Five Star award winner Chris Gall

Why hire a financial advisor? -by Chris Gall

The first and most obvious reason to hire a financial advisor is that any goal takes careful planning and execution to accomplish. In 2014, a survey of over 1,000 adults was published, and the results showed that people spend more time planning for their vacations than for retirement. Is this surprising? Vacations are short term goals that are fun and immediately gratifying. Think back to planning for your last vacation, the excitement you felt after booking that flight, or the thrill of knowing you will be taking time off work in the near future. For many people, retirement is a long way off, and planning for retirement doesn't evoke that same level of excitement as planning for a vacation.

But in the world there exists a rare few of us who really love planning for goals like retirement, saving for a child's college, buying a home, or even saving to start a business. We are the financial advisors, the nerds who want to spend the majority of our time on things that make other peoples’ eyes glaze over. We take the complicated world of financial planning and try to make it easy to understand. The intention is to help people achieve their goals and feel great about it along the way.

If we move from planning to actually investing money, another road bump comes up for investors: their emotions. When everything is going great in the stock market people feel best about investing. When things are looking really ugly in the stock market people get scared and want to sell. That logic leads to buying high and selling low. If you bought your first house, would you want to buy it at the height of the market or at the bottom? Of course you would want to buy it at the best deal possible. Logic tells us to sell high and buy low, but emotions can often contradict this. So the job of a good advisor is to help take the emotions out of investing and apply a disciplined, long term approach.

Whatever your goals may be, there are risks that could bring ruin to a financial plan. This is why risk management is such an important area within which an advisor can help. They can run a detailed analysis of your current risk management strategies and find gaps that need to be filled to protect your future. What if something happened to you or your spouse? A prudent advisor can help you put into place the proper disability and life insurance so your family can continue their same quality of life.

There are many areas where a financial advisor can be valuable to clients, but one of the most important is access to the advisor’s circle of influence. Imagine working with an advisor who has spent years developing great relationships with CPAs, realtors, mortgage brokers, estate planning attorneys and other professionals. When one of those professionals is needed, the advisor can be the quarterback within their circle of influence and pass you to the appropriate professional who will work well with your situation.

The journey of life can be filled with many ups and downs, and money is one of the most stressful parts of life for many people. A financial advisor can help you stay on the path to achieving your goals and take emotions out of investing. With this stress removed and risks mitigated, it could change the way you think about money and ultimately help you achieve financial success.

Published by,

Chris Gall, AIF®, CPFA®

President - Luminous Financial Group LLC

on November 21, 2016

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This award was issued on 12/1/21 by Five Star Professional (FSP) for the time period 04/12/2021 through 10/15/2021. Fee paid for use of marketing materials. Self-completed questionnaire was used for rating. This rating is not related to the quality of the investment advice and based solely on the disclosed criteria. 2084 San Diego-area wealth managers were considered for the award; 223 (11% of candidates) were named 2022 Five Star Wealth Managers. The following prior year statistics use this format: YEAR: # Considered, # Winners, % of candidates, Issued Date, Research Period. 2021: 6123, 459, 7%, 12/1/20, 3/30/20 - 10/16/20; 2020: 2218, 231, 10%, 12/1/19, 3/1/19 - 10/18/19; 2019: 1885, 224, 12%, 12/1/18, 3/23/18 - 10/15/18; 2018: 1498, 228, 15%, 12/1/17, 3/22/17 - 10/17/17; 2017: 1349, 349, 26%, 11/1/16, 2/25/16 - 10/14/16; 2016: 1337, 349, 26%, 11/1/15, 6/2/15 - 10/23/15; 2015: 1639, 350, 21%, 12/1/14, 6/2/14 - 10/23/14; 2014: 1838, 368, 20%, 12/1/13, 6/2/13 - 10/23/13; 2013: 1675, 417, 25%, 12/1/12, 6/2/12 - 10/23/12; 2012: 1014, 284, 28%, 11/1/11, 6/2/11 - 10/23/11.

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Securities offered through Registered Representatives of Cambridge Investment Research, Inc., a broker-dealer member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services through Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, Inc., a Registered Investment Adviser. Cambridge and Luminous Financial Group LLC are not affiliated.

Wealth managers do not pay a fee to be considered or placed on the final list of Five Star Wealth Managers. The award is based on 10 objective criteria. Eligibility criteria-required: 1. Credentialed as a registered investment adviser (RIA) or a registered investment adviser representative; 2. Actively licensed as a RIA or as a principal of a registered investment adviser firm for a minimum of 5 years; 3. Favorable regulatory and complaint history review (As defined by FSP, the wealth manager has not; A. Been subject to a regulatory action that resulted in a license being suspended or revoked, or payment of a fine; B. Had more than a total of three settled or pending complaints filed against them and/or a total of five settled, pending, dismissed or denied complaints with any regulatory authority or FSP's consumer complaint process. Unfavorable feedback may have been discovered through a check of complaints registered with a regulatory authority or complaints registered through FSP's consumer complaint process; feedback may not be representative of any one client's experience; C. Individually contributed to a financial settlement of a customer complaint; D. Filed for personal bankruptcy within the past 11 years; E. Been terminated from a financial services firm within the past 11 years; F. Been convicted of a felony); 4. Fulfilled their firm review based on internal standards; 5. Accepting new clients. Evaluation criteria-considered: 6. One-year client retention rate; 7. Five-year client retention rate; 8. Non-institutional discretionary and/or non-discretionary client assets administered; 9. Number of client households served; 10. Education and professional designations. FSP does not evaluate quality of services provided to clients. The award is not indicative of the wealth manager's future performance . Wealth Managers may or may not use discretion in their practice and therefore may not manage their clients' assets. The inclusion of a wealth manager on the Five Star Wealth Manager list should not be construed as an endorsement of the wealth manager by FSP or this publication. Working with a Five Star Wealth Manager or any wealth manager is no guarantee as to future investment success, nor is there any guarantee that the selected wealth managers will be awarded this accomplishment by FSP in the future. Visit www.fivestarprofessional.com.