She has homes in Boca Raton, Fla., and Suffern, N.Y. She says when her husband died, she received nearly a dozen calls from brokers but hired none of them. Instead, she handed over all of her assets to her son-in-law, who is a lawyer. He sends her monthly statements, though she doesn't read them. When asked about the condition of her portfolio, she says, "I have no idea."
"I don't follow it," Harriet says. "He could be embezzling from me for all I know."
Doris, a 65-year-old former elementary school teacher, says she was overwhelmed when her husband died of esophageal cancer last year. The couple had mortgages on homes in Pennsylvania and Florida, investments with nine different stockbrokers and money coming in from all over the place. Her husband, who worked in the garment district, had spent a lifetime creating his portfolio. When he died, she was left with a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces were scattered across the Eastern seaboard.
"I didn't delve more into the finances with my husband while he was still alive because he didn't want to believe he was going to die, and that made it difficult to talk to him about it. He was such a strong person that it wasn't until the last month that he realized he was going to die," she says.
Rather than pawn it off on her son, who is a CFA and a CPA, she decided to hire a financial advisor. She interviewed several candidates, including a woman who Doris says was not a good fit, personality-wise. After finding an advisor she liked, she ran his credentials by the Pennsylvania Securities Commission. She also liked that he drove an hour-and-a-half to meet her at her home.
Doris pays him 1% a year to manage $1.5 million and calls him about three times a month with financial questions. She doesn't mind that sometimes it's her advisor's assistant who calls her back. Her son monitors her monthly financial statements, to make sure everything is on track, but she says he didn't want the responsibility of investing her portfolio in case something went wrong. "I bother him too much as it is. He doesn't like it," Doris says.
Doris says she likes someone taking care of her financial matters, and she wants that person to show an interest in her personally, but only to establish rapport. "I don't want a whole hour of bull. It's more an initial showing that he's interested and he remembers something about me as a person," Doris says. "His time is valuable and I don't want to take it up with a lot of garbage."
That initial show of interest is vital. Doris says when her husband died, she called all his brokers to let them know what happened. Not one-not Salomon Smith Barney, not UBS PaineWebber, CIBC World Markets, First Union Securities or several others-made a follow-up call in the months that followed. It wasn't until her financial advisor requested her money be transferred from their accounts that any of them contacted her.
"One of the reasons they didn't get my business is because no one followed up with me," Doris says. "I didn't have a relationship with them. They had one with my husband. I thought they should have followed up with me."
Her primary concern is to have investments that produce enough income to cover her monthly bills. She's so concerned about monthly expenses that she keeps $100,000 of her husband's life insurance money in a checking account and a bond fund that is easily accessible. "I'm in great shape, but I hope I don't lose it all. You never know what's going to happen," Doris says.