August 26th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
I finally managed to read the recent interview of Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Portfolio.com that I blogged about a few weeks ago. I mentioned that Mr. Taleb is scheduled to deliver one of the three keynote sessions during the FPA Boston 2008 annual conference.
Now there are a few things that Mr. Taleb said during his conversation with Lloyd Grove that I think might rub a number of FPA members the wrong way. Here are a few of the things that stood out.
Taleb On Ties
Grove: And this “hating ties” business, and I know you’re being funny, but you distrust people who wear ties?
Taleb: It correlates rather well with incompetence.
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Posted in Professional Development | No Comments »
August 25th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
Sometimes I manage to stumble across fairly good personal finance articles on the Yahoo! Finance homepage, a typical stop on my early morning Internet circuit.
Today’s story is a feature from CNN Money titled Millionaires in the Making. They highlight a young couple, John and Gina Rodrigues, who are in their late 20’s earning a healthy combined salary, saving a lot, and practicing frugal spending habits.
Although, one of Mr. Rodrigues’ past attempts at being frugal actually borders on fraud. Here’s the clip:
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August 22nd, 2008 Bill Winterberg
In the last month or two, I have received a number of new reports that focus on operations and technology in the financial adviser space. These reports do a fair job of identifying some of the trends of technology used in a wide variety of firms and some of the reasons why advisers have been slow to roll out new technology.
The first report is the 2008 FPA Practitioner Technology Report - Leveraging Technology Solutions. This report uses results from an online survey taken by 291 random FPA members in February 2008. Respondents consisted of the following categories:
- Independent RIAs (35 percent)
- Independents affiliated with a broker-dealer and IAR-dually registered (21 percent)
- Independents affiliated with a broker-dealer (20 percent).
The majority of participants (72 percent) reported revenue of $1 million or less.
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Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »
August 19th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
When you have a moment, check out Matt Abar’s WealthFly blog and his review of Russ Thornton’s Wealth Simplified blog.
In the review, Russ provides an excellent list of software and other websites and blogs that Russ turns to on a regular basis. I thanked Russ for highlighting FPPad.com in his list of blogs.
Thanks Russ!
Posted in General | 3 Comments »
August 15th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
This morning I saw Tim Ferris’ tweet (Tim, author of The 4-Hour Work Week) about an interview of Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Portfolio.com. Most members of the Financial Planning Association should know by now that Taleb will be one of the keynote speakers at the FPA Boston 2008 annual convention.
Click here to read Taleb’s interview at Portfolio.com.
It’s an excellent interview, if not a little lengthy, but definitely put this on your weekend reading list.
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August 14th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
One of the FPA NexGen members posted a message to the general email list about a new initiative called OneVoiceRIA. The primary goal of OneVoiceRIA is to raise public awareness of Registered Investment Advisers.
Visit OneVoiceRIA at their website, www.onevoiceria.com.
The organizers of OneVoiceRIA include:
- Chris Cordaro, a founder of RegentAtlantic
- Tom Orecchio, Chairman of NAPFA
- Gobind Daryanani, co-creator of iRebal
- Paula Hogan, Board of Directors of NAPFA
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Posted in Professional Development | 2 Comments »
August 13th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
Yesterday I responded to a question on the Financial Planning Magazine online discussion boards about running tax illustrations and comparisons using Excel.
A few years ago I came across Glenn Reeves’ Excel 1040 tool. This is a handy and fairly comprehensive tool based in Excel that does a good job performing many of the common calculations that populate Form 1040. Included are worksheets to enter W-2 income, Form 1099 distributions, Social Security, Schedule B Interest and Dividends… the list goes on and on.
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August 12th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
Another update as of 8/14/08, see below and also read comments from Carol Lee Roberts, CFP®, Managing Director of Examinations and Education for the CFP Board.
Initially I wasn’t going to say anything about my recent experience with the CFP Board and some of the technical issues I have encountered over the last few months. But today the third issue came up, and I’m beginning to get concerned that operations inside the CFP Board aren’t going as smoothly as possible.
Back in June (after the exam registration deadline), I received an email message from the CFP Board that indicated either my payment or my registration was incomplete. Calls flooded the Board from concerned exam applicants. It turned out the email was sent in error to most (all?) applicants and we were told not to worry; our registration for the exam was not in jeopardy. Nevertheless, be still my beating heart!
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Posted in Professional Development | 2 Comments »
August 12th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
I wanted to address a recent article by David Drucker in August’s Financial Advisor Magazine titled Keeping the Lines Open. Here’s the important section (my emphasis added):
Also basic but often overlooked are commonly accepted rules for an effective client e-mail. Says Gregory, you maximize its effectiveness by making sure your e-mail has a compelling subject line, is tightly written and edited, is addressed and targeted to one client at a time and is designed with a lot of white space, which makes the e-mails easier to read by allowing you to compose them in a noncluttered, eye-inviting manner.
“But Bill,” you might say, “I’d love to send out personalized and targeted emails to all of my clients, but with 250 clients, it would take many hours or even a full day.” Instead, I can imagine what “targeted” emails advisers might be sending now:
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Posted in Efficiency, Software | 1 Comment »
August 11th, 2008 Bill Winterberg
Here’s another quick update to today’s news of Morningstar’s purchase of FCSI. Dusty Huxford sent the message copied below through the FCSI alerts listserv. I am subscribed to the alerts, though I didn’t receive his message today. I had to get it through other resources. I must not be a valued FCSI client!
August 11, 2008
Dear FCSI client,
I am writing to make you aware of some exciting news. We are pleased to tell you that Morningstar is acquiring Financial Computer Support, Inc. (FCSI).
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Posted in Portfolio Management Software | 1 Comment »
