Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that the SEC in recent examinations appears to be looking into RIAs' use of held-away asset management technology that allows advisors to more efficiently and securely manage their clients' 401(k) plan accounts by giving the advisor the ability to not just view and actually trade in the 401(k) account. Areas of concern for the regulator appear to include whether a firm is transparently disclosing fees (including whether fees charged by these platforms are covered by the firm or passed on to the client) and whether a firm is using third-party providers at all or is doing it themselves and then retaining client login credentials (which could create custody and data security concerns). Which highlights the importance for those who use held-away asset management technology to be able to explain to their regulator (whether at the Federal or at the state level) how it allows them to better holistically manage their clients' assets without resorting to collecting client login credentials.

Also in industry news this week:

• A survey of undergraduate students in financial planning programs finds that this group is largely focused on client service and growth opportunities (in addition to salary), suggesting that firms whose culture focuses on building long-term relationships with employees and clients alike could be more attractive to next-gen advisors
• The quality of advice received and the quality of the relationship top the list of reasons clients leave their advisor, according to a recent survey, suggesting that advisors meeting with a 'switcher' might explore how their experience and communication practices might (or might not) be a fit for these prospective clients

From there, we have several articles on investment planning:

• While a dividend-centric investment approach might come with tax inefficiencies (and potential concentration risk) compared to a 'total return' approach, it could still be attractive to certain retired clients who might be willing to spend more if they don't need to tap into their principal
• When it might (or might not) be prudent to reinvest dividends and how advisors can offer significant investment and tax planning value in this area
• Why a focus on investing in dividend-paying stocks could leave investors with a tilt towards value stocks that they might not have expected

We also have a number of articles on practice management:

• Three key questions advisory firms can ask candidates during an initial 'phone screen' to efficiently and effectively determine whether it's worth investing more time evaluating a particular applicant
• How financial planning job candidates can send more 'positive' signals during the interview process (and avoid 'negative' ones) while demonstrating both their technical and professional acumen
• How financial advisory firms can demonstrate their culture during the hiring process to attract good-fit candidates who will be more likely to stick around for the long haul

We wrap up with three final articles, all about AI and the workplace:

• A recent survey finds there appears to be a mismatch between the time workers say they save by using AI and how much additional productivity they achieve (which suggests that the task-switching and other costs of AI could reduce its potential time-saving benefits)
• How firms can ensure jobs remain meaningful in a world of increasing automation and human-AI interaction
• How the example of bank tellers (whose numbers actually grew after the introduction of the ATM, only to decline amidst the rise of smartphones and mobile banking) shows how technological innovations can have sometimes unpredictable effects on employment in specific fields

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

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Tax-loss harvesting can be an effective way to reduce investment income in a taxable portfolio, by selling positions at a loss and reinvesting the proceeds in similar securities (but not identical ones, to avoid wash sale rules negating the loss) – which creates a loss for tax purposes that can offset gains from elsewhere in the portfolio, while keeping the portfolio funds still invested and able to participate in any further market upside. The caveat, however, is that unless new funds are constantly added to the portfolio to buy new positions, there becomes fewer and fewer losses available to harvest over time. Because on average, the market tends to rise, and so in a diversified portfolio most positions will eventually rise far enough above their cost basis that even subsequent downturns don't result in taxable losses, while for positions that do continue to decline there's only a finite amount of losses they can actually generate (because their market value – and cost basis – can only go down to zero).

But recent years have seen the growth in popularity of a type of investment strategy that aims to generate more tax losses over time than standard portfolios, while still performing at or above the overall market return. At its core, "Tax-Aware Long-Short" (TALS) investing involves adding leverage (i.e., borrowing) to an existing portfolio to buy more positions and thus increase the number of potential losses to harvest. The leverage is used for both long (i.e., borrowing cash to buy equities in hopes that they'll increase in value) and short (i.e., borrowing equities to sell and repurchase later in hopes that they'll decline) positions – which means in theory, TALS portfolios can generate losses in both bear markets (where the long positions decline in value) and bull markets (when the short positions decline), while largely remaining economically neutral since a decline in the short positions will be mostly offset by an increase in the long positions and vice versa. And because short positions can theoretically generate an infinite amount of losses (since they decline when markets rise), TALS portfolios are less likely to run out of losses to harvest over time than standard long-only portfolios.

The higher tax-loss harvesting potential of TALS portfolios can make them useful in situations where an investor expects to incur a large amount of capital gains income, e.g., if they want to sell a highly-appreciated security and reinvest in a more diversified portfolio. However, for advisors who are considering TALS (e.g., managed by a subadvisor in a Separately Managed Account [SMA] portfolio), it's also important to consider the underlying investment strategy beyond just the tax ramifications. Because tax rules prevent TALS from being entirely economically neutral, i.e., the long and short positions can't exactly offset each other such that a loss on one side will be fully offset by a gain on the other side. Instead, they must have "economic substance", meaning there needs to be a reasonable expectation of profitability before considering the tax benefits of the strategy. In other words, TALS managers can't just aim to exactly replicate the performance of a market index while generating no additional pre-tax return from the added leverage – they need to actively try to outperform the market in order to substantiate the tax losses that they incur along the way.

Furthermore, the "carrying costs" of TALS investing – which include both fees to the TALS manager for managing the portfolio as well as fees to the custodian as compensation for their role in lending funds on margin (for the long side) and intermediating securities lending (for the short side) – create a significant baseline hurdle which TALS managers must overcome "just" to achieve market performance, let alone outperformance. And the higher the leverage in the portfolio (with higher potential losses to harvest), the greater the carrying costs – ranging from around 100bps (i.e., 1%) of the original portfolio value on the low end to 400bps (i.e., 4%) or more on the high end. And with that additional leverage comes more risk that any underperformance of the TALS portfolio will be more severe than in a more lightly-leveraged portfolio. Or put differently, increasing leverage in a TALS strategy increases the potential tax benefits it can generate, but also increases the risk that it may underperform enough that the investor would have been better off simply selling their concentrated security and paying tax on it!

The key point is that TALS portfolios' potential for asymmetric tax losses also comes with a potential for asymmetric economic losses. And as the popularity of TALS investing continues to increase, it's difficult to know what the repercussions of events like short squeezes will be in a world where TALS has ramped up the demand for short positions (as custodians like Schwab and Fidelity have begun to acknowledge by raising borrowing costs and imposing various restrictions on TALS accounts to manage their own counterparty risks as the primary lender in the strategy). And so advisors can provide value by analyzing not only the tax impact of a potential TALS strategy, but also how the costs and risk of the strategy aligns with the client's goals and their own investment philosophy – because it's one thing to generate 'just' losses for tax purposes, but it's another thing when those paper losses translate into real economic losses instead!

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Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 494th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Kristin Harad. Kristin is the founder of Full Advisor Coaching, a marketing and coaching firm for financial advisors.

What's unique about Kristin, though, is how her role has given her a window into how some advisory firms are struggling to train next-generation advisors in business development practices that might have come natural to founders (and how firms and newer advisors can overcome this hurdle in part by being clear about who they serve and the value they provide).

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Kristin finds that a firm's branding is at the heart of business development success for its advisors (as it gives team members a strong foundation to lean on when explaining the firm's value proposition), why Kristin counsels firms to craft an ideal client persona, which can make it easier for newer advisors to identify good-fit individuals to approach, and how Kristin suggests that firms can put together a one-pager that introduces the firm, talks about the problems it solves for clients, and includes elements of "social proof" so that team members have a consistent source of truth when engaging in business development activities.

We also talk about how Kristin helps newer advisors overcome hesitancy they might have in seeming too "salesy" when engaging in business development (including by focusing on how they actually help their clients rather than simply sell a product to them), how Kristin finds that newer advisors can introduce financial planning to contacts without being awkward by focusing on the problems they and their firm help clients solve, and why Kristin thinks that getting out and talking to more individuals (whether personal contacts, peers in local organizations or business groups, or centers of influence) about how they help clients can boost newer advisors' confidence (and potentially lead to new leads or referrals in the process).

And be certain to listen to the end, where Kristin shares how using content marketing can help newer advisors build their credibility and create more ‘warm' leads who are familiar with their expertise and who they serve, why Kristin thinks that firms could benefit from having a more expansive view of what constitutes business development by newer advisors (for example, by increasing ties between the firm and the children of older clients), and how Kristin overcame her own business development hurdles by being confident in her own value and by leaning into the types of personal interactions in which she thrives.

So, whether you're interested in learning about how to build a firm's brand to make it easier for newer advisors to engage in business development, how to overcome advisors' reluctance to seem to ‘salesy' when touting the firm's services, or how content marketing can create more ‘warm' leads, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Kristin Harad.

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2026 has been another rollercoaster of a year to start, as the onset of the Iran War triggered a sharp selloff of nearly 10% in the first quarter, only for us to witness a 15%+ rebound in the subsequent two months, forcing advisory firms to both once again manage their early-year expenses, while meeting an uptick in demand for client conversations to navigate through the market volatility. At the same time, vendors leveraging AI continue to make the case that their increasingly capable tools will help advisory firms lift productivity and manage their costs… even as the pace of new AI rollouts leaves many advisors paralyzed in trying to figure out what to buy and when (as it seems like a new-new even-better-sounding provider emerges every month or two!). Yet for the time being, advisory firms still face the same core challenges they always have – delivery of services to clients, capacity of advisors and support staff as they grow and try to scale, and leveraging whatever technology they can to make all of it work better together (hopefully!).

But now as the summer approaches, we enter what for most advisors is still a season of respite – when most advisors take more time off (if only because clients are harder to pin down for summer meetings in the midst of summer vacations)… and find some time to read and catch up on a few good books!

For those who love to read, though (and especially for those who have limited time and will only get to read just one or two books over the summer), the perennial question is always, "So… what's a good book worth reading this summer?"

As a voracious reader myself, I've always been eager to hear suggestions from others of great books to read, whether it's something new that's just come out or an 'old classic' that I should go back and read (again or for the first time!). And so, in the spirit of sharing, a few years ago I launched my list of "Recommended (Book) Reading for Financial Advisors", and it was so well received that in 2013 I also started sharing my annual "Summer Reading List" for financial advisors of the best books I'd read in the preceding year. It quickly became a perennial favorite on Nerd's Eye View, and so I've updated it every year, with new lists of books in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and a fresh round last year in 2025.

And now, I'm excited to share my latest Summer Reading list of top books for financial advisors in 2026, from what it really takes to achieve rapid-growth scaling (i.e., to actually 10X instead of 2X'ing), to a pair of books on how to more effectively scale yourself by 'buying back your time' and becoming a more effective manager, and a fascinating look at the history of the financial planning profession (as told by Bob Veres, who has 'seen it all' as a witness along the way!) along with another book on the broader history of money itself, to thinking through what it really takes to differentiate on a great client experience (beyond 'just' being highly competent as a financial planning professional and delivering great service), and how to instill more confidence, capability, and financial competency in our kids by teaching them the virtues of learning how to create value for others around them.

So as the summer season and summer vacations get underway, I hope that you find this suggested summer reading list of books for financial planners to be helpful… and please do share your own suggestions in the comments at the end of the article about the best books you've read over the past year as well!

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Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that the RIA industry (including both consumer-facing "retail" RIAs and larger asset managers that have investment advisory businesses) notched record highs for assets under management, total clients, and non-clerical employment in 2025, while the total number of RIAs grew for the 13th consecutive year. While strong market performance no doubt contributed to the 22.3% AUM growth experienced during the year, the report found that growing public awareness of the fiduciary responsibilities of RIAs and firms' expanding reach to different types of clients (e.g., through alternative fee models and digital advice platforms) appear to be drivers of the growing popularity of RIAs amongst those seeking financial advice.

Also in industry news this week:

• An SEC risk alert issued this week flags that a number of firms have been cited during recent examinations for failing to properly disclose certain fee arrangements, including how they handle (and receive revenue for) client cash holdings
• A report finds that while referrals remain the most popular way high-net-worth individuals find an advisor, only a minority rely on a referral alone (often performing their own research), suggesting that a firm's online presence could serve as a valuable supplement to an effective referral program

From there, we have several articles on investment planning:

• The "equity risk premium" is currently hovering around zero by certain measures (due in part to elevated stock elevations and rising bond yields), though it's not necessarily a short-term timing indicator
• Why certain investors might be attracted to the availability of long-term Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) currently offering real yields nearing 3%
• While they're not receiving as much attention as they did earlier this decade, I Bonds could be making a comeback given their ability to offer positive real yields

We also have a number of articles on Social Security:

• The latest report from the Social Security Board of Trustees finds that the trust fund that supports Social Security retirement benefits is expected to be exhausted in late 2032 (at which point it would be able to pay out 78% of scheduled benefits)
• A research study finds that while investing in equities might not be a panacea for Social Security's funding issues, it could be effective as part of a broader plan that first shores up the system through more 'painful' changes to taxes and benefits
• How advisors can support clients who are nervous about the state of the Social Security system, including by modeling how a 'worst case scenario' and potential policy changes would affect their financial plan

We wrap up with three final articles, all about "Dying With Zero":

• How financial advisors can help clients balance the need to save for the future with the immediate and long-term benefits that spending today can provide
• Why strict adherence to a "Die With Zero" philosophy could end up causing an individual greater stress and lead to financial precarity
• Given 'expiration dates' on certain types of experiences, spending relatively early in life could allow an individual take advantage of opportunities that might not be possible later on

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

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When building a financial planning firm (or any business), there is a tension between personalization and optimization. On the one hand, as a business owner, one ostensibly has the right to create their own rules and only do the work that is most fulfilling to them. Yet at the same time, the reality is that planners, like anyone else, need to earn a sustainable living – which usually requires some level of systems, processes, specialization, and optimization to ensure that there is reliable income. Without optimization, it is challenging for firm owners to do what they're passionate about… and with that optimization, advisors can feel as though they've built a business for someone else's life.

In this 192nd episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss how creative advisors can build a business that is both fulfilling and successful. For example, for many advisors, financial planning is more creative than technical, as it is centered on relationships and individual needs, not 'optimal' decisions. Similarly, many clients choose advisors not only due to their perceived competency, but also their unique personality. So, advisors may want to consider how they can further imbed their unique interests and strengths into the advisory firm offerings, trusting that it may be something which attracts clients, regardless of how 'optimal' it is. For example, many advisors integrate their interests into client experiences, from fishing to sharing meals, which can increase the personal meaning of the work for the advisor and the client experience.

Another part of building a fulfilling firm owner experience is to outsource. For example, many advisors dislike administrative and compliance tasks. Even if that work 'only' takes up a few hours, delegating or outsourcing it can create huge dividends in the advisor's day-to-day fulfillment. Alternatively, technology solutions may be able to produce the same benefit.

At the same time, these decisions come with a trade-off: advisors can build a business designed for humans that is still profitable, but it may be less profitable than a purely optimized business. There is, thankfully, room for nuance between a solely optimized business and wholly creative acts, and advisors who build indfully may reap the benefits of both models. And alternatively, advisors may choose to optimize their business in order to fund their more creative pursuits in their own time!

Ultimately, building a human-centered firm experience does not have to come at the sacrifice of profitability. Highly creative advisors can give themselves permission to do what is most fulfilling, leveraging their unique strengths, interests and approaches. This can ultimately create a better client experience… and a more fulfilling workplace for the advisor themselves!

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Business owners have long been a popular target clientele for financial advisors; successful firms with strong profitability created an advisor opportunity to help business owners diversify their wealth (into the advisor’s managed accounts), to propose tax shelters (to offset business income), and to secure the value of the business with life insurance (to fund buy-sell agreements or estate liquidity). However, while the reality is that these have been lucrative ways for financial advisors to engage with business owners, it understates the full breadth of the unique financial advice needs of many business owners. After all, successful businesses are often the largest asset by far on the business owner’s balance sheet, which means advice to help them better grow and manage the business as an asset, can far exceed the economic impact of any of the advisor’s ‘traditional’ offerings. With the caveat that means advisors may need to develop new advice skills and new domains of advice expertise to serve the full breadth of business owners most effectively!

In this ‘hybrid’ video-based article, Michael Kitces and John Bowen, CEO and founder of CEG Worldwide and CEG Insights (formerly Spectrem Group), map out the four stages that entrepreneurs pass through as they grow and scale their business – and the new kinds of knowledge expertise that advisors need to develop to best help their business owner clients overcome obstacles along the way.

The first stage (Foundation for Freedom), centers on moving from scarcity to structure. At this point, owners are building stability, generating income, and coordinating basic financial infrastructure. This is where most traditional advisory services fit comfortably, including investment management, retirement plans, tax coordination, and basic succession discussions.

The second stage (Energy for Expansion), begins when entrepreneurs start converting their expertise into scalable intellectual property. Instead of relying entirely on personal effort, they begin building systems, processes, training, and thought leadership that can grow independently of the founder’s direct involvement. However, many businesses become trapped by "founder dependency," where the owner remains indispensable to operations and growth, which creates both valuation limitations and operational bottlenecks. In these stages, advisors are largely focused on collaborative and coordinating services – such as ensuring CPAs, attorneys, and other specialist all work together to help the business owner achieve their goals, connecting the business owner to IP attorneys to understand how to turn their experiential knowledge into valuable intellectual property, and perhaps even some coaching nudges to the business owner themselves about how to evolve the business to be less dependent on them as a path to expanding enterprise value.

If entrepreneurs can mold a business to run independently of themselves, then they enter the scaling-focused stages. The third stage (Collaboration and Multiplication), is where business evolve into self-managing teams that can make complex decisions independent of the owner. From the advisor perspective, expertise needs shift significantly at this stage, as the business owner focuses more on how to ensure good governance of a business they may be less involved with day-to-day, the implications of sharing equity across key leaders in the business (as it dilutes the business owner’s own stake), and beginning to position the business for an eventual exit and liquidity event.

Finally, at the most mature fourth stage (Exponential Impact), entrepreneurs move beyond wealth accumulation toward significance and long-term influence. With their financial security firmly established and financial goals broadly achieved, the focus shifts toward family governance, strategic philanthropy, next-generation development, and perhaps how to create meaningful impact during their lifetime (rather than simply leaving a legacy after death). Many ultra-high-net-worth entrepreneurs are less concerned with maximizing investment returns (growth for what purpose at that point?) and more focused on defining purpose, stewarding family relationships, and aligning capital with personal values. This is where advisors increasingly function as strategic coordinators and personal CFOs, helping clients integrate financial, family, business, and philanthropic decisions into a coherent vision for the future.

The broader implication for advisors is that serving affluent entrepreneurs effectively requires a shift away from traditional expertise of investments, insurance, and retirement planning, into a more integrated advisory role that delves into valuable "non-traditional" advice domains from how to really boost enterprise value, to governance of their wealth and managing their equity cap table, and ultimately how to better align their wealth with their values and legacy (when all their other goals have been satisfied), while increasingly serving as orchestrators of expertise amongst increasingly specialized legal and tax experts.

Ultimately, there is a wealth of opportunities for advisors who work with business owners, particularly those who can emphasize their role as a thought partner, coach, and coordinator, by developing the unique expertise capabilities that successful entrepreneurs need. Especially for financial advisors who want to work with business owners of larger enterprises, where "traditional" financial planning expertise becomes less relevant, and the truly unique planning needs of business owners arise!

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Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 493rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is David Mozeika. David is the founder of TOMORO, an RIA based in Red Bank, New Jersey, that oversees $350 million in assets under management for 600 client households.

What's unique about David, though, is how he approaches financial planning from a cash flow perspective, treating income as an asset to be distributed based on a client's goals.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how David treats cash flow planning not as a budgeting exercise but rather as an opportunity to default clients into saving rather than spending, how David uses what he calls a "cash flow reservoir" to hold client income, with a portion of the reservoir transferred to the client's checking account for spending (frequently leading to greater savings than transferring extra cash from the checking account to savings or investment vehicles), and how David's approach helps clients reduce their "unconscious spending" (such as on subscriptions that they might not use often) and supercharge their savings.

We also talk about David's four-part "financial positioning" process (which includes protection, growth, estate planning, and cash flow) and the milestones he wants to hit when meeting with prospects, how David treats meetings with ongoing clients as a forward-looking "calibration" process based on changes in their financial situation, and how David puts an emphasis on "defense" in the planning process, digging deep into clients' insurance policies to ensure their coverage is commensurate with the growing wealth they achieve over time.

And be certain to listen to the end, where David shares how he created his own software solution to run his "income under management" cash flow planning system (and began to offer it to other advisors), why David made the transition to the RIA model after building a successful career within the insurance channel, and how David has ultimately found success by leaning into his unique talents to solve other people's challenges.

So, whether you're interested in learning about an alternative approach to client cash flow management, the potential benefits of sending client income to a "reservoir" rather than their checking account, or how to leverage ‘defensive' strategies to improve client outcomes, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with David Mozeika.

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Joining your "professional association" has long been a standard for professionals. Doctors have the American Medical Association. Lawyers have the American Bar Association. Upon completing a profession's educational and licensing requirements, membership associations are a typical next step on the journey of professional development. At least, until the internet and the rise of social media began to substantively change the behavior patterns of professionals to find everything from educational content to community online, leading to a broad-based decline in participation at many professional membership associations. Of which financial planning's own leading membership organization – the Financial Planning Association (FPA) – has experienced its own challenges and waning membership in recent years.

In this guest post, financial advisor (and former Board of Directors member of both the FPA and the CFP Board) Dan Moisand discusses why membership associations are still as important as they ever were, and arguably even more so in the case of financial planning, where our recognized status as a profession is still developing in the eyes of the public, which can require a strong membership association to build credibility.

Notably, in recent years the CFP Board has done much to advance recognition of financial planning as a profession. It requires education on an increasingly comprehensive body of financial planning knowledge, administers a robust comprehensive exam, and has repeatedly lifted its code of ethics and standards of conduct to be increasingly fiduciary in its requirements to serve clients' best interests at all times. While also supporting and better recognizing financial planners who take the time to engage in pro bono financial planning services for those who cannot afford the services.

Yet the reality is that CFP Board's scope is limited, where organizations like the Financial Planning Association can have impact. While CFP Board may be helping to drive the profession, the FPA supports the professional in areas that CFP Board is not well suited, from Continuing Education (through new FPA's Competency Model) to Practice Management (with FPA's professionally-diverse community of advisors) to Advocacy (where FPA can uniquely advocate on behalf of professionals, even sometimes including against the CFP Board).

As Moisand ultimately notes, the FPA does still have work to do, to turn around a nearly 20-year steady decline in membership, and the organization is still in the midst of trying to revamp everything from its MediaSource tools (for consumer media leads) to PlannerSearch (for consumers seeking a financial planner) to its series of four national conferences. Still, while other specialized membership organizations are growing, the unique benefits from advocacy to community amongst a diverse group of business models arguably means those who wish to see the profession advance as a whole should consider belonging to their more specialized membership groups and the FPA.

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Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that a survey of financial advisors by CFP Board found that respondents had a median income of $195,000 in 2025, with CFP professionals having 11% higher income than their peers (after controlling for a variety of factors), and that median pay can move significantly higher along with an advisor's years of experience and the number of individuals they manage. The survey also found that 85% of CFP professionals surveyed said they experience personal fulfillment with their careers, with 54% of respondents expressing "very high" fulfillment. Altogether, these findings suggest that financial planning can be a financially and personally rewarding career with a potential bump for those who make the investment in CFP certification (though it might take some time for such benefits to accrue).

Also in industry news this week:

• A report finds that while overall financial advisor client satisfaction is high, relatively lower levels of client engagement and willingness to make referrals suggest some firms might have room to grow not only by evaluating their client value propositions, but also by forging closer client relationships
• The compliance deadline for affected smaller RIAs subject to amendments made under Reg S-P hit this week, as some firms appear to face challenges securing assurances from third-party vendors that they are properly protecting client information and will be able to meet the notification deadline when a data breach occurs

From there, we have several articles on retirement planning:

• Four risks to retirement security, including those that can be mitigated through portfolio-based strategies (e.g., longevity and market risk) as well as those (including mortality and decision risk) that require different types of solutions from the advisory toolkit
• Why the relationship between retirement date and lifespan can be particularly hard to disentangle
• Three questions advisors can consider to gauge a client's retirement risk, from the composition of their spending to the percentage of their portfolio that is inflation-adjusted

We also have a number of articles on client communication:

• Why clients sometimes put off implementing the 'perfect' financial plan and the strategies advisors can use to encourage action
• While asking questions early on in the relationship is natural, clients might be more willing to open up if they feel like they aren't being judged based on the response
• A three-part framework that can take clients from being merely satisfied to actively engaged with the planning process

We wrap up with three final articles, all about kindness:

• The difference between being "nice" and "kind" and when each might (or might not) be appropriate
• Experimental research suggests that those engaging in generous or kind acts might underestimate the ultimate impact they're able to make
• How the ability to stand up for one's interests is a valuable complement to kindness in personal and professional interactions

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

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The traditional view of financial planning is that advisors are experts, who learn a specialized base of technical knowledge (e.g., CFP certification), and leverage that knowledge to collect information about clients' current situation and future goals and craft recommendations about what course of action clients can take to get from here to there. In this context, clients come with questions, financial advisors provide the answers, and then clients implement the recommendations (or subsequently delegate those steps to the financial advisor altogether). Yet in recent decades, this paradigm has begun to shift as the internet provides consumers near-unlimited access to information themselves… and now seems to be coming to a head with AI chatbot tools that allow a client to feed an advisor's entire financial plan and recommendations into the engine and come back with questions to challenge what their advisor said!

In this guest post, Dr. Meghaan Lurtz, a leading expert on the psychology of financial planning and Professor of Practice at Kansas State University, discusses how in reality clients coming back with AI-informed questions may not be a signal that technology is undermining financial advisors, and instead indicates that clients are more proactively engaging with their financial advisor in what could become a boon to advisor-client engagement!

When advisors have had years and decades of experience as being "the authority" on financial planning issues that their clients ask questions about, it's only natural to feel challenged when they begin to double-check what their advisors have said using AI. Yet the reality is that clients who don't understand their financial planning recommendations aren't going to implement… and in the past, clients who didn't understand had little way to learn more, and may not have even known what questions they should be asking to better engage in the process. Whereas now, when clients leverage AI for themselves in a planning engagement, it creates a form of 'hybrid' model that makes it easier for them to engage proactively with their advisor!

After all, if clients really want to circumvent an advisor's advice, they can already do so; they simply go open the trading account, or buy the crypto, or purchase the boat, and don't bring it up to the advisor they already knew would likely tell them not to. The mere fact that clients choose to bring questions back from their AI output and ask "What do you think about this?" means there is a desire to take the conversation with their advisor even deeper. In turn, this means that advisors who invite clients further into the (AI-prompted) conversation create more opportunity for clients to be heard, which further increases the likelihood they'll follow through!

Advisors who want to lean in further and turn client AI-prompted challenges into more constructive conversations can use a four-part framework: first thank the client (I'm really glad you brought this up. This is exactly the kind of conversation I want us to be having), then listen ("What was it about this idea that got you excited? What's the part that feels right to you?") before offering to share perspective ("I appreciate you sharing all of that. Can I offer some additional context that might be helpful as you think this through?"), which opens the door to better understand ("I can see why that strategy looks attractive. Here's the piece I'd want us to stress-test before making a move — what do you think?"), to finally co-create a new future with the client ("This was a great conversation. Keep bringing me what you're finding — this is how we make the plan better together.").

Ultimately, though, the key point is to recognize that clients who bring questions that seemingly are "challenging" their advisor are probably not doing so because they're unhappy or don't value their advisor; it's a pathway for clients to engage with their advisor more deeply, with greater confidence, because the AI may have helped them better get up to speed on what questions to ask, what conversations to have, and in the process may better surface the values and goals that are really most important to them. Which isn't unique to financial advisors; when a patient tells their doctor, "I looked up my symptoms on WebMD," a good doctor doesn't say, "Stop Googling things." A good doctor says, "Tell me what you found and what concerned you", and the patient leaves that appointment feeling heard. The same door of opportunity is now opening for financial advisors, too!

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