Many suggest that the way to build your savings is to spend less each month and to realize that putting money away helps you to progress toward tomorrow’s financial goals. But, what about today? Saving is great, but everyone needs to take a vacation, or buy a new wardrobe, or take up an interest hobby.
Maybe saving isn’t everything.
“It’s that balance between having fun today and saving for the future. And it really comes down to helping clients do the best they can with what they have to work with,” said Ronald J. Van Surksum, CFP®, managing member of Advanced Asset Management, LLC. “Not everything can be about retirement or 10 to 15 years from now.”
Advanced Asset Management based in Grandville, Michigan, provides financial, estate, and retirement planning services. The firm also offers college savings planning and insurance review services. No a minimum investment is required and clients can elect to pay hourly to receive ad hoc advice, Van Surksum said.
“I enjoy being able to help clients in that way, to give them the help they need when they need it,” he added.
Advanced Asset Management works to equip clients with the financial know-how to reach their financial goals. Clients rarely face clear-cut financial decisions, making education a crucial component to wealth planning, Van Surksum said.
“Educating the clients is important. So is helping them understand what the impact of different decisions can make on their finances and financial plan,” he said. “An educated client is, for me, a better client. Rarely is there anything in the money decisions that we make that are black and white, or right and wrong – there’s a lot of gray area.”
Van Surksum works with clients to develop their financial goals and build a customized plan to reach them. Typically, the plan includes aggressively paying down debt, creating cash flow, and keeping the goals front-and-center.
Formulating effective financial goals often requires a human advisor, however, and clients who try to go it alone or lean on new, so-called “robo-advisors” tend to find their results dissatisfying.
“Investing in the stock market without knowing the history can really make it difficult to make rational decisions when the stock market reacts,” Van Surksum said. “A robo-advisor won’t be able to talk to them, walk them through the emotional side of investing and investment planning.”
It takes human involvement to build the mutual understanding the client-advisor relationship runs on. Clients need to know their advisor is looking out for them first and foremost, and not chasing commissions or selling pet-products; Advanced Asset Management has been a fiduciary advisor since 2003 and clients get the best advice possible for their situation, not the firm’s, Van Surksum said.
And that’s for all clients, not just the ones who invest.
“Clients don’t need to come to invest, they can just get advice,” Van Surksum said. “Some clients do their own investing and come for help [occasionally]; most clients end up investing because they don’t want to do it themselves.”
For more information on Advanced Asset Management, LLC, visit: aamllc.com
