Early Retirement - Financial Freedom (Investing, Tax Planning, Retirement Strategy, Personal Finance)

Here’s How To Determine If You Should Keep Or Break Up With Your Advisor

• Ari Taublieb, CFP®, MBA • Episode 184

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Is your financial advisor truly meeting your needs, or is it time for a change? In this episode, we tackle the tough decision of when to fire your financial advisor. Learn from personal stories, including my parents' own experiences with suboptimal guidance, and uncover the critical factors you need to consider—like expert tax planning and specialized early retirement strategies. We also break down the logistics of transferring your assets smoothly and emphasize why lining up a new advisor before making any changes is crucial. Spotting red flags, such as an advisor who never asks for your tax return, is just one of the practical tips we share to help you make an informed decision.

Understanding the key differences between tax preparers and financial advisors is essential for your financial strategy. We'll discuss why integrated tax planning is a must and explore the importance of a clear succession plan for your advisor to ensure continuity and trust. Long-term relationships and manageable client loads are vital for sustained success, and we highlight these aspects in our conversation. Finally, we dive into the value of detailed financial planning for retirement and the necessity of fee transparency, demonstrating how justified fees can boost your confidence in your retirement plan. If you're contemplating a change or just seeking better financial advice, this episode is packed with insights to guide your journey.

Create Your Custom Early Retirement Strategy Here

Get access to the same software I use for my clients and join the Early Retirement Academy here

Ari Taublieb, CFP ®, MBA is the Vice President of Root Financial Partners and a Fiduciary Financial Planner specializing in helping clients retire early with confidence.

Speaker 1:

most of you, if not all of you, are listening to this podcast or watching this on YouTube because you have a financial advisor and you're wondering if you should fire them. You're wondering if it actually makes sense to logistically how it works, and this is what I'm going to help you understand, because sometimes it's you actually haven't asked them the right questions and they're a great advisor. Sometimes it's no. I know I should be moving on, but I just don't know how to approach that. They're a family friend. I've been with them for years. 80% of people that are reaching out to us they have an advisor, but there's something missing. They're not doing the tax planning, they don't specifically work with people retiring early, they don't understand the nuance involved with withdrawal rates or healthcare, and so they're coming to us going listen, if I could pay less and get way more. This is a no brainer, but sometimes it's not that simple. Sometimes it's what we call an incremental brainer hey, they're pretty good, they're doing all this stuff right, but yeah, they're just not doing the tax piece and sometimes that's worth it. Sometimes it's not worth it. And so today is not me saying go fire your advisor. Today is me going here's how to think through it. Here's some myths that you might be thinking. We call it head trash right now, so that if you do decide that you want to break up with your advisor, here's actually how it works. So some of you are going, hey, I don't even have an advisor. Well, this might not apply to you, but it's still going to be helpful for you to understand that when that day comes, if you do hire an advisor, how to know if you should keep them or if you should move on. So the really important thing that I want all of you to know is my parents were burned by four financial advisors. That is why I became an advisor. Now, a lot of you already know that, but the important thing of why I mentioned that is it's not like these other advisors were stealing their money or doing a terrible thing. They weren't doing anything crazy like that. And so some people hear me say the word burned and they're like, oh my God, did they like lose everything? No, when I say burned, what I mean is they were not optimized. Now you're like, hey, all right, burned is kind of an extreme word there, and I probably could choose a different word that might be more applicable, but it's the word that resonates with me, because right now they're working. Luckily, they like what they do, but in large part, they wouldn't be working if they were doing the right things, if their fees were lower and if they were a whole lot more intentional with the way they invested and saved on taxes. So I'm lucky that they like what they do, but my point is they're working right now because they have to, not because they want to, and a good advisor should show you how to do the opposite, in that you should be paying them gladly going. Yep, there is tremendous value here.

Speaker 1:

Now a lot of you are gonna be like listen, how do I even approach this conversation of breaking up with my advisor? And I like to start with don't Like first, before you break up with an advisor, even consider it like have another option in place so that you're like oh, I know where I'm gonna go. Don't just break up for the sake of it and most of you won't, and that's a good thing, and that's a good thing, but it's also I'll joke that I am the meanest early retirement advisor because I don't want you to retire too early and run the risk of running out. I also don't want you to break up with an advisor and then be like, okay, well, now I need guidance, where do I go? It's almost like quitting a job and then being like, okay, what am I going to do now? So my point here is logistically, this is a big hurdle for people. There's nothing your advisor can do. It's not like they have the assets locked.

Speaker 1:

Even if, for example, my parents were at Wells Fargo and they wanted to switch at one point to UBS and they were like, listen, I think I can move my money, but I don't know how do I approach that. And then we found this was years ago. Obviously, there's no lock. They can transfer their money whenever they want. There's no lock. They can transfer their money whenever they want. Right now, if you're at UBS or Merrill Lynch or you know wherever you Vanguard Fidelity, you can move your money to wherever you want. There's no lock that an advisor has. Now what you don't want to do is move your money and then your advisor's like, hey, what's going on here? I thought we had a good thing going. You know, we were talking about Netflix last week and now you're firing me. So you don't want any awkward conversation Now let's talk about, because logistically, that's just a big hurdle, fyi.

Speaker 1:

There is nothing they can do to stop money moving now. Okay, great, logistically. But now how do I know if I should break up with my advisor? Like, give me the hard details. And a lot of you know this, I do my kind of dopey stories, but when I went to the doctor a few months ago this was many months ago now I said, hey, doc, that sounded great. I think you think that sounded great. I don't know what you just said, and so give it to me in English. And too often I hear people say, yeah, it depends. It's like, yes, it does depend, but still give me guidance. So that's what I'm going to do for you right now.

Speaker 1:

So if your advisor has never asked for your tax return, that's what I call a pink flag. There's red flags, pink flags and, of course, green flags. Now if your advisors never asked for your tax return, it's, by the way, probably not their fault, meaning it's very rare, I see it's actually the advisor's fault. Whenever someone comes to me, more often than not it's the firm not letting that advisor do what they actually want to do, and the reason I know that is because a lot of the advisors that work for me. Now they are coming from Fidelity and Goldman Sachs and Vanguard going. Listen, they make me work with 400, 300 people. I can't possibly do tax planning and withdrawal analysis and healthcare, and all of this for everyone, or else I won't even see my family. So my point here is your advisor might actually be great, but their firm doesn't let them do their best work. So FYI there.

Speaker 1:

Now to my main point here. If your advisor is not asking you for your tax return, I do not know how they could offer tax planning. So here's what they might say. They might say go talk to your CPA. And your CPA they're going to say go talk to your advisor. So now here you are playing middleman, and here's why this occurs. Your advisor wants to be careful. Maybe at the firm they're at, they don't do tax planning or it's not their expertise. So they're going to say go talk to your CPA.

Speaker 1:

Now your CPA's job is as follows. Their job let's assume I'm their client. They go Ari, look how much I saved you this year, or tried to save you in taxes. Would you please come pay me again next year? Not a bad job, that's an important job. They are preparing your return. That is not what we do.

Speaker 1:

What I just explained is a tax preparer. We do what's called tax planning. So what you are likely hoping for right now is that your advisor is going to say, hey, go talk to your CPA. And your CPA is going to come back to you with hey, here's why tax brackets are changing and how you might be able to retire earlier if you implement this strategy and the importance of harvesting. But wait a second, those required distributions are going to hit. You probably want all of that guidance. Your tax preparer is not going to give that to you.

Speaker 1:

So this is me saying they're not bad and don't beat them up. That's not what they do. That's what I think a financial advisor should do. But your advisor might not be allowed to because their firm doesn't offer tax planning A lot of these older firms. They just aren't up with the times and say, yep, go talk to your CPA. And it's almost easier for a compliance thing to say, yeah, we don't do taxes. If you don't do taxes, I don't know how you do planning. And that's the reality, because any investment decision is actually a tax decision. Because if we're going to select an investment and there's dividends, well, how are the dividends taxed? Is it qualified? Is it non-qualified? How much interest is coming in? How does all of this connect to what I want most in life? So tax planning is huge.

Speaker 1:

If your advisor right now says, hey, go talk to your CPA and your CPA says, yeah, no, your advisor should be doing that, that's one reason to potentially consider firing and having a new advisor. Now, that's number one. Number two if your advisor right now is in similar age to you, what's going to happen when they retire? And are you playing interviewer the next 5, 10, 15? Who's Lewis? Where, all of a sudden, you like your advisor, it's going well, you've got a good relationship going, you're talking about Netflix and then all of a sudden you're like, wait a second, I'm in zoom and this Lewis guys here, who's Lewis and we call it the who's Lewis because all of a sudden you like your advisor and you're passed off to the next advisor. Now, that happened to my parents a and it's not a terrible thing and you can't ever promise no one's going to guarantee to work with you forever. You don't know if someone's going to quit or do something else.

Speaker 1:

But in our world, my hope is that you have that advisor for 20, 30-plus years and there's a reason that no advisor has ever left Root Financial, where we work. Because, look, we recognize when people are coming. They don't want to have to work with 300 people, they don't want a quota. I they don't want to have to work with 300 people, they don't want a quota. I don't even get to decide if you get to work with Root fully. My job is to take the first call with everyone to even see if you want what we're looking for. And then you get to talk to one of our advisors and our advisor is like yeah, you're awesome, I want to work with you, or no, you know what I can just tell, based on what, I'm not going to be able to meet your expectation. So I want to tell you right now or, yeah, I can meet it, but I'm not going to be taking on new clients. If you reach back out in eight months, there's another advisor here, but it won't be me. So I want to give my advisors total control.

Speaker 1:

I'm asking them to do proactive planning. Most firms are like no, no, no, what are we doing? More revenue? Just have four or 500 clients, because I'm going to make way more money, and that's an approach that does not resonate with us. So the important thing here where is your advisor, both in age and in goals? And the question to ask him is hey, what's your succession plan? Like, god forbid, you get hit by a bus. My dopey joke here. Someone said hey, if you get hit by a double decker like you know, because I manage clients' money they go hey, do you get hit by a double-decker bus, what's gonna happen? I go does it have to be a double-decker? Could it be like a Mini Cooper or something Like okay, anyway.

Speaker 1:

So my point here I said, well, you have three options and you guys have these three options too. Let's assume, hypothetically, you're working with your advisor right now. You could, if God forbid, something happened to them. Um, but it's just, it was, they were great. I don't really trust anyone else, but I'm going to keep my money there. That's one option. You can say you know what? They were great, but I still need help here. So, like they were so good, I kind of had a relationship with their assistant and maybe they're going to become an advisor one day. So I'm willing to kind of give them a chance. Or you could say this totally sucks, I'm going to move all my money to vanguard or fidelity, so schwab, wherever you want. So you, almost you have three options.

Speaker 1:

This is the important thing. So number one are they reviewing your taxes? Are they doing tax planning? Number two and this is the big one in my opinion is hey, are you having another job in retirement where you're interviewing every five, 10 years and potentially subjecting yourself to the who's Lewis? And then number three.

Speaker 1:

Number three is a four part thing. You're like, oh my God, there's a lot here. It is okay. So I'm gonna tell you this is the four hoops. I tell everyone this is what I say on the first call. So if you are right now, if you've booked a call with me I know right now the availability isn't for three, four months, but if you've booked a call with me or a member of my team and you might be listening to this, it's not applicable to you anymore. But the point here is there's four hoops, okay, so I'm going to give you the four hoops and these are going to help you understand right now. Okay, is this my advisor? Should I break up? Should I move on?

Speaker 1:

And then I'm going to tell you the hardest part right after this, which is, even if all of these things resonate, and you go yeah, I know I should, you're still not going to want to because you're a good human. And the truth is I don't work with robots, I work with people, and people have emotions. And you're like listen, I get on paper. I could possibly pay less and get way more, and I know I probably should. But there's a reason you probably don't work out every day of the week, even though you should, and there's a reason that you still want dessert, because you're a human and you're allowed to have those wants and desires. It's about being able to go okay, what do I care about most for the rest of my life and how do I think through that? So I'm gonna give you a few examples in a second, but here are the four hoops.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so number one someone reached out and they said hey, I heard you're a fiduciary. Like, when do I start? And I said I don't really like the word fiduciary. They go wait, are you guys not fiduciaries? No, we are 110% of percent of the time. We must legally act in your best interest. It's crazy that not every advisor does that, but that's the reality. They go oh, okay, good. So like when do I start? I said I told you I didn't really like that word, why not? Well, my parents were working with Fidelity at one point and Fidelity is great. I like Fidelity products. But if your advisor is working at Fidelity and recommending Fidelity, there's a conflict of interest there and someone's like wait, but they're a fiduciary, that's right. They could be a fiduciary and still only want to incentivize their own products and that advisor isn't once again doing a bad job. They're trying to do what they think is best and they've got a family to feed and so there's a reason they're going to push a certain product.

Speaker 1:

Some people are like whoa, whoa, whoa, you hate fidelity. No, I don't, okay. Oh, you hate Fidelity. No, I don't, okay, I don't hate anyone. I hate the fact that you are not optimizing right now. That is true, but I do not hate Fidelity or Vanguard or Schwab. In fact, I like them. So that's number one.

Speaker 1:

Number two someone else said hey, I heard you're a certified financial planner. Like when do I start? And I said how many doctors have you met that are MDs that you wouldn't let touch your body? And they're like what do you mean? And I go well, just because someone's certified, I'm certified, I'm a certified financial planner, I have an MBA in financial. Don't hire me just because I have letters after my name, kind of like the doctor example I told you before. It's like listen, I care that you have the credentials so that we can even have a conversation, but then from there it's got to go deeper. So my point here is if you're a fiduciary and you're a CFP and you're considering to hire an advisor, number one, if your advisor are not those things, that's a red flag. Now, if they are both of those things, great, you can still talk to them. It doesn't mean go fire them and it doesn't mean that they're amazing. It means neither of those things.

Speaker 1:

From there, the next step is okay, do you do holistic planning for people like me? Because some people are like I'm gonna work with everyone. You're 20, you're 60, yep, bring it on. Other people like ourselves are going listen, we work with people at a certain stage of life. They've done a really good job. They're in their 40s or 50s and 60s. They go even 60s, of course, beyond, for the rest of your life. Like, listen, I wanna optimize.

Speaker 1:

I didn't necessarily feel like I needed an advisor up until this point because I'm just saving my 401k and you know, doing the right things. But now here I am considering our retirement the next few years I don't know what to do. I've got Roth conversions and tax gain harvesting and my advisor is not modeling that stuff out and they tell me to go talk to a CPA. And so here I am kind of playing middleman, but I know I need help. I get that there's value, just don't know how to actually go about getting that and I don't really know if I want to break up with my advisor. So that's not me saying go do it, even if we do all of that tax stuff, which we do. But it's about you going okay, how important is that to me and do I recognize the importance of that and do you want that?

Speaker 1:

Like some people are, like I don't want to optimize. I like the fact that I have an advisor. They talk to me once a year, it's not a big headache. I'm like great, like don't work with us because with us it's way more work, and so I joke that my job's to kind of half scare people away from what we do, because it's for those that are eager and want this optimization level of planning. Now I think most people deep down do want it, but they're like listen, how much work is this? Well, the first one to two months, it's like four or five, six, seven, really as many meetings as it takes for you to understand the plan. So number three is deep, holistic planning designed for people like you. Is that what they specialize in? And the number four is it goes beyond software.

Speaker 1:

Like, what do you mean? I'll give you my dopey story. It's not dopey, there's a real one. Actually, I've got some dopey ones, as you guys know. But so this client comes to me. They go um, not a client, excuse me, new potential client. And they go not a client, excuse me, new potential client.

Speaker 1:

And they go hey, I think I'm in a good spot to retire. I've got like 2.1 million bucks and I don't want to spend like crazy. And here's what I want to do, and I'm gonna have an inheritance and all this stuff. And so I said, okay, like when do you want to start? Here's our approach, all that good stuff. And they go no, no, I just want to tell you real quick, like kind of what's going down, and like I've got this Monte Carlo. So like, are you do agree or disagree that I can retire. I go, oh, monte Carlo, and they go yeah, I go, okay, let's talk about that. And I kind of do it to humor myself.

Speaker 1:

I do six of these calls a day. So I'll say what is your Monte Carlo say? And they'll say Well, you know, I kind of ran through the simulations. It does like 10,000 or something. It's pretty cool. And it says I have a 99% chance of success. And I said that's so cool. Oh, my God, that's so great. It's almost a hundred. You should like go retire.

Speaker 1:

They're like, yeah, but I don't know I go. What don't you know? They go. Something's irking me. It's just I can't put a word on it, but I just don't know.

Speaker 1:

I think I know and it looks good on the plan, but I don not sure I go. Does it assume that brackets change and that you implement conversions? They go, oh, no, I go. What's the plan for healthcare? Are you going to take advantage of subsidies and keep your income low and are you going to use the guardrails approach to withdraw income? They go no, no, I don't know that stuff. It just it says 99.

Speaker 1:

And I said I'm going to tell you. And I told this to them. I said I'm going to tell you something you're not going to like to hear, but I'm not here to be your best friend, I'm here to give you transparent guidance. And once again, I'm the meanest advisor. And they go okay, give it to me, I go. You have a fake 99. Like what do you mean? I go, you have a 99 that looks good, it feels good, and so you almost have a plan like self-diagnosing. If so, I'm a soccer player and I'll try to relate to my clients and friends as best I can when I'm talking about money. I'll go hey, if you think you're in a good spot, that's like you.

Speaker 1:

Like, you know, pulling your hamstring going listen, I don't think it's that bad, you know, maybe it's a week, I know the degree of it and you need an MRI. And an MRI is a really in-depth, quality financial plan, not just a Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo is like okay, I think I hurt my hamstring. I think I'm good if I just do physical therapy, but I don't know, and what if, all of a sudden, I come back too soon and hurt my hamstring again? Not a perfect analogy, but I do my best, and so my point here is I want my clients to understand.

Speaker 1:

What if you live way longer than you think? What if healthcare costs go up? What if taxes go up? What if, all of a sudden, you're like, oh my God, I want to spend way more than I initially figured? What if you get unlucky and markets just don't perform well like they have recently? If all of those things happen and you're still in a good spot, okay, great. Now we're talking about retirement. But too often people retire and go. Yeah, I kind of hope I'm going to work out.

Speaker 1:

So if you're like, hey, I don't have that level of confidence in my plan Another reason to consider hiring an advisor. And then, lastly, I am the weird advisor that likes talking about fees. And that is the thing that most advisors are like hey, listen, you're fine. And like you know, you look, your money's going up. So, like, if you didn't work with us and you didn't fire your advisor, you'd also still probably be okay. Okay, now I'll say that a lot on my videos and other advisors hear me say it. You're like, hey, would you like kind of pipe down on saying that You're kind of hurting my business? I'm like, I don't care, that's not my problem. My job is to make sure that I'm justifying value through some multiple of the fee we're charging.

Speaker 1:

So here's my point when you're working with an advisor, when it comes to fees, and the way to think about this is it's got to be transparent. You got to know what you're paying right now. And I'm going to give you an example of this. So client comes to me and they have $4.4 million. Okay, I'm gonna do the math with you. I've got my phone right here. I'm not pre-record this, I'm just telling you. I'm doing it right now with you. So client comes to me, they have $4.4 million and they go. And I said how much are they charging you? And they're like I don't know. I go okay, let's take a safe assumption. Do they ever talk to you about if you have more money? They charge less or they go? No, it's just 1%. I go okay, 1% of $4.4 million, that's $44,000. So I said, if you're working with us, here's what the fee would be. I'm going to do it with you guys right now so you can understand it, because it's very difficult in our world. And if you tried looking on your statement, by the way. One, it might not be there. Two, they're going to give you prospectuses for all the mutual funds and ETFs and things that you own. If you want to fall asleep, do me a favor and try reading one of those. I nerd out over this stuff. Okay, I like it a little bit. I'd like to more than I admit, but the truth is even I'm not reading those things, okay. So here's my point. I'm going to do it with you. We have a tiered structure, so this and this is how a lot of advisors work, so it's not me promoting us. I don't care if you work with us or don't work with us. I care that you don't pay more than you need to and you get holistic guidance. And I think we're good at10,000. Okay, so, 1%. You're like okay, got it. The next 2 million, between one to 3 million, that is not billed at 1%. Let's keep it really simple. Let's assume it was 1% on 4.4. Once again, 1.1%, for that's 44,000. So let's add up what our fee would be, just because this is how a lot of other firms work. So, okay, 1% of a million, that's 10,000. I got that. The next 2 million is billed at 0.75%. You're like well, that's not 1%. I go, that's true, it changes. The fee decreases as the assets increase. You're like okay. So let me kind of understand this a little more clearly. So I'm going to give you the example. So I know I just said so twice. I was just changing something on my computer real quick. I want to make sure that this is tracking. I'm like I do a lot of my in-house recording on my own. So here's my point 2 million, 0.75%, 2 million more dollars, that's $15,000. That's $7,500 each. Okay, so $15,000. Okay, $3 million is 25,000 versus $3 million. Not with any of this tiered business, but just 1% would be 30,000. Okay, great, let's continue on. So now we've got 1% on the first million at 10,000. The next 2 million so between 1 million and 3 million is about 0.75%, that's 15,000. We're at 25,000. What about the next 1.4 million to bring us all the way up once again to 4.4 million? Well, we're going to take half a percent of that, that's an additional $7,000. Like where are you at? Are you like 12 million? No, so now we're at 10,000 plus the 15. That's 25 plus 7,000. Plus 7,000. So now, $32,000 a year would be the cost to work with us on a $4.4 million portfolio, versus the 44,000 they're paying. They're like oh my God, 32,000 a year. Is this like real numbers? I go yeah, and our clients are begging to pay us 60 or 80 or a hundred because we're adding value in X of that by some multiple, or else do not hire us. And, by the way, that's not even the main reason. People are hiring us. They're hiring us to fully delegate all this stuff. But here's my point. This couple was said and they're very reasonable and I hear this a lot. I talked to a lot of nice people. They go listen, I get it. I know I could cut my costs from 44 to 32. And after you explain that I get it, but I just it's and I know there's value. I'm not kind of saying there's not, it's just hard for me to do. I have a relationship here. Some of you are listening to this, going, oh my God, I could fire someone tomorrow if you told me that I'd save more. I'd get way more. So this is not gonna apply to all of you, but some of you are like, no, this is me. Yep, it's gonna be difficult to do. So my point here when it less the question is do they add more value? Now, in this example, they go yeah, and I said, no, you're not paying $44,000 a year. They go, yeah, I am. You told me 1% on $4.4 million. I go no, you're spending $80,000 a year. They go what? I go? Yeah, because there's all these expenses of all the investments you own, all of those mutual funds and ETFs. They have really high fees because your advisor is being incentivized to pick one over another, because their commission is higher. They're like what would your commission be? I'm like we don't have commissions. They go. So then, like what do we just have nothing? I go, no, we have something. We just we don't care what we use because we don't get paid by them. So my incentive is to keep them really low. Because of this fun example I'm going to tell you right now. So, right now. So they go. Whoa, $80,000 a year is what I'm paying right now, and with you guys it's, you know, 32,000. That's a big difference. I go it's not 32 because there's still investment fees, but I'd want that to probably be in the range of two to 3000. You don't want the lowest. I'm going to give you an example why. So you're probably paying 80 right now and I'd want you to pay 35. They're like hey know, that's north of $40,000, $45,000 in savings and that can be quantified. So a lot of this can and a lot of it can't. So here's my favorite story with investments and I just want to tell it to you, because your advisor may have explained this to you. They may not have, but it's a good question to ask them. And then I'm going to kind of finalize my thoughts here and make your life easy. So, right off the bat, here's what I need you to know. I try to keep it fun in the meeting. So I go to my client. I say, hey, what grocery store do you go to? And they're like right now I go to like Fred Meyer, and they live in Washington. Some of you are like I've never heard of Fred Meyer, I just learned about. Not just learned, but a few months ago I started doing these calls. I'm learning about Publix. So a lot of you are like, yeah, I kind of say there's three buckets. There's the dollar store, then there's Trader Joe's, albertsons, vons, then there's Whole Foods and Erewhon. If you know Erewhon in LA, you're like, oh my God, this is like the most expensive store ever. And it is. So here's my point Active management, those really high fees and expenses. That's like going to Erewhon or Whole Foods and buying paper plates. You don't need to do that, okay, you're unnecessarily paying where you don't get BB paying for your buck, okay. Now other people are like, oh so I should keep my cost as low as humanly possible. I go, no, you probably don't wanna do that. That's kind of like going to the dollar store for everything. You're like, oh, what's wrong with the dollar store? I go, nothing's wrong with the dollar store. You could go there and buy your groceries and you're still going to eat. But is it the best value? Is the quality of the food the best? Probably not. Now, if you're like working at dollar store and you're offended right now, that's not why I'm doing this. No-transcript joe's. That's not my point here. My point is you want to make sure you are paying in aligning with the approach that resonates with you. A lot of my clients go. You know, I kind of like the idea of the dollar store, but just for like the paper plates. And you know, stuff like napkins, like I don't need Whole Foods napkins or Trader Joe's napkins, but then for Trader Joe's or for my investments that you know having create income for me, I don't want to pay more than I need to. But I want to make sure I don't just have dollar store stuff Like I need bank for my buck here, I need value, and that's my job is to come to you and go hey, what if we use Vanguard, or what if we use Schwab, or what if we use Fidelity or Empower? Here's all the benefits and pros and cons and you'll be able to go. I like this approach. That resonates with me. Oh, I kind of like the blend approach here. No, this one really makes a lot of sense to me. So you're still making the final call, but your advisor, you should right now be putting your hand up going. I know which approach I have. And if you're like I don't know another potential reason to break up with your advisor, so logistically for clients that want to work with us, I'm sending them language, because it's very difficult to even break up with your advisor and I say don't break up with your advisor today. So the way it works here you have a conversation with me. If I think you're a potential good fit, great, and you potentially think you want to work with us, now you don't get to work with us. You talk to one of our advisors and our advisors is like oh my gosh, yeah, this is a perfect match for heaven. We're going to love each other Only after that. Well, now you'd break up with your advisor and begin working with us, so you can have a conversation with me without breaking up with your advisor or someone on my team. Then, after you speak with your advisor, we send you what's called advisor transition language. You don't need this, but it can be helpful. So if you're wondering, should I break with my advisor, should I not? This is going to help you have that conversation. Now. Some people send an email, some people do a phone call, whatever resonates with you. The important thing I want to mention here there's one quote that comes from Naval Ravikant that a lot of you know, and he says and I like this there's a famous example. If you ask everyone hey, how would you rate your driving average below average, above average, amazing, horrible. Like 80% of people say above average, which is impossible, of course, statistically. So then he kind of brings up this other example of and I'm just reading it, there's this quote here he goes hey, if 50-50, if you're 50-50 on a decision, you're overweighting comfort. And that's the reality. Is, if you're like hey, I don't know, I'm kind of should I or should I not? You're just overweighting the fact that you have something you already know and there's this scary unknown. And I'm not here to say it's not scary, I'm here to say is it worth it? And that's what hopefully educating can do. So just want to tell you that quick thing there. That is what I wanted to go through. I'm checking my last things on my agenda Other than that. Oh, a few quick things. This is just kind of nuance. If you are considering breaking up with your advisor, are there any proprietary funds? So it's very rare I see this, but Fidelity has a few proprietary funds, which is like they cannot transfer. Like if you were to move them anywhere, you'd have to sell stuff and it's a whole thing. Cannot transfer Like if you were to move them anywhere there, you'd have to sell stuff and it's a whole thing. So that's kind of number one and then number two um, any life insurance or annuities or stuff like that, that can be complicated. Don't fret over it right now. It's going to be okay. But my point here is don't essentially be like I'm not going to break up with them because of that, but don't just start transferring stuff, like there could be tax implications. And then, really, the biggest thing is the question we invite you to ask yourself is what division? What decision would future you make? What decision would future you make If you're like you know what, I think I should do this and my future self would like me to do it? Okay, maybe consider breaking up with your advisor If you're like no turns out, they're great and they're awesome, and I just need to ask them all these questions. Great, like, maybe it doesn't make sense too. So I'm not here to break up for the sake of breaking up. I'm here to make sure you're optimizing. So one of my longer podcast episodes, but an important one, and hope that you guys find it valuable. Thank you for listening to another episode of the early retirement show. If you have a question that you want answered in a future episode, you can always go to my website, earlyretirementpodcastcom. That's earlyretirementpodcastcom, and you can go ahead and submit a question that I'll look to answer in a future episode. Thank you all for listening. Please do rate it, review it and share it with someone who you think would benefit from this information. If there's anyone out there that you know, I certainly appreciate it and I will see you all each week. Hey guys, it's me again. Please be smart about this. Nothing in this podcast should be construed as financial, tax or legal advice. Consult with your tax preparer or financial advisor before taking any action. This podcast is for informational purposes only.