Let us answer with a story. Back in 1957, when Warren Buffett was just starting out, he was referred to a wealthy family in Omaha named Davis. This would be the first really important client he would have outside his family, and so he met with them, made his presentation, and left – and the Davises didn’t know what to make of him. He was 27, kind of odd-looking, and the family just kept talking back and forth. They couldn’t decide what to do. And then Mrs. Davis spoke up, and she just said, “I like everything about that young man”. And that was that. It may not seem very scientific, but that is the way WE like to get chosen – or not at all.

Our commitment to the clients who choose to work with us is simple: We’re going to care more about you, and be more personally devoted to your financial success, than anyone in the world who doesn’t share your last name. If somebody else is cheaper, or somebody else puts up better numbers for a year or two, well, we just don’t think that stuff matters very much in the long run.

The right advisor for you is the one you and your family trust the most, and have the most personal faith in. The very best advice we can give you, from the heart, is this: choose your advisor the way the Davis family decided to hire Warren Buffett.

We don’t accept accounts on that basis. We would expect to be responsible for the entire portfolio or none at all. That may seem harsh, but it’s borne of concern for your best interests. We don’t think it smart for you and your family to use two financial advisors. Here’s why:

You’ll get the best real-life return by making a comprehensive plan with one advisor you implicitly trust. Then, in building and managing a portfolio with that person in a manner that carries the plan forward in a coherent and concentrated way.

With portfolios from two or more advisors, you risk gaps, redundancies, poor guidance, quite possibly fee inefficiencies, and just general cross-purpose miscommunication. Worse, it clouds judgement by risking comparisons over who gets the higher return over a year or two or three, which is too random, and no way to build a smart plan. Our advice? Pick the advisor whom your head and your heart tell you will be the most personally committed to your financial success, and entrust them with the whole assignment.

It’s likely that in reading this, you are concerned about retirement and funding your life with money dedicated to that purpose. For most people, it’s life’s biggest goal. But without a plan, meeting your goals becomes random and prone to setbacks or poor guidance.

For example, we won’t know how much of your money is dedicated for retirement, or for other purposes. We won’t know how long you have until retirement, or until you need funds for the other goals you’re preparing for. And we won’t know how much or little you may be able to add to your assets between now and then. Most of all, we won’t know how much income you’ll need your portfolio to provide in order to fund those goals – especially if that includes providing funding when you stop working – such that you can maintain your lifestyle, dignity, and independence.

We simply would not know what to recommend until we’ve worked through a financial plan together – one tailored just for you.

That may be a valid comparison, if advice were a commodity. But that isn’t a valid comparison.

Advice is the un-commodity. Like the acumen of advisors themselves, advice varies widely in quality. For example, most advisors continue to render investment advice based on market prognostication, and with “educated guesses” as to which investments will outperform. This is an approach we believe is thoroughly discredited, and which invariably leads to substandard returns.

We would encourage you to think back to a time you received great advice in your life… maybe it came from your father or mother, family, friend, or trusted colleague. It’s likely this advice was priceless to you, and worth more than advice you may have gotten anywhere else.

Financial advice is very similar. Good advice isn’t always easy to find. We should seek it out before we need it, and value it once it’s found. It proves its mettle during, and in spite of, critical and vulnerable life moments, and improves long-term, real-life outcomes well beyond its cost.

If you’re not completely convinced of that, let us advise you, as strongly and sincerely as we can: Go with the broker, online service, or bank that is cheapest.

We don’t, and neither does anyone else.

Investment ratings are essentially backward looking, because that’s all they can be. There’s no reliable way of projecting future performance from past performance.

Moreover, the nature of the cycle is that sectors and styles that have outperformed in the last several years will often be the underperformers of the next block of time. What we can certainly do is make sure you’re in the right kinds of investments, given your long-term goals and your ability to handle market volatility. We would urge you to be terribly careful of any advisor who says they can do much more than that.

We don’t know that with any consistency, and I’m happy to report that no one else does either.

It’s not important and thank goodness it isn’t, because nobody can do it. Read almost any of Warren Buffett’s annual reports, and he’ll proudly tell you he can’t time the market, and never tries.

Twenty years ago the market was at a fraction of where it is now; thirty years ago it was at an even smaller fraction of where it is now. That doesn’t even include the dividends it’s paid. For folks who are still saving for retirement and for those who are already in retirement and may need to live on their investment for upwards of 30 years, THAT is what’s really important.

It’s not that you can’t try to time the market; it’s that you don’t need to.

We help our clients work toward long-term financial objectives with a goal-focused and planning-driven approach. Attempts to outguess the economy or the markets are futile and short-sighted. We are convinced that successful investing involves consistent progress toward your life-long goals within the framework of a plan, and that unsuccessful investing comes from over-reacting to life stressors or momentary market conditions, leading to The Big Mistake.

Here’s what that means: At critical market junctures, doing nothing is often the most important thing you can do. And yet it’s almost impossible for most people to accomplish. You need a really outstanding advisor to convince you to do nothing when it really counts.

When markets are rising spectacularly, people naturally want to concentrate into the one or two hot sectors producing spectacular returns. But inside every tortoise, there’s a hare struggling to get out, so we discourage sector-hopping, and fad-chasing. During those moments, we’ll say: “You have a beautifully diversified portfolio, ideally suited to your most important long term goals. It’s a fad in a passing moment. Don’t put your plan at risk. Do nothing.” And of course, sooner or later, doing nothing turns out to be the one right move to make.

The same is true, and perhaps even more so, in the late stages of bear markets. Many clients will want to get completely out of stocks and move into cash alternatives. Our advice is the same – “You have a beautifully diversified portfolio, ideally suited to your most important goals. The sky is not falling. This time is not different. Do nothing.”