practice is difficult enough and one of the methods has become conventional wisdom – but that doesn’t mean it is right in these days of fundamental and structural change for the industry. The concept of a professional firm requiring 3 distinctly different roles of a Finder, Minder & Grinder was the thinking of one of the most influential authors & thinkers of my professional life. David Maister literally wrote the book on building, structuring and then managing a professional services firm. It happens that he wrote quite a few other books, a number of which are still utterly relevant to todays financial services professionals. — Tony Vidler
7. How To Overcome Price And Fee Objections
As a financial advisor, you have an unfair advantage when it comes to raising your fees compared to other professions. By simply doubling your fees, you can almost double your income—while working less than you ever had before. Why then don’t more financial advisors raise their fees? — James Pollard
8. Investment Management Is Risk Management
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: investment management IS risk management. Look no further than the past 2 years in the stock market. Through yesterday’s close, the SPY (S&P 500) ETF is up a whopping 20% this year. And QQQ (Nasdaq 100 ETF) is up 47% this year. Putting aside the fact that EQAL (the average stock within the 1,000 largest companies) is only up 3% for the year, the “headline” indexes are flying. What a stock market, eh? — Rob Isbitts
9. 2024 Will Be All About Earnings
Santa Claus overstuffed investors’ stockings in November as rates fell and investor sentiment levels soared. Negative earnings growth over the past year amplified the market’s reliance on these two inputs. Typically, earnings grow, sharing the burden of influence beyond rates and sentiment. Good News! Earnings growth restarted last quarter and should accelerate from here throughout 2024, cranking up a missing engine of support. This will reduce the stock market’s reliance on interest rates and sentiment for direction, which should improve the ride, and the odds, of continued returns for investors. — David Waddell
10. The 4% Retirement-Asset Spend-Down Rule Is Rubbish
Conventional financial planning uses two rules of thumb. One is the 70% replacement-rate, retirement-spending rule. The other is the 4% retirement-asset, spend-down rule. The replacement-rate rule says you need to accumulate enough assets to be able to spend 70% of your pre-retirement income in retirement. The 4% rule says you should withdraw and spend an amount equal to 4% of the retirement account balances you held when you first retired. Whether these two rules, both of which tell you what to spend in retirement, are mutually compatible is a good, but apparently never posed question to which I'll return in a subsequent column. — Larry Kotlikoff
11. 4 Key Opportunities for Advisories in 2024
This year has been one of exciting developments across the financial advisory sector. Looking ahead to 2024, there are four strategic opportunities that I’m currently eyeing as a COO that I believe will shape the industry’s trajectory and define success in the shifting financial services ecosystem. First, the unprecedented pace of technological advancement presents a golden opportunity for companies to embrace digital innovation and integrate fintech solutions into operations. — Beverley Yeomans