Sometimes during one’s career there is a time to thank the people they work with and those they work for.
That became obvious to me last month when we discovered that, for the fourth year in a row, readers like you selected this magazine as the publication aimed at financial advisors that they read most frequently, according to research conducted by Erdos & Morgan, a venerable 70-year-old market research firm. When advisors were asked to name the publication they read most often, Financial Advisor finished second—to the Wall Street Journal.
Since we launched Financial Advisor in 2000, our editorial staff has always been cognizant of how serious your work is. Money certainly isn’t everything, but most Americans value financial independence as one of their primary goals.
Achieving it is very difficult, but minimizing money worries makes many of the other challenges in life easier to address. Without a skilled financial advisor, the odds of people getting where they want to go diminishes significantly.
Editors and reporters covering personal finance are fortunate in that they are confronted with a never-ending fountain of interesting stories. Chronicling the problems people face and the solutions advisors conceive is fascinating.
Often, there is no one right solution. Speaking for our staff, readers like yourselves have continually provided us with ideas that turn into compelling articles. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be here and our lives would be a lot less interesting.
Gifted writers from the advisory business and academia also have written articles for the magazine that change the way you look at financial independence and retirement income. One example in the current issue comes from Russ Hill of Halbert Hargrove and Sam Pittman of Russell Investments. The second in a series, their latest contribution applies concepts from the institutional pension world to determine whether a client has adequately funded her retirement. Their method offers a degree of flexibility other metrics don’t.
Elsewhere is this issue, Dr. William Reichenstein, an academic I’ve long admired, explains how advisors can help retirees minimize the tax bite when they start taking Social Security. Some consumer advocates will argue that smart, informed individuals can attain financial independence on their own, but I’d ask you to read his article and estimate how many of your clients could do what Dr. Reichenstein describes.
Hill, Pittman and Reichenstein will address these subjects in detail at our Inside Retirement conference on May 11-12. That event will be preceded by our Invest In Women conference, ably directed by our Executive Editor Dorothy Hinchcliff, on May 9-10.
Both events are designed to bring the magazine to life. Neither would be possible without you.
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