Monday, May 14, 2012

The Two Most Important Words in Advising

Kendall King, a partner and advisor here at Legacy Financial Group, linked to a great article on Financial Advising today on his twitter feed.







The link can be found here or if you follow Kendall on twitter (@kendallwking) it can be found there as well.

The most important words from this article are: "Fiduciary Standard."  There are several definitions of what a "Fiduciary" is, but they all say the same thing.  I will use the definition presented on the Fool.com website which is where the article in reference is taken from.


Wednesday, May 2, 2012

“Buyer Beware”

By Eric Burkholder

This a great blog post by Dan Wheeler.  Click Here.  A little background on Dan:  Dan is a CPA who has an extensive background in accounting and finance.  He recently retired from his spot at Dimensional Fund Advisors as director of Financial Advisor Services after 21 years.  He now is semi-retired and writing his own blog titled “Wheeler Writes.”

Prior to starting his career in the fee only advisor business he had a notable stint working for Merrill Lynch servicing retail clients.  It was this experience which ultimately led him to see the ethical failing of the commission based financial services industry and start out on his own as a fee based advisor.

He is currently writing a series of blog posts that speak to his time at Merrill Lynch.  I highly recommend everyone read his blog.  He discusses the same issues I often mention, but with the most important distinction of having actually lived it.  So I repost his short blog article and implore you to read it. (“Implore” was the fanciest sounding word I could think of to say “I really, really, really think you should read it.”)

Before reading it I want to highlight a few points that I think are especially relevant to you.