Hari Maragos CFP TEP

Learn from the experts each month about all things Life Insurance - mailchi.mp/b24b271cb55e/i…

@markcecchini Been doing the same for some time now! Family estate planning and administration 101! Great idea!

Over 60% of couples have 1 partner who takes on all responsibility for managing finances & other admin Despite this, few people have created a detailed document for their partner if they weren't around I did this for my wife recently, and I'm now sharing my template publicly:

@behaviorgap Silverback syndrome

Most of us don’t like being asked how much money we make. We’ve gotten really good, however, at building a material world around us that implies great wealth, even if the reality is something else entirely. With our cars, our houses, and the clothes we wear, we are constantly signaling what we want the world to think about the very question we hate to answer. And while we often treat these material things as a sign of our success, in reality, they’re usually just a front. In fact, most of us would be better off (financially speaking) buying a less expensive car and putting the leftover money into mutual funds. Ironically, if we all just walked around with a big sign around our necks saying how much we make, we wouldn’t have to do all this posturing and pretending. Our relationship with money would change considerably if our financial decisions were transparent to the world. For instance, what if the home in which we live could no longer hide that we’ve saved nothing for retirement? Maybe then we would find it easier to focus on the financial choices that help us instead of hurt us.

@behaviorgap Reason = subjective (it always is)

Work is not the reason.  Money is not the reason.  Accomplishments are not the reason.  Awards and the praise of peers are not the reason. What is the reason?

@behaviorgap Even seeped it’s way into academia teaching the next gen of advisers - when it should always be about the clients values, principles and purpose

The investment industry seems to think that their entire purpose in life is to convince you that the best thing you could ever do is hire someone to help you beat an index.

@behaviorgap First world problems…

We live in a time of too many options. How many time management apps will you try before you just use a 3x5 index card? How long will you search for the perfect pen before you finally start writing? You can keep exploring options if you want. Or you can embrace the constraints of your current set of tools and get to work.

@behaviorgap Love. This. Post

Back when I was a financial advisor, I had a client named Maxine. I’ll never forget the first time she came into my office with a Bankers Box full of opened letters, unopened envelopes, bills, bank statements—you name it. She told me that her husband, who had always handled their finances, had just passed away. There was pain in her eyes, and a healthy dose of confusion. I asked her if I could hold onto the box until our next meeting. Over the next couple of weeks, I put all the scattered pieces of Maxine’s financial life into a recognizable order. When she came back, I handed her a neat and tidy three-ring binder and walked her through it. I remember looking at Maxine after we finished the last page and closed the binder. She looked at peace. “Thank you,” she told me. “You have no idea how much this helps.” Maxine’s situation is not at all uncommon. Most people’s financial lives are just as chaotic and disorganized. We have old stocks, retirement accounts from jobs left long ago, a mutual fund from a parent, a mortgage, and a handful of hopes and dreams. Even if it’s not in a literal Bankers Box, it might as well be. The pieces rarely seem to fit together. When a Real Financial Professional designs a portfolio for a client, they take that chaos and give it order. The relief people feel when presented with a neat and tidy portfolio is hard to put into words. I don’t think Maxine ever looked at that three-ring binder again. But just knowing it existed, just knowing that her financial life was neatly organized, provided a ton of relief at a time when she needed it most. 💚 Are you a Real Financial Professional? The Society of Advice is business mindset coaching created just for advisors. There is no support quite like it in our industry. If you’re serious about being elite at your craft, building a remarkable firm, and confidently leading your clients, now is the perfect time to join The Society of Advice. The only thing this group is missing is you! Get your first month free… thesocietyofadvice.com

@behaviorgap But careful of how many (and how you even ask) questions of product as they don’t like being kept accountable…

Does your advice stink? The quality of your advice will be partly a function of how long you stay curious!

@markcecchini Interesting. We can do this with one ac in Australia

We often open (2) brokerage accounts for clients: #1 Long-Term Growth Investment Account Suggested Risk Mandate = Moderate / Aggressive Suggested Strategy = Diversified ETF Portfolio or Custom Stock Index → Diversification across equity asset classes per investment committee guidance and CMEs (Capital Market Expectations) → Ability to customize around a large amount of unrealized capital gains (if applicable) and manage around legacy positions as part of transition to preferred holdings → Tax loss harvesting at the individual security level on a go-forward basis → Minimizing tracking error to the appropriate benchmarks #2 Cash Management / Funding Account Suggested Risk Mandate = Capital Preservation / Cash Management Suggested Strategy = Treasury Bills / Money Market / Ultra Short Duration Fixed Income → Create a "dry powder reserve" for things like regular emergency funds, lump sum lifestyle withdrawals, income taxes, and ongoing capital commitments → Earn an attractive yield on funds held via Money Market Mutual Funds, individual US Treasury Bills, and/or fixed income ETFs → Money Market funds are T+1, meaning they can be traded to cash, 1 day settlement, and then cash can be dispersed to bank accounts → Be able to liquidate various traded positions at a moment's notice for T+1 or T+2 settlement dates for further disbursement to bank, or outgoing wires

@behaviorgap Something the Real Financial Planners have known since methuselah was a pup - but masters of the universe always seem not…

The first meeting with a potential client is where you establish yourself as different from the rest.  Don't blow it by turning it into a sales pitch.

@behaviorgap Agreed (and so does all the research) But the regulators and legislators can only modify behavior by managing cost. #conundrum

One of the main duties of a Real Financial Professional is to help clients see their blind spots and close the Behavior Gap.

@behaviorgap Contingency planning 101 What we all plan for - what we all very rarely actually implement…

Complexity theory is one of my favorite subjects! It finally helps us understand the feelings we've all been having around money, entrepreneurship, and building a business. Look at how normal accidents occur in a system due to the unpredictable and interactive behavior of the components... It's not that the components are unknowable. It's that nobody can predict all the ways they can influence one another.

@behaviorgap = I just want to be #happy

I don't want to be a high performer bro... I want my wife and kids to know I love them.

@markcecchini 0 inbox is a myth. Just think of all the things around the house that need done - do you ‘answer them’ immediately? Nope Just think of all the personal life planning questions remaining unanswered - do you drop tools and ‘answer them immediately? Nope A myth perpetuated by hype

--My wife has over 81,000 unread emails in her Gmail --I clear out my personal inbox every day ^^Why do these 2 people always marry each other? 🤔

@markcecchini Real #FinancialPlanning

“Hi, Mark. This is Maria. We are at the hospital because Bill's liver cancer has gotten worse. The doctor just told us he has a few months to live.” As it turned out, Bill would be gone in about 3 weeks. No amount of training prepares you to receive a phone call like that. My boss Frank (Bill's lead advisor) was out to lunch with a client and our receptionist put Maria through to my office line instead. I was the support advisor on their relationship and I had never spoken to Maria before her call from the hospital. (Maria had not participated in Bill's ongoing relationship with my firm to that point) She was naturally very distraught through the phone, and I was unsure how to react. I thought I had 2 main options: Option 1️⃣ - Go immediately into “financial planner problem solver” mode. Check the boxes. Do my job, and tell Maria we’ll begin executing end-of-life financial action items and getting things in order. Ask for a follow up meeting ASAP. Option 2️⃣ - Be a human being. Listen with empathy. Provide support. Don’t burden her with financial planning concepts and to-do items. Give them time to process. I’m proud to say that I went with Option 2. I listened for a while as Maria explained more about the situation, then I spoke: “I’m so sorry to hear that, Maria. I give you my word that we will be here for you every step of the way. I’ll let Frank know when he gets back to his desk. Tell Bill to hang in there and we’re all thinking of him at the office. If and when you are ready, we’ll organize a call with both of you to talk about getting things in order.” Maria was completely out of touch with her and Bill’s finances (by choice, and by her own admission). Money was a foreign concept to her, and she operated on a cash only basis, even with her banking. Her only financial transactions involved taking cash out of one bank's ATM and depositing it to another bank down the street. Needless to say, she needed a LOT of hand-holding after Bill passed away. Bill had over $1.9 million in liquid investments which she inherited, along with $800k cash proceeds from a life insurance policy. So how did we help? 👉🏽 We contacted our partner insurance firm and helped cash out the $800k life insurance policy (Bill had obtained a cancer policy as part of a previous planning recommendation) 👉🏽 We called the Social Security office with Maria and began the process of applying for SS Survivor Benefits 👉🏽 As part of this, we ran an analysis of whether or not she should opt to wait and collect her own SS earnings benefit, or collect Bill’s Survivor benefits now 👉🏽 We contacted the Estate Planning firm we had recommended to them years prior and alerted them to Bill’s passing so they could start on their end-of-life administrative processes 👉🏽We obtained multiple copies of Bill’s death certificate Maria needed to close bank accounts and claim assets 👉🏽 We mapped out an investment plan for the $800k life insurance proceeds according to Maria's new risk tolerance and timeline 👉🏽 We worked with Charles Schwab to get Bill's brokerage accounts "stepped up" -- this is when taxable assets held at death get the underlying cost basis stepped up to the fair market value at passing 👉🏽 We created a long-term financial plan that showed Maria that she would indeed be able to sustain herself on their investment assets and retirement income for decades to come, even without earning a high level of investment return 👉🏽 We set Maria up with a monthly transfer from the Schwab investment account to her preferred bank so she could withdraw cash on demand for her living expenses 👉🏽 We had Maria come to our office for another meeting and then took her out to lunch afterward to talk about how she was doing after Bill's passing (zero financial talk) During the holidays that year, Maria delivered a handwritten note to our office with a simple message: “I honestly could not have survived Bill’s death without you and your team. Thank you for everything. I hope you have a great Christmas with your families.” Moral of the story? 👉🏽 Be a human being first and act with empathy and compassion. Then do your job, and do it WELL. Pretend it's one of your family members going through it. Not everyone is financially inclined, and some people even *fear* it. Our jobs are often about so much more than dollars and cents. If you enjoyed this... 1. Repost to share with your audience 2. Follow me on X for more personal finance content 3. Add me on Linkedin 4. DM me to connect live

@behaviorgap Yep People have dedicated years of their lives to this studying all manner of ecosystems - but history always seems to repeat itself…

One crazy thing we do as humans is take the recent past and project it indefinitely into the future. As the news cycle has sped up, this problem has only gotten worse. It used to feel like the “recent past” went as far back as a couple of years. Now, it can feel like the last couple of minutes. We think if things are going terrible, they are going to continue being terrible forever. If your portfolio value seems to be dropping, it's tempting to say, “At this rate, if this continues, I won’t have any money [insert number of months] from now.” On the other hand, if things are going well, we expect them to continue going well forever. If every year for the past five years you’ve gotten a bonus in January, and in October of this year you want to buy a new house, it may be tempting to factor that bonus you will surely get in January into your decision. Of course, it's terribly disappointing if that bonus doesn't come. Turns out, this phenomenon has a name. It’s called Recency Bias—and if you’re not aware of it, it can wreak havoc in your life. The only solution I've come across is to lengthen your definition of the recent past. As they say, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We would do well to make our memories go back just a little bit further than the common goldfish. That way, we may find ourselves recalling a time when the bonus didn't come, or the market was better, or whatever financial boon or burden we need to keep in mind is a distinct possibility in the very near future. If we can do that, we stand a much better chance of not falling into the same traps over and over again, not just in our finances but in every aspect of our lives.

@SMSFCoach Most common issue in estate administration claims as well. The only people it benefits are the lawyers

The Bank of Mum & Dad #BOMAD is the unofficial 5th largest lender of finance for Owner Occupied #property in Australia (and NZ). 90%+ are not protected by a loan agreement so disgruntled son-in-law or daughter-in-law of often walks off with family wealth in a divorce. #strategy

@behaviorgap Yep Your 'problem' is never what you think it is - it's often really you!

One of the most challenging personal finance issues we all face is an ever-expanding definition of “need.” What if financial happiness is not about getting more but about wanting less?

@markcecchini Yep A very common thing all over the world (or worse still - ok then, sounds like you need some more ‘insert product they sell’) Sigh…

Younger couple working w big firm (parents are clients): Asked for help w home purchase, advice on tender offer, more planning ...*crickets*... $2m managed, $700k income, 1 y/o child, massive future inheritance They were referred to us at the perfect time

@behaviorgap Yep. Advice has always been about having real conversations with clients but has long been hijacked by in/vested (product) interests.

"You may fire me for the conversation we're about to have, but you should definitely fire me if we don't have it." This sentence has been invaluable to me in helping clients achieve their goals.