Your Budget, Your Portfolio, and Your Risk Tolerance

 

The preferences of our clients at Dominion Securities continues to skew further away from money management and more towards wealth management. These trends are clear in the nation-wide surveys.

Money management concerns itself with portfolio rates of return, sector exposures, and market trends.

Wealth management is a holistic view of finances based upon client goals that consider the portfolio, taxation, and estate needs from a more passive perspective.

My goal has been to try and run a balanced approach between both views with more emphasis on the money management because that is what I enjoy doing.

As we have outlined numerous times this year in these writings, the financial markets behave differently since the post 2020 government money printing programs worked their way through the economies of the world.

These shifts have reweighted the importance of money management and wealth management from the perspective of our clients: Money management is less critical and wealth management needs continue to grow.

I think this would have happened without the post 2020 financial changes because the baby boomer generation continues to age and requires broader financial services.

The rest of this letter is going to be a survey of how you feel we could improve our service to you.

1. Do you have financial goals related questions that you feel have not been addressed by our present level of services? This refers to questions or concerns around your long-term financial wellbeing. It might relate to your budget or how long your savings will last into retirement? It might relate to something else you are concerned about.
2. Have we helped you map out your estate goals and taken the time to listen to what your wishes are in this area? Do you feel your Will, Power of Attorney and Representation Agreement are all up to date? Have you ever wondered how efficient from a tax perspective your estate would be if you were to die today?  
3. Are there any insurance related needs that you would like help with? Insurance is an area I am woefully not interested in personally, so I don’t spend any time talking to clients about it. I know I am underservicing in this area.
4. Is there anything else you feel we should be helping you with that we have not worked with you on up to this point?

These services are not the things I love to do. I love the markets and investing. Again, the feedback from our company wide client surveys confirm for us that these wealth management services are important to you.

Please send me your thoughts about these questions. I will not be offended by your comments. I need to know the truth to understand how I/we can improve.

Thanks in advance for your honesty.