Why You Shouldn't Abdicate Your Financial Future to Financial Advisors

This time we’ve gone 12+ years without a market correction – we’re definitely past due. (What does this mean for dentist retirement plans?)

A correction is a normal part of our market cycles. However, the government and federal reserve ran interference, and we’ve had cheap/hot money for many, many years. Now we are paying the price. 

The markets are paying the price. The country will pay the price. 

Consumers, business owners, and people who invest in stocks, mutual funds, bonds, are all taking a big hit. It's amazing to me to hear the pundits out there in the financial space, the Wall Street space, the marketing engine of Wall Street, still trying to offset what is happening right in front of their eyes.

We have many clients in Freedom Founders who have had financial advisors, or still use them to some extent, and some of the responses from their financial advisors have been, “Well, we need to have upheaval in the stock market. We need to have risk. Risk is how we make our money.”

Seriously? That's not a call long term investors would make.

Now risk, upheaval, and volatility works well for traders. If you want to trade in the markets, options and commodities, or crypto, then yes – traders love volatility. That is how they make money.

From a financial advisor (CFP) standpoint, to tell their clients that risk is what they look forward to speaks volumes about how they look at other people's money. They make money on the risk, on the volatility. They try to hold that money as long as they can and the more they do, the more money they make.

Would you put your own money in a business where you didn't have control? Many of you own businesses, own professional practices. Would you just give your money to somebody else? “Here, I'll go into debt. I'll give you this capital for the business and work in it, but I'm not going to have any control over it. I'll just let you run it.” Would you then expect them every few years to say, “Well, we just expect to have losses. We just have to take these on the chin. It's just what we do.”

Of course you wouldn't. Especially not for dentist retirement plans.

That doesn’t mean that sometimes you don't go through difficult times, but when you are navigating your own ship, you can make the decisions – sometimes the tough decisions to change course. The key is: You are the decision maker.

So why would you abdicate your financial future, your retirement plan, to a Wall Street machine? To financial advisors who have no idea what's going to happen next? They just give you fancy algorithms (essentially Excel spreadsheets with a fancy label slapped on) and say, “Well, this is what we predict and here's your future. Here's what it’ll look like down the road in 10, 20, 30 years and what you'll end up with.” 

But in reality, they have no clue.

Most financial advisors have not experienced an inflationary period like we're having right now – let alone while having the big difference of such a massive national debt. The models have now changed completely. What worked in the last 4, 5, 6, 7, 10 years will not work the same going forward. I wrote this in my book we published earlier this year, Inflation – The Silent Retirement Killer.

All these prognostications were made in my book. It's happening right before our eyes. 

I have never been an abdicator of my financial future to the markets. I've always kept my investments in the alternative arena where I have some control. Did I pay a price in some time and education to learn about an area that I didn’t go to school for? Yes, absolutely. 

But I'm reaping those rewards, and so are the members in Freedom Founders, because we curate alternative investments. We curate a different, accelerated path. A path to financial freedom for dentists.

First and foremost, we are not about losing principal. Warren Buffet's number one rule is: Don't lose principal. 

In the financial markets, it seems like it’s totally okay to not follow this rule. 

They're all about, “Well, we have to lose money in order to make money.” I guess that makes sense to them. It makes no sense to me. Why would you abdicate your financial future to a model that expects to lose money and has no alternative plan for when things go awry?

In Freedom Founders, we've been planning for this time period for a number of years. We know how to hedge downside risk, and how to move our money so that we are not taking hits on our investment principal. We know how to balance those portfolios and not play the games financial advisors try to play with their clients by saying, “Well just hang on. Hang on to the roller coaster as it goes up and down, and up and down.” If that’s you and your money, I’m sure that advice doesn't sit well with your stomach.

Many of our members who have joined our tribe recently have experienced that up and down volatility and are sick to their stomachs of the losses they've taken in the last 6-8 months. They're tired of it and through with it. They're moving to cash and alternative investments. 

That could be you, but you have to step up to the plate and take action. Do not put your head in the sand. It's your money. It's your future. Don't abdicate it to some unknown third party and to the Wall Street machine. It's a huge marketing machine and they have created a construct that a lot of people get used to. But when it doesn't work, it will not bode well for your future.