Financial Advice Vs. Financial Information
What’s the Difference?
Before you invest your life savings based on what the Financial Expert on TV or the internet says, you need to understand how it applies to your personal situation. In the video below, Josh explains the difference between financial information and financial advice.
Video Transcript
In April of this year, I had the unpleasant experience of a battle with kidney stones. This is my second experience with that. And it’s something that I don’t wish on anybody. And it lasted a while I thought it was all done, but they, I kept going in for blood work and my kidney results kept being off. I ended up having some sort of zap it out of your surgery type thing with a urologist and, as everyone in their late thirties wants to have as their own personal urologist. But, lucky me, that’s what I’ve got.
When they eventually got those kidney stones out of me, I went back to the urologist for a follow-up visit. And I thought what her intention was, was to tell me what I should eat and what I shouldn’t eat and how I should adjust my diet and my lifestyle to try and avoid kidney stones in the future. And I was all ready for it.
I had my notes and I was ready to go. And, what she tells me is we’re going to do a lot more tests. And she went through this litany of tests that she was going to do. And to me, I said that doesn’t make sense. Can’t you just tell me what to eat? She goes, no, we need to know exactly what’s going on inside of your body because kidney stones are different and there’s all these different things that we’re going to have to figure out before we can tell you what to eat, what to not eat, to help to avoid kidney stones.
And once she explained that I was very grateful for that. Well, in our financial services world, it’s kind of the same thing. We suffer from a whole litany of, what I refer to as talking heads on TV. And if you’re watching me in this video, I guess somehow I’m a talking head on your computer screen somewhere, but they like to spout information. And like a televangelist, they’re going to tell you what is right. And it’s always a hundred percent right? You should be doing this all the time. You know, annuities are terrible. Annuities are great. Always be in the stock market, these CD grades, you know, whatever it might be. They’re trying to tell you exactly what is right for your information.
Well, or for your situation, I should say. And you know what? There are no two situations that are exactly the same. Every single person has a different upbringing. You have a different experience with money as a child, it means something different to you now. Everybody that we talk to, everyone has different desires in their life.
They might have children that they want to leave a lot of money to their kids. They might have a child or family member with special needs and need to take care of that. They may have no kids and they want to party as much as they possibly can. Whatever it might be, that situation is personal to you.
And there are no two situations that are alike. I like to refer to this as advice versus information. When you’re watching a talking head on TV, ask them for the information. You have to take the information and for you, if you’re a do it yourselfer, you take that information and you process it and you do whatever is right for yourself.
But, before you ever do something based on what they tell you in one of these videos, please make sure that it’s right for your situation. And just because Dave Ramsey said this, or Susie Orman said this, or even the guy at Chase says, you should be doing this, please look and make sure it fits your situation or have a professional make sure it fits your situation.
In our office before we ever make a recommendation we’re going to spend one to three hours asking you a slew of questions, trying to get to know you as best as humanly possible. We’re going to want to know about your family, your upbringing, your desires, your fears.
What keeps you up at night? What are you trying to accomplish? Because until you understand it until an advisor actually understands what you’re trying to do, there is no good advice. It’s all information. And make sure you understand that before you’re leaping to try and take the next self-help pill in the financial services world.
I hope you got some value out of the video we just shared with you. And if you know somebody else that could find value in this, please feel free to share it with them. If you yourself would like to talk further about this, please use the link below to book a 15 minute phone call with our office. Thanks.
