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Are you able to answer that question? If you have a financial advisor that you trust, then maybe you don’t care to be able to answer that question. Some people are perfectly comfortable delegating that responsibility to a trusted advisor. Others want some level of involvement in the process. Then you have the people who don’t value a professional opinion and want to do it themselves. Regardless of where you stand, risk is usually a significant factor in the decision-making process.

In most cases, you are talking about your life savings and it should not be taken lightly. You should at least have some type of thought process behind your decision making whether you are working with an advisor or doing it yourself. How much time do you have until you need to start accessing your funds? How much income do you need from your portfolio? Do you want to leave a certain amount to your heirs? How much volatility are you willing to accept in order to reach your goals?

If you can answer those questions, you can start to determine how much money you need to retire and how much risk you would need to take in your portfolio to get there. While that doesn’t guarantee your desired outcome, it certainly puts you in a better position than having no plan at all. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me they have investments, but have no idea what they’re invested in. Again, if you have an advisor that you trust and are really hands off, then maybe that isn’t a major issue. However, I try to educate clients to the extent that they will let me on what we are doing and where we stand in regards to their financial plan. It is prudent to have at least some idea of what you’re doing.

As fiduciaries to our clients, we take that responsibility very seriously. We have a process that we use to help our clients understand the risk they are taking in their portfolios. Our clients have an Investment Policy on file that we review annually to make sure we are all on the same page with the risk in their portfolios. As a reader of our content, we are offering you a complementary risk assessment. It only takes a couple of minutes to complete and it would be a great first step towards understanding what you are doing. You can simply click on the link above.

At the end of the assessment, you will have the option to have one of our team members reach out to you. The hardest part of financial planning is getting started. So many people want to talk to a financial planner and get things in order, but they put it off for long periods of time. This makes it easy for you to get the process started in less than 5 minutes. In closing, if you don’t know what is in your portfolio or how your portfolio fits into the goals you have in mind for yourself, you owe it to yourself to take this step whether it is with us or somebody else.

Disclosures