Approved-adviser lists benefit NFL players: Letters

Thank you for the excellent article “Advisers tackle tough clients in NFL players” (InvestmentNews.com, July 12).

I wasn’t aware that lists existed for approved financial advisers to help NFL players. I see that as a tremendous positive because the players’ union is looking out for the athletes, many of whom are first-generation college graduates and may get paid annually what their families earn over a lifetime.

So these athletes need help — but help from advisers who are looking out for their best interests.

I hope to see follow-up stories on Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. It would be interesting to see if their respective players’ unions look out for them in the same way.

With the National Football League, it is vital because the players’ careers are generally shorter.

When I worked for a brokerage firm in Philadelphia, I had a client who was a former pro quarterback. The client would give an order to buy or sell like he was calling a play in the huddle.

Then he would say, “Go, go, let’s move,” which was fun for me because it reminded me of my own athletic background.

But he was demanding in terms of time. He would research companies like he was studying game film to prepare for an upcoming opponent, then we would discuss the options and variables and how best to “play” the stock.

In many ways, his approach was a microcosm of the highly competitive and often complex nature of the industry itself.

It was always a lot of fun working with this particular client, and he easily is one of my all-time- favorite clients.

He did relatively well, but when online trading gained momentum with its lower costs, he moved to that team. I hope he is still throwing touchdown passes.

Michael A. Incitti

Registered investment adviser

Strategic Capital Management

Mountain Top, Pa.

I am tired of hearing about our intent to help the 95% of the population that doesn’t have access to a financial planner.

Are you?

Even if, as I read in InvestmentNews, the public doesn’t increase its interaction with financial advisers when times are tough, I am sticking to the tried-and-true assets- under-management approaches that have worked so well, even if my revenue is down.

The general public without assets, by contrast, routinely wastes my time. They might need an insurance policy or a mutual fund, but you can’t create a practice around “one-ups.”

Besides, I like developing relationships with high-net-worth, high-income folks. I like multisession planning engagements with “deep- dive” goal-setting sessions, life planning and soft-issue discussions, legacy planning and trust work.

I want clients who need the complexity that I was prepared for in the certified financial planner program — and who can pay for it.

I hear that some planners have a model for providing a menu of services to middle-income people, but how do those people find clients in sufficient numbers to make any money? I don’t have a clue.

Myfinancialadvice.com says that it has a compliant “monetization engine” to allow me to troll for ways to provide “live” advice on the web via social networking, but if there are people talking about money on the web, I don’t know how to serve those people. They won’t pay my fees, and they aren’t asking for the services and products that I sell.

I volunteer to give pro-bono advice to help out the poor, of course. I do my part.

Last year, I talked to six of those folks about getting job training and budgeting their food stamps, but I don’t really know much about those things, so I am more of a hand-holder than a real help to them. I do get asked a lot of questions at family dinners and service club meetings, but none of those folks meet my requirement, and all my software would be lost on them, so I give them a little analysis to show that I am on top of things.

My methods and my services are sophisticated, I know. My clients have to be able to understand statistical methods, Monte Carlo graphs, efficient-frontier modeling, and so forth, so I preselect them in my marketing. The products that I use are complex, also.

The last annual meeting I went to in Anaheim, Calif., was filled with booths, but nearly none of them had products or services for middle-income people. I get to go to some great meetings, though.

So I am pretty sure that this unceasing encouragement to us to help the middle class is really just spin that makes us look good to the press. Most people have the wrong idea; they think that we only help the wealthy.

Are they kidding? Nearly half my clients have less than $500,000 in their accounts. I am doing the best that I can.

The general public has Money magazine and lots of stuff on Yahoo Finance, Mint.com and blogs such as GetRichSlowly. People talk about money all over the web.

Middle-income people can sometimes get their questions answered from financial web sites run by Fidelity Investments, T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and others. They can get literacy programs by the National Endowment for Financial Education and charities funded by the big firms.

Our profession spends lots of money caring for the financially illiterate. Those helping with this work are well-recognized for doing so.

It is noble work, and I commend them for it. I will continue to support programs for the poor.

But in sum, let’s stick to our knitting, people. We are here to serve those who have the wherewithal to pay for our services, and who need and will pay for the products we provide.

Serving middle-income people with the models and methods we now use is a waste of time, though well-meaning. Next time you hear someone spouting off about serving the rest of the population, call them on it.

Maybe if things in the economy get worse, we can revisit this topic, but right now, we have higher priorities.

Of course, this letter was written with my tongue firmly embedded in my cheek. Like many of you, I am convinced that the prognosis just can’t get any worse for middle-income people and that they need someone’s advice.

It is my sincere hope that our “profession” will take responsibility for doing something about their plight, even if it means innovative practice- management approaches and an unorthodox use of technology.

We seem to be waiting for someone to rally the troops.

Well? Who will it be?

Kevin Condon

Executive vice president of adviser services

Myfinancialadvice Inc.

Boulder, Colo.

In his Retirement Watch column “Income emerges as a top priority” (July 12), Frank M. Porcelli, managing director of U.S. retail at BlackRock Inc., totally missed the boat when he said that bonds trading with yield spreads over Treasuries are his “magic bullet” for retirement income.

I would think that he would be knowledgeable about immediate annuities coupled with guaranteed life insurance that would yield 5% to 9% after tax, with the principal guaranteed.

One insurance company writes the immediate annuity, betting on early death, while the second insurance company writes the life insurance, betting on the insured’s living a long time. The 5% to 9% return is computed by subtracting the life insurance premium from the after-tax annuity income.

David A. Bardes

Chief executive

David A. Bardes Organization Inc.

Vero Beach, Fla.