I promised yesterday I would introduce you to someone. Let me tell you about a client of ours who might be the most medically supervised man in America.
He loves going to the doctor, and I say that with real affection, because his enthusiasm is kind of wonderful. He has a cardiologist. A dermatologist. A specialist, near as I can tell, for every system in his body. He keeps every appointment, follows every instruction, and shows up early.
And here is the detail I find fascinating. Every single one of those offices does its job well. When he walks in, they take a complete inventory. What are you taking? What did the other doctor prescribe? Any changes since last time? Careful people, asking careful questions, writing careful notes.
Not one of them talks to the others.
Each specialist sees a slice of him. The heart people see a heart. The skin people see skin. Nobody, in that entire roster of well-trained professionals, is responsible for the whole man. So he coordinates it himself, in a spiral notebook, at age plenty-past-seventy. He has become his own general practitioner by default.
Now open your file drawer, because that is most people's money.
A team of specialists who have never met
Think about how the average retirement actually gets assembled. Not designed. Assembled, one product at a time, over thirty years.
There is the annuity from a presentation in a hotel ballroom in 2015. The life insurance from a fellow who used to go to your church. The 401(k) from the job before last, still sitting wherever it was when you left. The brokerage account your brother-in-law swore by. The long-term care policy you are fairly sure is still in force.
Here is the thing I want to be fair about: most of those people were not villains. Most of them were careful, exactly like the specialists. Each one took an inventory before they sold you anything. But it was their version of the intake form, and it only ever covered their slice. The ballroom fellow asked everything about your income needs and nothing about your life insurance. The church fellow asked everything about your family and nothing about your annuities.
Every product had its own salesperson. And no two of them were ever in the same room.
So who is coordinating? You are. In the drawer, in your head, in a stack of annual statements that arrive in different months from different companies. You became your own general practitioner by default, exactly like our client with the notebook. And unlike him, you probably did not even get a notebook.
The question that separates a salesperson from an advisor
I heard an advisor of ours say something in a review once that has stayed with me. A client was nervous about an annuity recommendation, and the advisor told him, "I was actually a wholesaler for that insurance company once. I sold myself an annuity with them fourteen years ago."
Set aside the reassurance for a second and notice what it reveals. This is a person who has been on the selling side, and chose the side of the desk where you look at everything. The difference between a salesperson and an advisor is not honesty, and it is not credentials. It is scope. A salesperson answers for a product. An advisor answers for the chart.
Which gives you a wonderfully simple test, and it is the same test from Monday. When somebody recommends a financial product, ask them: how does this interact with what I already have? A specialist cannot answer, because they have never seen your full list. That does not make them dishonest. It makes them a specialist. The problem was never any single product in the drawer. The problem is that nobody is responsible for the drawer.
What it looks like when somebody holds the whole chart
At American Retirement Advisors, this is the entire design. When our clients sit down for an annual review, everything comes to the table. The Medicare coverage and the annuities. The Social Security timing and the old 401(k). The life insurance and the beneficiary forms. Every piece gets asked what job it was hired to do and whether it is still doing it, and, just as important, how it interacts with the piece next to it.
That is what a general practitioner does. Not replace the specialists. Coordinate them.
If reading this you realized that you are the coordinator of your own drawer, here is your gentle next step: stop being your own general practitioner. Gather the pieces, even the ones you are fuzzy on, and put them all on one desk. Ask us about an annual review. Bringing a messy drawer is not an imposition. Bringing a messy drawer is the entire point of the appointment.
Our client, to his enormous credit, keeps every appointment. Just make sure at least one of your appointments is the one where everything gets looked at together.
Tomorrow is Saturday, so we are having some fun with this. Eddie and Betty are going to a steak dinner. Sort of.
Disclaimer: The information in this article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or investment advice. Tax laws change frequently, and individual circumstances vary. American Retirement Advisors does not provide tax or legal services. Before making any tax-related decisions, consult a qualified CPA, tax attorney, or financial planner who can evaluate your specific situation.