When It Comes to Managing Your Wealth Can You Spot Your Blind Spots?
What keeps families from reaching their financial goals? Many don’t see when they’ve veered off track, let alone why—so enlisting the help of an independent financial advisor can make a big difference. See how good you are at finding four of the most common financial mistakes high-net-worth families make.
Don’t get caught up in the Silicon Valley-inspired mindset of building overnight wealth on the back of a big idea or hot startup.
Understanding the role of time and how it impacts wealth is a critical lesson for the younger generations. It helps address the notion that getting rich is not only something you do with an idea or a company, but also something you can do over time with good decisions, patterns, and habits.
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It’s easy to get spooked in a down market—and completely understandable. You’ve spent years building your nest egg, so why would you want to watch it gradually shrink (or worse, vanish overnight)? But it’s often smarter to ride out volatility than to do something brash—like pulling your investments at the first sign of it.
Usually when emotions are part of the decision-making process, it leads to poor results. So we talk to our clients about focusing on long-term asset allocation with the understanding and acceptance that there’s going to be volatility in the interim. In fact, we might be buying during those times and taking advantage of various opportunities.
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There are many reasons why parents hesitate to discuss finances with their children. For high-net-worth families, there’s the concern of fostering an entitled attitude where resources are squandered without thought for the future. But in the end, that’s a strong reason to make the wealth-planning conversation a priority.
It’s crucial to teach your kids about using the wealth they’ve inherited wisely—and to do it as early as possible. We can help put instruments and trusts in place, and help coach your children. The last thing we want is a 30-year-old who’s spent all of their inheritance and has no job or skill set.
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Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, 20 years? Answering that question is as existential as it is financial, but it has a tangible impact on the here and now—which is why it’s crucial to frame your personal goals.
What does your ideal life look like? What are you not doing today that you should do? The intersection between day-to-day life and money is really important, whether you want to spend more time with family, travel, or support causes you care about.
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So now you know the most common blind spots for high-net-worth families. Do you see any in your own situation? You might not, which makes it critical to work with a pro who can spot the mistakes—and opportunities—you miss.
Independent Registered Investment Advisors* are held to the fiduciary standard and must always put their clients’ interests first. As such, they provide a level of support that can have a meaningful impact on your family’s financial future.
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Three Misconceptions About Risk Management
Minimizing risk is the objective of risk management.
Managing risk is not about minimizing risk. Rather the objective of risk management is to take the right amount of risk, of the right kind, at the right times. Just as there is a cost to taking too much risk, there is a cost to taking too little. The goal is to take the right amount of risk, no more and no less, that’s required in order to generate the right level of expected returns for each strategy.
Market risk is the primary focus for a risk management team.
Risk comes in many forms. Risk managers who focus only on market risk overlook other important forms of risk including counterparty risk, model risk, operational risk, and technology risk. For example, some of the biggest market drawdowns have been due to misunderstanding the role of counterparties. Therefore, it’s very important to have a broad perspective on all the different categories of risk facing a strategy. This includes how much and what types of risks are appropriate, what are the potential impacts from these risks including during stressed environments and, importantly, what controls are in place to effectively manage these risks to appropriate levels.
Risk can be measured.
Risks generally can be estimated but not measured. For example, if an investor has a global fund and is worried about the impact of a sell-off in oil, the projected impact on his portfolio is entirely dependent on the relationship between the price of oil and the assets that are held. That risk can only be estimated — sometimes the relationship between oil and any given asset may be strong and sometimes it won’t be. It’s imperative that the investor see the potential impact from as many different angles as possible. If they happen to estimate the risk based on a period where the correlation between oil and their holdings are low, they may assume their risk to an oil move is benign. However, had they estimated this same risk using different assumptions, the expected outcome to such a move might have been meaningfully different.
Therefore, when mapping out the risk profile of a strategy, it should be based on a series of estimates to better understand the range of potential outcomes. It is also important to remember that while historical events may provide a reasonable guide post to potential risks, monitoring exposures to these events could be a starting point in risk management but it should not be the end. The goal should be to best position a portfolio to weather not just the last storm but the ones we haven’t seen before.
This information is for informational purposes only and not intended to, and does not relate specifically to any investment strategy or product that Alpha offers. The risk management process described herein will not always be successful. It is being provided merely to provide a framework to assist in the implementation of an investor’s own analysis and an investor’s own view on the topic discussed herein. Source: AQR.com