The Best Question to Ask Clients – And Yourself

By financial planning logo
February 28, 2019
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Written by: Chelsea Emery | Jeff Motske has one of the strongest ways to tease out client priorities I’ve heard in quite a while.

“What if?” Motske asks clients.

“What if one if your partner needs critical care? What if you want to move to Arizona? What if one of your kids starts a family on the other side of the country?,” the CEO of Trilogy Financial asks.

It’s deceptively simple, but an excellent method for getting at the heart of clients’ values and fears.

“These are critical questions,” Motske told me during a recent visit to Financial Planning offices in New York. “You want to ask them before things happen.”

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By Trilogy Financial
June 19, 2018

No matter how much you and your partner have in common, investing will uncover differences. Maybe one likes playing it safe while the other relishes risk-taking. One wants to invest every available penny, while the other yearns to live it up now. Or perhaps you disagree on when to retire.

Differences are inevitable, says Kathleen Burns Kingsbury, founder of KBK Wealth Connection in Waitsfield, Vermont. “That’s the nature of a partnership.”

But some couples don’t discover their differences until they fester into conflicts. You can avoid discord by bringing financial topics into the open, finding common ground and compromising.

“Learning how to talk about and work through conflict will make you stronger partners,” says Kingsbury, author of “Breaking Money Silence: How to Shatter Money Taboos, Talk More Openly About Finances, and Live a Richer Life.”

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By Forbes logo
December 28, 2018

If you didn’t grow up around people who invested, then chances are that you still may not know a whole lot about the process. It may seem like something you should do as an adult but otherwise difficult to wrap your head around. Particularly for young adults who entered the job market during the Great Recession, the idea of investing heavily in the stock market still carries a certain level of fear.

Yet, with the right knowledge and guidance, young investors are quite capable of successfully creating a portfolio that will deliver solid returns. To help you gain that crucial insight, 15 members of Forbes Finance Council share the most important things young investors should know about getting started with stocks…

Many view the stock market as a roller coaster, but they ride it the wrong way. Instead of a quick ride full of highs and lows, start the ride early, travel through the small bumps and know it will go back up in the decades between today and retirement. Remember, though, the key to financial success doesn’t depend on the market’s performance but on the sound financial decisions you make each day. -Jeff Motske CFP®, Trilogy Financial

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