Last week a stack of new brochures came off the printer in our Scottsdale office. Ivory paper. Navy ink. Thin gold frames. And on the front of every one, two familiar faces drawn in a 1950s pen-and-ink style: Eddie and Betty.
The advisors loved them. They loved them so much that I wanted our whole website to feel the same way. As of this week, it does.
What changed on americanretirementadvisors.com?
The look, and only the look. Every main page of americanretirementadvisors.com now matches the brochures our advisors have been handing out: ivory paper, navy ink, gold frames, classic serif headlines, and Eddie and Betty drawn in pen and ink. About 200 pages got the new look, from the homepage to the advisor pages, the podcast, and the guides library. We did not change a single word. Everything you read there before is still there, just dressed for the occasion.
We were careful about one thing: real people stay real. Photos of our advisors and our clients are still photographs, shown like snapshots tucked into an album with little gold corners. Things, on the other hand, got the pen-and-ink treatment. A photo of a pocket watch on a desk in our Scottsdale office is now the pen-and-ink pocket watch at the top of the homepage.
Who are Eddie and Betty?
If you listen to our podcast, The American Retirement Advisor, you already know them. Betty is the one who asks the question you were about to ask. Eddie is the one who reads the fine print so you do not have to, and gets a little too excited about it. They have been talking listeners through Medicare letters, income plans, and inheritance questions for months. On the podcast, they were only voices.
Ben Douglas, who creates content for our team, gave them a look to match. Eddie wears a navy suit and a red tie, with one stubborn curl on top of his head. Betty wears a striped top, a denim jacket, and a bow in her ponytail. They look like they stepped out of a 1950s magazine ad, and that is the point. Retirement planning is serious. It does not have to feel stiff.
Where will you see them?
Around the office, for starters. We have a new library in our Scottsdale office, and Eddie and Betty run it. They have single-page guides that make the complex topics in retirement 1-2-3 easy: long-term care planning, generational wealth strategies, retirement income planning, and our BeneficiaryBox program. Each guide fits on one sheet of paper, and each one is built around a picture you will remember.
The long-term care guide is a good example. It opens with Eddie and Betty on a porch swing, under a simple promise: a plan for care, before you need it. Then it answers three questions. What does care cost? How do you pay for it? When do benefits begin? The generational wealth guide shows the two of them watering a young tree, and its three ideas are just as short: protect it first, pass it on, give with purpose. Big topics. One page each. That is the whole idea.
If Scottsdale is not on your way, the online version of the library lives on the Guides page of our website, where you can download and keep a guide on each of the big decisions. You will also find Eddie and Betty on the podcast page and on our YouTube page, where every one of our channels lives in one place.
What does this mean for these articles?
It means more company. Starting this week, Eddie and Betty move into these articles too. When we write about income, you might find Eddie napping in a hammock, untroubled about where next month's paycheck is coming from. When we write about savings, Betty will be filling a jar marked BANK. A Medicare choice might put Eddie at a crossroads, squinting at the signposts. It is the same plain-English writing you are used to, now with two friends in the margins who make the hard parts easier to picture.
Why go to all this trouble?
I grew up watching my father sit with families and turn a scary pile of paper into a plan they understood. The best advisors I know do that every day. They take something complicated and make it simple enough to act on. A drawing of a man in a suit holding an umbrella over a jar of savings will never replace that conversation. But it might be the thing that gets someone to start it.
That is the line printed in gold italic at the bottom of every brochure: It all starts with a conversation. Take a look at the new site at americanretirementadvisors.com. And if your next meeting with us is in Scottsdale, glance at the library on your way in and say hello to Eddie and Betty. They will be around.