When Good Planning Beats Bad Markets

"How's business going with everything going on in the markets these days?"

We've gotten that question more than a couple of times the last few months. And the truth is, it's an easy answer - business is booming.

"Well that's great to hear. Why do you think?"

This one takes some more thought to not come across too confident, but there's a pretty easy answer we've uncovered: Good planning beats bad markets. In the midst of turmoil, good advisors get to show their mettle and prove a bit of what their worth. And not to toot our own horn, but our process and our planning have been bright spots in the midst of the market flux.

Let's dive in a little deeper. We love to use the example of prescription medication when it comes to financial advice. Let's say that one of us starts feeling like a cold is coming on and decides to run to the grocery store to get some medicine. Without any real idea of what's going on, each of us can likely stumble across something that will probably work a little bit and at the very worst, not help. Maybe some Benadryl, maybe some Tylenol, maybe Nyquil. Whether we've got a sinus infection or the common cold, it's hard to mess up over the counter medicine. But it's even harder to get specific results to what you're actually dealing with.

Compare this to a retirement portfolio that you've been watching lose money for the last 10 months. You might not really know why you're in the fund that you're in, but maybe a buddy in the break room recommend it. Or maybe it was the one your employer put you in automatically when you started working. You've got a pretty general sense that markets need to turn back around so that you can one day retire, and you can't really mess anything up by picking a different investment out of the 25 options they give you, right?

Same as a prescription medication is going to do a lot more and be more specific than picking a box off the shelf, good advisors get to help diagnosis and treat financial problems with more and specific options than your retirement "shelf." 

That's the message we got to preach the last several years when everyone's investment future looked healthy. Now that it's a little more uncertain, we're getting the chance to provide knowledge, wisdom, and value, and those things can be difficult to find. Part of our process includes semi-annual checkups to make sure the plan we worked hard to organize and establish is still right on track. Another part of our process includes investments that haven't followed the trend of the market this year. That allows us to make sure our paychecks are still coming in every month in retirement or that college education we worked hard to pay for hasn't been cut in half.

At the end of the day, we really do believe that good planning beats bad markets. If all you can rely on in order to retire is whether things or up or down, you're going to lose more than money on the path to get there. Making sure you've got someone in your corner to walk through the what, the why, and the how is the pharmacist behind the counter willing to offer help on a sniffle.