Advancing Knowledge in Financial Planning
While the Nerd’s Eye View blog is free to all, the Kitces.com Members Section includes additional exclusive content available only to members, including white papers, webinars, and unique member resources. If you want to go deeper and get the best educational content in the financial planning industry to be more successful, you will love a Kitces.com Premier membership which includes:
During this four-hour virtual conference, you’ll have a chance to see what successful financial planning value looks like, with a unique behind the scenes look at real financial advisors’ efforts to demonstrate their value in their marketing, their financial planning process, and their ongoing advice services. Afterwards, connect with your peers at our Community Event.
Join Michael and expert guests Kathleen Burns Kingsbury and Stephanie Bogan as they discuss how to confidently have the fee-increase conversation with existing clients.
Asking great questions during client conversations is an essential part of the job as a financial advisor. Great questions help advisors gather important information, and great questions can even help motivate clients to take action. Meghaan Lurtz will discuss the different types of questions that are available to advisors as well as how and when to use these questions throughout the financial planning relationship.
Meghaan Lurtz, Ph.D., FBS™ is a Professor of Practice at Kansas State University where she teaches courses for the Advanced Financial Planning Certificate Program, a lecturer at Columbia University where she teaches Financial Psychology, and an on-staff writer and researcher of financial psychology at Kitces.com.
As more and more advisors offer increasingly comprehensive financial planning and deliver more service to clients, it’s becoming harder to differentiate between every other advisor who is also doing the same thing. At this Month's Office Hours, Michael and expert guests Kristen Luke and Robert Sofia will share what it takes to really differentiate from the competition, including factors that actually lead prospective clients to choose one advisor over another as well as how to avoid "differentiators" that unwittingly lead to just blending in instead of truly standing out.
Join us at the October Kitces Monthly Webinar where ETF expert Dave Nadig, CIO and Director of Research at ETF Trends, will discuss how and why ETFs are so efficient, as well as where they fall down, why focusing on exposure trumps everything else, and how to understand the true total cost of ETF ownership.
ETF industry pioneer Dave Nadig is Chief Investment Officer and Director of Research of ETF Trends and ETF Database. Nadig comes with 25 years of ETF experience, most recently as Managing Director of ETF.com, where he helped grow the business and provide expert commentary for the past decade.
Michael and Matt Oechsli, founder and CEO of The Oechsli Institute will discuss what the research tells us about how affluent investors select their advisors (and why they care more about partnering with their advisors), as well as ways advisors can tailor their marketing to reach more affluent clients and increase their revenue.
Matt Oechsli is the founder and CEO of The Oechsli Institute, which does primary research into affluent investors and how they select advisors, and then provides financial advisor marketing and sales consulting and coaching on how to leverage those research insights to grow their firms by reaching more affluent clients.
In this late-breaking webinar, Jeffrey Levine will take a deep dive into all the details of the latest Biden Tax Plan proposal, and provide his expert perspective on the planning issues and strategies advisors need to consider as the law is finalized in the weeks to come.
Jeffrey Levine is the Lead Financial Planning Nerd for Kitces.com, Chief Planning Officer at Buckingham Wealth Partners, and is the Lead Creator and Content Expert for Savvy IRA Planning®, offered through Horsesmouth.
Jamie Hopkins will discuss current proposals and associated drivers that may affect estate planning, as well as the 10 steps of a solid estate planning process that you can easily apply in your client conversations.
Jamie P. Hopkins is the Managing Partner of Wealth Solutions at Carson Group. He also serves as Finance Professor of Practice at Creighton University’s Heider College of Business. A nationally recognized writer and researcher, Jamie is a regular contributor to Forbes, InvestmentNews, and MarketWatch. A highly sought-after speaker in the financial services industry, Jamie has also been featured on Wall Street Journal podcasts, NPR radio, and Fox radio, and has made multiple appearances for NBC10 Philadelphia, PBS, and USA Today.
Julie Littlechild, Founder of Absolute Engagement and Dennis Moseley-Williams, Founder of Moseley-Williams Strategic Consulting join Michael for August Kitces Office Hours where they will discuss how the delivery of a great client experience starts with viewing everything about your financial planning process as an experience to be staged for clients, and why, in the end, it's not just about what you do for clients, but what positive changes you bring, and the transformations that are created in their lives.
At August’s Kitces Monthly webinar, Jeffrey Levine will share the strategies and nuances of using a CRT to provide clients with the benefit of a lifetime payout as an alternative to the no-longer-available stretch IRA. In this webinar, advisors will learn how the SECURE Act changed the stretch IRA and the impact of the 10-Year Rule as well as the client factors planners will want to look for and consider when suggesting the CRT as a potential alternative to a stretch IRA.
Jeffrey Levine is the Lead Financial Planning Nerd for Kitces.com, Chief Planning Officer at Buckingham Wealth Partners, and is the Lead Creator and Content Expert for Savvy IRA Planning®, offered through Horsesmouth.
The ongoing rise of firms providing financial planning value beyond 'just' the portfolio is leading more and more advisory firms to charge advice fees in addition to (or in lieu of) an AUM fee. The good news of subscription and retainer fee models is that the advisor can get paid for giving advice beyond the portfolio, and even be compensated for the advice they provide to clients who don't have a portfolio. Learn how advisory firms are explaining the ongoing value that their clients will receive for the advice fees they pay, and how you can demonstrate your firm's ongoing financial planning value.
Alan Moore is the co-founder of XY Planning Network (which supports nearly 1,500 advisors utilizing monthly subscription and other fee-for-service models) and AdvicePay (which handles payment processing for ongoing advice fees), giving him unique insight into how real-world advisors are structuring their ongoing advice fees and what they're doing to earn and substantiate those fees.
Choosing the “right” risk tolerance questionnaire receives little consideration among financial advisors today, despite being a requirement for FINRA-registered brokers and insurance agents, and a matter of fiduciary protection for registered investment advisors. Michael Kitces will explore what exactly risk tolerance is, how it is distinct from risk capacity and risk perception, what risk tolerance questionnaires are designed to measure, and what it takes to create a high-quality risk tolerance questionnaire that will serve as a useful tool for assessing a client's risk tolerance.
Michael E. Kitces is the Head of Planning Strategy at Buckingham Wealth Partners and is a passionate advocate for evolving, expanding, and institutionalizing excellence in financial planning. In addition, he is a co-founder of the XY Planning Network, the former Practitioner Editor of the Journal of Financial Planning, and the publisher of the e-newsletter The Kitces Report and the popular financial planning industry blog Nerd’s Eye View through his website www.Kitces.com, dedicated to advancing knowledge in financial planning.
Several major changes are expected under the Biden Tax Proposal, which will impact affluent clients in particular, as it eliminates the tax preference for capital gains and qualified dividends for higher-income households, along with the step-up in basis. Jeffrey Levine and Michael Kitces will answer member questions on the proposed changes and how to prepare for them.
Jeffrey Levine is the Lead Financial Planning Nerd for Kitces.com, Chief Planning Officer at Buckingham Wealth Partners, and is the Lead Creator and Content Expert for Savvy IRA Planning®, offered through Horsesmouth.
To best serve clients in the decumulation phase, advisors must evaluate which risk factors and preferences to incorporate in the plan including age, retirement date, equity allocation, pension wealth, and rate environments. David M. Blanchett, will discuss how to create an efficient and uniquely designed decumulation portfolio for each client using the ‘total wealth’ perspective.
David M. Blanchett, PhD, CFA, CFP is head of retirement research for Morningstar Investment Management LLC. In this role, he helps develop and maintain methodologies relating to wealth forecasting, general financial planning, automated investment selection, and portfolio assignment.
How can advisory firm owners create a natural feedback mechanism to understand whether their decisions are maximizing value? Join Michael Kitces , Brad Bueermann, CEO of FP Transitions and David DeVoe, Founder and CEO of DeVoe & Company as they share their expertise on how to get a handle on what an advisory firm business is really worth, as well as the latest trends in advisory firm valuations.
In order to help clients achieve the ultimate goal of a happy retirement, advisors must account for the psychological impact of generating income from retirement assets, as well as the physical and emotional considerations that affect retirement satisfaction. In our May webinar, Michael Finke, PhD, from The American College of Financial Services, discusses what actually makes people happy in retirement, as well as the planning considerations specific to individuals in retirement.
MIchael Finke is a nationally renowned researcher with a focus on the value of financial advice, financial planning regulation, investments, and individual investor behavior. His research questioning the 4% rule of retirement planning was published in the Journal of Financial Planning and won the 2014 Montgomery-Warschauer award for most influential article.
Despite devoting a lot of time and effort to establishing relationships with local “Centers of Influence” (COIs), such as attorneys and accountants, many advisors struggle to actually get referrals from them. Yet referrals from COIs in your target market generate more affluent prospects on average than any other advisor marketing strategy, according to a recent Kitces Research study. So, what can advisors do to generate referrals from their COI relationships? Join Michael Kitces and expert guests Brett Van Bortel and Jeffrey Levine as they share their expertise on what it takes to actually build relationships with COIs that produce results.
As a speaker and consultant, Brett Van Bortel's focus is helping advisors in the building of strategic partnerships with attorneys and CPAs. He also works to help in the horizontal growth of advisory practices by provisioning wealth management guidance, marketing to age 65+ clients, assisting in the branding of financial advisory firms and scientifically testing for the most effective ways to ask for and receive client introductions.
John will explain to advisors how they can determine a client’s main objectives regarding their stock options, restricted stock shares, and restricted stock options, and apply specific planning strategies to meet those objectives.
Mr. Nersesian is Head of PIMCO Advisor Education and provides advanced wealth management and investment consulting education to financial professionals. Previously, he was the managing director of wealth management services for Nuveen investments from 2000 to 2018.
Congress has just passed new legislation to provide relief to American people and businesses affected by the economic impact of Covid. Jeffrey Levine will discuss key new rules and provisions, as well as immediate planning strategies that can be implemented with clients.
Jeffrey Levine, CPA/PFS, CFP®, AIF, CWS®, MSA is the Lead Financial Planning Nerd for Kitces.com, the Chief Planning Officer at Buckingham Wealth Partners (where he works closely with their team to create a seamless client experience that makes it easy to plan and instill confidence as they work towards their most important goals), and the Lead Creator and Content Expert for Savvy IRA Planning®, offered through Horsesmouth. Jeff is a recipient of the Standing Ovation award, presented by the AICPA Financial Planning Division, and was named to the 2017 class of 40 Under 40 by InvestmentNews.
Compensation is one of the most influential drivers of employee motivation, and is often used by employers as a way to guide their team’s behaviors. At our March edition of Kitces Office Hours, Michael Kitces and Angie Herbers will discuss the common mistakes that many financial advisory firms make in developing their compensation models for employee advisors, as well as the drivers behind compensation that actually do (and don’t) motivate employees.
Angie Herbers is Chief Executive and Senior Consultant at Herbers & Company, an independent management and growth consultancy for financial advisory firms. Angie’s deep experience is the growth catalyst behind many of the largest advisory firms in the US, and the fastest growing startups. Her expertise and research is globally syndicated in domestic and international industry publications.
Monte Carlo analysis has become the dominant approach for financial advisors trying to project out and evaluate the viability of a client’s retirement plan. Yet in practice, today’s Monte Carlo software and associated outputs primarily just show whether a current path is viable, and do little to provide guidance about when and how a prospective retiree might need to make course changes to stay on track. Derek Tharp will discuss how to adapt the Monte Carlo analysis and make it more useful and tangible for clients trying to formulate an actual plan for retirement.
Derek Tharp is Lead Researcher at Kitces.com and an assistant professor of finance at the University of Southern Maine. In addition to his work on this site, Derek assists clients through his RIA Conscious Capital. Derek is a Certified Financial Planner and earned his Ph.D. in Personal Financial Planning at Kansas State University.
Join us in February for Office Hours where Michael Kitces and expert guests Alan Moore and Mark Tibergien will answer your questions about how to price your advisory services and determine the “right” fee to charge, and share the latest Kitces Research data on financial advisor fee pricing.
While financial advisors are taught how to analyze client situations and craft recommendations, there is remarkably little guidance in what to do when clients don’t actually follow those recommendations. Because in the end, helping clients actually change their behavior can be difficult, and the best way to push them forward – without offending them in the process – is not always clear.
During January Office Hours, Michael Kitces and Taylor Schulte, who wrote the Nerd's Eye View article 2 Ways I Improved My Advisor Website SEO (And How You Can, Too), discussed the do's and don'ts of building your own website as well as provided the best practices on how to create a site that generate prospects.
How does one build an appropriate portfolio for accumulation-stage investors? What assets should be considered for an accumulator’s entire portfolio?
Expert guest David M. Blanchett, PhD, CFA, CFP®, will discuss how financial planners should consider traditional investments alongside human capital, housing, and pension assets. Furthermore, David will discuss the risk of each of these assets and how they should be considered with the overall goal of being able to build an efficient, diversified portfolio.
At this Kitces Monthly Webinar, advisors will learn:
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