No explanation necessary…

From Bob Veres – e-column, entitled Perspective

Good afternoon.

My fiancee has told me many times that gratitude is the key to happiness (she has actual research to back this up), and lately I’ve been feeling more than my share of gratitude for the Inside Information community, and the thoughts and feelings and ideas and ground-level experiences that you’ve been sharing with me during this financial crisis.

I am not naturally inclined to worry about these market meltdowns, because human ingenuity and resilience always seem to win out in the end, and I have learned that it is never as bad, in retrospect, as it seemed at the time. But I AM looking, hard, for ways to make the whole ordeal more bearable for you and your clients. And to that end, I’ve received some great messages which I think help put some things back in perspective.

One, from Sacramento advisor Carol Van Bruggen, describes how she reluctantly left her office during a big one-day downturn and dragged her business partner to the studio of a local TV station. The news director had asked for volunteers to man the phones and take calls from individual investors who might have noticed the headlines and be nervous about their portfolios.

The event gave her some remarkable perspective about herself and the value of her services. “From 4:30 to 7:00 PM, eight of us spoke to over 100 frightened individuals who had no financial advisor they trusted to help them make any decisions about their financial situation,” says Van Bruggen.  ”It was an emotional eye opener for me, since in my experience, my clients have ME to talk them through these scary times; someone who knows their needs, resources and goals intimately.”  

One woman on the phone told her: ”Thank God I got you tonight; I was so scared I didn’t know if I should sell everything and hide it under a mattress.  I now feel I can sleep tonight.”  Another man asked if the station could have this group of advisors available every day to talk to people about their finances and help them make decisions.  ”He felt the whole market would be much calmer if everyone had a financial planner,” says Van Bruggen.  

The key insight of the experience is that while most of you, reading this, are beating yourselves up for not having gotten your clients out of the markets before the drop (which you know, in the rational part of your minds, would not have been possible), the consuming public is craving something more basic: a friendly hand to hold, a calm voice to hear, and good advice that encompasses a decade or more of wisdom and experience.

“I, for one, have been guilty of taking what I do for my clients for granted,” says Van Bruggen.  ”But now I have a renewed appreciation for what my firm does, and the fact that we do not take on the management of a client’s money until we have done a comprehensive financial plan, so we know how to help them get where they want to go calmly despite the turmoil in the markets.”

There is absolultely nothing to add to this…pat yourself on the back, you deserve it!