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Financial Planners in Pasadena CA

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Financial Planners in Pasadena CA

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Financial Planners in Pasadena CA

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Financial Planners in Pasadena CA

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Financial Planners in Pasadena CA

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Larry Russell, Managing Director

MBA – Stanford University, MA – Brandeis University, and BS – M.I.T.

Lawrence Russell and Company Pasadena, California 91103

(626) 399-9579

A California Registered Investment Adviser — Certificate 133101

KNOWLEDGE — OBJECTIVITY — HONESTY — DILIGENCE — SATISFACTION

Start a conversation today — Send a message using this contact form

Financial Planning in Pasadena California

Pick financial advisers and investment advisers solely to obtain objective and high quality financial advice. Specific financial counsel and investment counsel is potentially of high quality, only if it is carefully customized to your particular needs and only if it is given by an adviser who is independent, knowledgeable, and competent. If you agree with the advice being given, then buy the recommended securities and other financial products through the most inexpensive channels possible.

This is one of the “10 Steps in the Right Direction” that make up The Pasadena Financial Planner’s personal financial planning and personal investment management process. For a summary of these ten steps, see Family Financial Planning. To find an in-depth article for each step, just click the Sitemap link at the top of this page. Also, you can reach us by using the contact form below, and you can subscribe to Financial Planning Software. Please enjoy reading this article. Thank you!

The only reliable way to ensure the potential objectivity of any financial planning advisor or investment counselor is to pay directly for the adviser’s services, after investigating the adviser’s background, competence, and work ethic.

There are no shortcuts. “Free” advice is NEVER free. In fact, free advice is usually far more expensive than the advice that you receive from an advisor whom you pay directly. When you choose to obtain “free” advice, in lieu of paying fixed hourly services or a fixed fee for a planning project, the long term costs to you can be horrendously high. However, these huge costs are largely hidden and that is why this industry game of “free” financial advice keeps going on.

Advice that is contingent on any expectation that you will purchase products through your financial counselor or adviser is subject to a major conflict of interest. Financial advisers, who are not paid directly by you, must instead derive their compensation from commissions and other fees paid by the financial services industry. By following “free” financial recommendations, you are much more likely to pay a significantly higher price over the long term.

“Free” investment and other financial advice can become incredibly expensive advice – not just because of the high commissions and high visible and hidden costs. In addition, you may end up buying inferior financial products, because the free recommendations lead you to buy financial products that were not the best for your needs and that are not the best products available.

If you take the “free” advice of financial advisors and investment counselors who are paid by the financial services industry, you are more likely to achieve inferior long term investment returns.

For example, many people pay investment front end sales loads for advice that seems free. Industry representatives willingly tell you that their advice is both free and good. Advice paid by the financial services industry is neither free nor necessarily good. You just end up paying a financial sales rep to sell to you and in the process perhaps to confuse or mislead you about the facts.

The industry argument is that the advice is free and that you only have to pay, if you do follow the good advice that is given so freely. Well, sales loads and good financial advice are a contradiction in terms. For example, industry-paid financial advisors do not get paid to push better investment index mutual funds with the lowest costs and the best future prospects.

Much better advice can be found, when you look of it. If you buy and hold very low cost, low turnover, and broadly diversified passive index mutual funds, you are more likely to get better net long term total returns after taxes, fees, and other costs are taken into consideration. (See this article on our sister website, Best No Load Mutual Funds. It is entitled: “Best Noload Mutual Funds.”)

Unfortunately, when you follow this kind of “free” investment advice, it often leads you to pay a sales load, which compensates your adviser and his firm. When you pay a front end sales load, your initial assets are lower, which obscures the huge long term cost of the load itself. In addition, the mutual funds that are recommended tend to carry more expensive management expense ratios and higher hidden investment portfolio trading costs.

Furthermore, a 12b1 fee gets tacked on every year. With a 12b-1 fee, the same investment counselor who gave you the “free” advice will get paid over time to stick around and sell you more of the same. (See this article on our sister website, The Skilled Investor. It is entitled: “Investment Sales Loads” and “Returns lost to investment sales loads.”)

Financial sales loads, excessive asset fees, high cost active investment strategies, and a myriad of other suboptimal financial industry strategies and products typically bleed 1/4 to 1/3 of the typical individual investor’s portfolio annually. This waste compounds year after year after year, until individuals and their families get smart and realize that “free” is not really free and that “just of percent or two” has a huge cumulative negative impact on their financial welfare. (See this article and another dozen Investment Performance Improvement on our sister website, The Skilled Investor. It is entitled: “Excessive Investment Costs.”)

A financial advisor or investment counselor who has a conflict of interest can be very dangerous to your long term personal finance interests.

Many industry-paid advisers are ethical and helpful. However, the reputations of ethical advisers are tainted by others who are just salespeople who masquerade as advisers. Furthermore, even industry paid advisors face a career-long struggle to be independent of financial industry influences. They must spend their careers balancing the best interests of their clients against the interests of the financial companies that employ them. They must weight continuously the best interests of their clients against their own personal financial interests, paychecks, and bonuses.

Think about the continuing dilemma that an ethical person faces, when they are paid by the financial services industry and not their clients. Training programs for industry compensated financial advisors and investment advisors focus on selling, selling, and more selling. These people are classified as “producers” by the industry, because that is what they do. They produce revenue and profits for their companies. These revenues and profits come from you. (See this article on our sister blog, The Skilled Investor’s Personal Finance Blog. It is entitled: “The Financial Services Industry is Still the Largest S&P 500 Sector – Even after the Collapse of its Stock Values.”)

When a financial advisor is not independent of the financial services industry, you can never be certain whether you are getting the best advice or just falling for the latest financial sales pitch.

Once an ethical and newly minted financial counselor emerges from a financial industry training program and starts a financial sales career, the pressure to produce is constant. His compensation program will provide incentives to take more and more from his clients and will pressure him to pull in more and more assets to manage.

His company will constantly pressure him to perform and produce more revenue. If you have any doubt about this, you should investigate the financial incentives that are offered to retail financial advisors and investment counselors. The financial sales and marketing programs are designed to drive higher revenues and higher profits. Again, you are the source of these higher revenues and profits. (See this article on our sister website, The Skilled Investor, entitled: The Securities Industry Calls Marketing and Selling – “Advising”)

Now, think about the not-so-ethical financial advisor who is paid by the industry and thinks first about his or her paycheck and bonus, before taking care of your personal financial interests. You do not stand a chance. In the name of supposed “innovation” the financial industry has introduced so many new products and services that they greatly confuse the personal financial planning and management process. In and of itself, financial product innovation can be a good thing. However, large problems arise when this flood of new and expense financial products combines with not-so-ethical advisors and the marketing and sales culture of the financial services industry.

US financial services industry regulation is minimal at best. When a loose regulatory environment is combined with not-so-ethical financial advisors and investment counselors, almost anything goes. Most financial consumers are confused and outgunned. If industry sales reps can push expensive, high compensation products into the “retail” financial consumer channel, they will. There is little to stop them from emptying the wallets of naive retail financial consumers and individual investors.

You have to seek out and find independent financial advisors and independent financial counselors proactively. Most of the financial counselors who will actively approach you are industry paid “financial consultants.” They just want to add your financial assets to their “book of business.”

When control of your assets is the primary objective, where will your best interests fit into the picture? You should never have to waste your time and emotion second-guessing your advisor’s motivations. Often, self-interested advisors are well trained, and their sales presentations are sophisticated and polished. It may be a challenge to tell whether the advice given is in your best interests or whether it serves the financial interests of your adviser and the company he represents.

If you become more knowledgeable about how the personal finance advisory industry works, you can better assess the quality of the financial and investment advice that you receive.

The links below will lead you to over 30 personal financial planning articles related to finding, selecting, and working with a financial advisor or investment counselor. These financial advisor and investment counselor articles can also help you to avoid the many problems associated with financial and investment frauds and scams.

• Preparing to interview a financial planner or investment advisor
• Does it matter how financial planners and investment advisors are paid?
• Regulation of financial planners and investment advisors – Introduction
• Avoiding financial planning and investment advisor frauds and scams – Overview
• Are Your Best Interests the Same as the Financial Services Industry?

Note that these objective personal finance articles about finding a financial adviser or investment counselor are published on our sister website, The Skilled Investor. All articles on The Skilled Investor are written by the same author who researches and writes the articles for The Pasadena Financial Planner. (See: About The Skilled Investor.)

All materials on The Pasadena Financial Planner website and on The Skilled Investor website have been researched, written, and published independently. To ensure objectivity, no compensation of any kind has been paid by any third party to influence the editorial content of either The Pasadena Financial Planner website or The Skilled Investor website.

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See: Fee Only Financial Planner Pasadena CA >>>

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Larry Russell, Managing Director

MBA – Stanford University, MA – Brandeis University, and BS – M.I.T.

Lawrence Russell and Company Pasadena, California 91103

(626) 399-9579

A California Registered Investment Adviser — Certificate 133101

KNOWLEDGE — OBJECTIVITY — HONESTY — DILIGENCE — SATISFACTION

A truly independent financial planner and fee only investment advisor

(Concerning my compensation, I provide financial planning services only on a hourly fee or fixed fee for service basis, and only under a contract that we would agree upon. You do not have to pay any form of asset fee. In addition, to avoid any conflict-of-interest, I never accept commissions or compensation of any type from the financial services industry.)

Start a conversation today — Send a message using this contact form

Pasadena Investment Advisors

Use the services of the best independent investment counselor for people who live in and around the Pasadena, West Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley area, including the cities of Altadena, Alhambra, Altadena, Arcadia, Burbank, Eagle Rock, Glendale, Glendora, La Canada Flintridge, La Crescenta, Monrovia, Montrose, South Pasadena, Sunland, Temple City, Tujunga, Toluca Lake, and Walnut.

This is one of the “10 Steps in the Right Direction” that make up The Pasadena Financial Planner’s personal financial planning and personal investment management process. For a summary of these ten steps, see “Your Family Financial Planning.” To find an in-depth article for each step, just click the Financial Planner Pasadena CA Sitemap link at the top of this page. Also, you can reach us by using the contact form below. Please enjoy reading this article. Thank you!

Set an insurance budget as part of your personal financial planning for non-investment risks

While value, affordability, risk exposure, and risk tolerance should affect insurance purchase decisions, insurance is often sold and purchased emotionally. Yet, insurance premium payments reduce personal funds that might otherwise be available for additional investments and/or consumption. Many people could spend all their net savings on insurance premiums and have nothing left to invest and to build an investment portfolio. The issue is where to set a rational rather than emotional balance between expected risk and return.

The reality is that individuals and their families must intelligently and rationally budget for those insurance coverages that might ameliorate most effectively the risks that could do most damage their lifetime financial prospects. There simply are too many risks and too many types of insurance that cost too much. Given the required premiums for the broad range of insurance coverages, a majority or even a large minority of the US population simply can not afford adequate coverage for most of these insurance risks. Furthermore, they cannot find jobs that help to provide adequate coverage in some of these risk areas.

At the outset, let me be very clear about the role of insurance in personal financial planning. Certain types of cost effective and carefully selected insurance coverages from reliable insurance companies are vital and very important to protect your family’s long term financial interests. Determining which insurance coverages would be most beneficial to you requires 1) knowledge of your needs, 2) an appreciation for uncertainty, 3) an understanding of the best product alternatives, and 4) complete objectivity in the decision process. Unfortunately, putting all four of these factors together when buying insurance is a very tall order.

Given the unpredictability of life and the attendant risks, fears, and emotions, a primary point of this article is to urge you to shift your personal insurance decision making process toward as much rationality as is possible. When you find yourself in an insurance sales process, where subtle or overt appeals to your emotions have begun to predominate, stop and step outside the sales process for a breath of fresh air. Your emotions may be willing to pay any price for safety, but your rational mind should be asking about the tradeoffs. Do your homework BEFORE the ink is drying on the contract.

Tradeoffs between personal financial and investing strategies and insurance risk management are inevitable

Living is risky and unpredictable. For the price of their premiums, insurance companies promise to eliminate or reduce many of these risks for you. When you have coverage in force, you experience an insured event, and your insurance company steps up to meet its obligations, the real virtues of insurance are obvious. At other times, you must operate in a very broad realm of uncertainty about a) what might happen to you and your family, b) whether the insurance that you happened to purchase will actually cover the risks that actually materialize, and c) whether your insurance company will deliver on its promises.

To remind you of the extent of the various risks to which you might be exposed, these are many of the insurance coverages that you could buy, depending upon your needs:

• auto insurance
• business insurance for the self-employed
• dental insurance
• disability insurance and workmans compensation insurance
• earthquake insurance
• fire insurance
• flood insurance
• flight insurance
• general liability insurance
• home owners insurance / condo insurance / renters insurance
• legal insurance
• long term care insurance
• medical insurance / group health insurance / individual health insurance
• mortgage insurance / title insurance
• property insurance / boat insurance
• term life insurance / universal life insurance / whole life insurance
• unemployment insurance
• vision insurance

Insurance is never free and you should never expect it to be “profitable” to you. Unless an insurance company is poorly managed and makes excessive benefits commitments, you can never make a “profit” from an insurance company on the premiums you pay. From a strict financial standpoint, you should always expect to get less money out of insurance than you pay in insurance premiums.

In general, you are paying to participate in a risk sharing pool. That is all insurance really is. If, somehow, you find an insurance contract that seems to provide excessive benefits relative to its costs, then you better be toward the front of the claimant line, because the insurance fund will be exhausted before those at the back of the line get served. A better approach would be not to enter into any insurance contract that seems too good to be true.

Insurance is even more expensive, because it not just a redistribution of paid in premiums and the pooled financial assets of policy holders. Insurance premiums include very substantial sales and marketing costs, administrative expenses, and insurance company profit requirements. For some forms of insurance, less than 50 cents of each dollar taken in gets paid out in benefits. Insurance is like a lottery. Insurance premiums and lottery tickets are both prices of participation. Yet, with insurance there inevitably is less joy in the payout, because something rather nasty needs to happen to become a “winner” with insurance.

Risk and return tradeoffs between insurance and investments

Insurance affordability inevitably dictates that most people will bear some insurable risks without insurance coverage. Individuals may be more or less comfortable with this situation. Having a good understanding of one’s risk exposure and risk tolerance is one place to begin.

Given that people are exposed to many, if not most, of the risks that could potentially be reduced by the insurance coverages listed above, where do you set the balance? A good start is to have a better understanding of the potential impact of certain risks, through financial planning and cash flow modeling across your lifetime. To judge the value of insurance, you need to have a better understanding of the inevitable reduction of consumption, savings, and investments that accompanies higher insurance premium payments.

In general, individuals can significantly lower insurance premium costs by focusing on buying catastrophic risk coverage and using self-insurance for more minor risks. For the insurance that you must have, shop around and choose high deductibles to reduce premium payments. Carefully evaluate the scope of insurance coverage to assure that the policy has good quality catastrophic coverage. Then, invest the premium savings achieved through higher deductibles, rather than spending those savings. Over time, these premium savings and investment returns on them will build up your self-insurance asset pool.

Catastrophic personal events can drain assets and destroy the best of investment plans.

Property, liability, life, disability, and other types of insurance may be rational purchases, because of risk pooling with other risk adverse people. However, these types of insurance are not investments in and of themselves. Instead, they limit the financial impact of potential, but relatively unlikely, negative future events. The question comes down to finding good quality insurance at a competitive price and determining the tradeoff between money spent on premiums versus money retained and invested.

Optimal investment planning focuses on enhancing expected risk-adjusted portfolio performance. An optimal investment plan assumes that the necessary labor-based net income will be earned over time to build up your investment assets. By adopting optimal investment practices, individuals increase the chances of financial success that can be attributed to investment returns. However, other risks are inherent in life planning, and there are no guarantees. Personal financial and investment plans may fall short of goals due to a long list of non-investment risks. These risks include inadequate savings, personal tragedy, and family misfortunes.

Combined insurance and investment products confuse personal financial planning decisions

In recent years, insurance firms have expanded their products and services from offering only pure insurance to selling hybrid products that combine insurance and investment characteristics. Long ago, the insurance industry also garnered certain tax treatments that can make their products more seem more appealing to persons with particular tax situations. The mixing of these tax advantages into hybrid insurance and investment products makes evaluation even more confusing.

Unfortunately, many hybrid insurance/investment products are characterized by inferior returns, very high costs, significant insured risk limitations, and other problems. Ultimately, the issue that the potential buyer must sort through is whether the purchase of a separate insurance-only product and a separate investment-only product would yield better insurance risk reduction and superior risk-adjusted investment performance. Very often, buying separate low cost insurance and separate low cost investments is a much better alternative.

Insurance-based annuity income guarantees are not investments

Investment risk cannot be insured or avoided. Without the risk of loss of capital, you simply cannot be investing. If you think that you can pay someone else to take away your investment risk through some insurance guarantee and still have the chance of earning an investment risk premium, you are simply mistaken. No insurance company will take on your investment risk, unless they can do so profitably for the capital that they must put at risk.

Many investors rationally seek retirement income guarantees through annuities insurance products. When they purchase such insurance with their labor income and/or investment assets, they change the complexion of their portfolios. When they shift investment risk bearing to an insurance company providing a guarantee, they cease to be investors for that portion of their assets.

For example, fixed or immediate annuities are not a investment. Instead, you transfer your assets to an insurance company and you pool your longevity risk across all annuity participants. Your expected total return is likely to be inferior to holding onto your assets and continuing to be exposed to the investment risks. However, unless you have far more financial assets than you are likely ever to need, you cannot self-insure against longevity risk.

Longevity risk is when you live far longer than expected and you exhaust your financial assets somewhere along the way. The value of an annuity is realized, when you live a long life, and of course, the insurance company also stays around to meet its commitments. When your lifespan is shorter, you just happen to be the part of the annuity participant pool that provides valuable financial assets to fund the remaining lives of the other participants. From six feet under, presumably, you will not be concerned about your altruism toward these other longer lived annuity participants.

Finally, there is one insurance risk that individuals must retain and cannot shift, when they trade their financial assets and investment risk to an insurance company for an annuity. This risk concerns whether the asset pool of the guaranteeing insurance company will be adequate to fulfill its future annuity obligations. The sad, yet still ongoing saga of the 1991 collapse of Executive Life Insurance Company is a reminder of nontransferable risk when dealing with insurance companies.

Do your homework about the insurance company from which you intend to buy an annuity or any other insurance product. Looking into the resources and ratings of insurance companies can reduce the risk of non-fulfillment. Do not expect that a commissioned insurance agent or insurance broker will do this, as carefully as you should do this assessment. Insurance agents and insurance brokers will get paid at the front end, whereas you want to get paid all the way to the back end!

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See: Financial Planner in Pasadena California >>>

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Larry Russell, Managing Director

MBA – Stanford University, MA – Brandeis University, and BS – M.I.T.

Lawrence Russell and Company Pasadena, California 91103

(626) 399-9579

A California Registered Investment Adviser — Certificate 133101

KNOWLEDGE — OBJECTIVITY — HONESTY — DILIGENCE — SATISFACTION

A truly independent financial planner and fee only investment advisor

(Concerning compensation, I charge solely on a fixed fee or hourly fee for services basis, and only under a contract that we would agree upon. You do not have to pay any form of asset fee. Furthermore, in the interest of avoiding all conflicts-of-interest, I do not accept compensation or commissions of any type from the industry.)

Start a conversation today — Send a message using this contact form

Pasadena Financial Planning Consultants

Use the top fee only financial advisor — helping clients in Southern California, including Altadena, Tujunga, Walnut, West Covina, La Canada, West Hollywood, West Los Angeles, West Toluca Lake, and Pasadena.

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Larry Russell, Managing Director

MBA – Stanford University, MA – Brandeis University, and BS – M.I.T.

Lawrence Russell and Company Pasadena, California 91103

(626) 399-9579

A California Registered Investment Adviser — Certificate 133101

KNOWLEDGE — OBJECTIVITY — HONESTY — DILIGENCE — SATISFACTION

Start a conversation today — Send a message using this contact form

Financial Planning in Pasadena CA

Use the services of the best independent investment advisor and financial planner in Southern California. I can help clients locally and remotely including residents of Altadena, Alhambra, Arcadia, Burbank, Eagle Rock, Glendale, La Tuna Canyon, Los Feliz, North Hollywood, San Gabriel, South Pasadena, La Canada Flintridge, La Crescenta, Monrovia, Pasadena, Pomona, Rosemead, Studio City, Sun Valley, Sunland, and San Dimas.

(Note that you can reach us by using the contact form below.)

Using hundreds of thousands of what the securities industry calls “producer” employees, the brokerage industry sells investment products and services to clients for transactional fees, asset holding charges, and many other more or less visible investment costs. Governed by the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, the legal standard of client care by these brokers is the “suitability” of an investment to a client. However, there is huge latitude in what a suitable investment is and how much it can cost a client.

From the brokerage industry’s perspective, the wealthier the client is the better. Greater assets yield more revenue and higher profit per hour spent with clients. For example, Morgan Stanley’s 2007 compensation plan for their personnel serving retail clients eliminated all compensation for household accounts below $50,000, and it reduced compensation on household accounts under $75,000, unless these client accounts were being charged a percent of assets fee. Clearly, the message to Morgan Stanley sales personnel was and is to chase wealthier fish. Similar messages are given to broker producer employees in all brokerage firms across the industry.

Post-Credit Crisis Notes Concerning:

Financial Planning Fees

NOTE: Best individual financial planning and investment practices persist and shouldn’t vary because of financial crisis. The detailed article below was published before the financial and requires little updating. Given the more recent financial crisis, the update comments in this box were authored more recently to emphasize the enduring wisdom contained in the detailed original article below.

As the financial crisis arose and subsided, those who occupied many of the musical chairs of the financial industry changed. However, the financial incentives and compensation practices of the industry changed hardly at all. Since increasing industry concentration had never been challenged before the financial crisis, we were all faced with the “too-big-to-fail” conundrum. The professional — supposedly “smart money” — financial industry created a toxic financial environment for everyone, but they just “had” to be bailed out by taxpayers, so that all of our houses would not burn to the ground collectively.

Subsequently, little if anything has changed — even with passage of Wall Street reform act in 2010. Before most of the country had realized just how persistently bad things would become in the general economy, the securities markets turned around in anticipation of future improvements. And, huge Wall Street bonuses started all over again. Yet, it was the taxpayer bailout money that keep the financial industry and the general economy away from the precipice of another great depression. Thus, financial market expectations rose off of extremely pessimistic depression expectations, allowing the industry to restore its profitablity and fat paychecks.

Concerning how the financial advisory industry deals with the “retail public,” which is discussed in this article, little has changed. If anything the industry’s pursuit of the rich has intensified, while services to the middle class have declined. In summary, if you don’t have substantial investable assets, then expect little attention and overly expensive commissioned products. If you do have substantial investable assets, then hold on to your wallet with both hands! You will be asked to pay a substantial percentage of your assets year after year with no reliable assurance that these fees will improve your welfare in the long-term.

Most registered investment advisor compensation is proportional to client assets — the more assets you have the better for your financial adviser

Another large segment of the financial services industry that serves the public consists of about 100,000 independent investment advisor consultants, who are regulated at the federal and/or state levels. Governed by the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, as amended, and by state laws, these advisors have a seemingly more stringent standard of client care. However, again there is huge latitude in what constitutes minimally acceptable advisor service quality and how much advisory services will cost a client.

Most registered investment advisors deliver services that are charged as a percent of client assets under management. However, often many of these same advisors obtain additional revenues from the securities and insurance industry, when they sell commissioned financial products to their clients.

The wealthier the registered investment advisor’s client is, the better it is for the advisory practice. The greater the client assets under management, the more total revenue for the advisory firm and the higher the client service profit per hour will be.

The economics of the financial consulting industry create a mad dash to catch the wealthy

Whether served by a broker or by an independent financial advisor, if an individual wants personal professional attention, that individual must already have substantial assets that can generate revenue to compensate the advisor. If clients are to be given personalized attention and the valuable time of the advisor, each client must generate several thousand dollars in fees annually one way or another.

The math is simple. For example, if average client servicing requires 20 hours of attention yearly and a profitable hourly rate is $150 per hour, then the required average revenue per client is $3,000 per year. If $3,000/per year is the client revenue minimum for a practice, then the client needs to have $300,000, if the fee is 1% of assets per year. The lower the assets, then the higher the percentage necessarily must be.

Since clients usually balk at much higher percentage fees, the revenue requirements of advisory practices mean that people with less assets will not get personalized services. Clearly, the vast majority of Americans do not fit the industry’s economic profile of a profitable advisory client.

This is why there is so much effort to obscure and hide the true financial and investment costs that clients actually pay. The more the true cost can be hidden and the services promoted as supposedly “free,” then the easier it is to profit from the client, while probably not serving his best interests.

The Pasadena Financial Planner breaks out of this chase-the-rich compensation model

My financial and retirement planning services will be valuable and cost-effective to you. My financial consultant fees will be reasonable, clearly understood, and determined in advance. I can provide you with comprehensive, reasonably priced financial, investment, and retirement planning services on an hourly, fixed fee, or retainer basis. I never charge any fees in relationship to your assets.

For a better understanding of how I operate see: Financial Planning in Pasadena

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See: Independent Pasadena Financial Advisor >>>

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Larry Russell, Managing Director

MBA – Stanford University, MA – Brandeis University, and BS – M.I.T.

Lawrence Russell and Company Pasadena, California 91103

(626) 399-9579

A California Registered Investment Adviser — Certificate 133101

KNOWLEDGE — OBJECTIVITY — HONESTY — DILIGENCE — SATISFACTION

A truly independent financial planner and fee only investment advisor

(Regarding how I am compensated, I perform services only on a hourly fee or fixed fee for services basis, and only under a contract that we agree upon. You do not have to pay any asset fees. In addition, to avoid any conflict-of-interest, I never accept compensation or commissions of any type from the industry.)

Start a conversation today — Send a message using this contact form

Pasadena Financial Advisors

Find the best independent financial planner for those living in the San Gabriel Valley, including Arcadia, Baldwin Park, Burbank, Covina, Diamond Bar, Glendale, Duarte, La Canada Flintridge, West Los Angeles, and Pasadena.

(Note that you can reach me by using the contact form below.)

The Pasadena Financial Planner (Larry Russell) is an experienced business executive with a background in corporate business management, technology start-ups, financial modeling, investment management, economics, statistics, taxation, and accounting. This article provides the biography of the Pasadena Financial Planner and explains how his expertise in comprehensive financial planning and investment management has developed over his career.

The Analytical Education of the Pasadena Financial Planner

The Pasadena Financial Planner is me, Larry Russell. I grew up in a rather small town in the Midwest. I was 6’ 6” tall by age 16, and my pants were always too short. In 1970, I left for college on a Greyhound bus with one box and two suitcases. I arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts to study at MIT.

As a child growing up in the America’s endless rural heartland in the 1950s and 60s, I lacked a genuine appreciation for the word “metropolitan.” I did not realize that the edge of one “town” near Boston was not a field or pasture, but just another crowded suburb. A modern Paul Revere would have been stuck in traffic all the way to Lexington and Concord. And, the British Army would have been way back in that traffic jam.

At freshmen orientation in MIT’s old gymnasium, various university dignitaries welcomed the incoming freshmen. One gentleman gave us the “look-to-your-left-look-to-your-right-one-of-you-won’t-be-here-in-four-years” speech. I got the point and decided that I would still be there in four years, and I was. While MIT’s core science and math curriculum was a required rite of passage that I still value over three decades later, I found studying human behavior to be much more interesting.

I studied politics and economics and picked up a BS from MIT and later an MA from Brandeis University. After Brandeis, I embarked upon a career in social science research. First, I conducted survey research and performed statistical analyses of corporate employee benefit programs at the private, non-profit National Manpower Institute in Washington, D.C. Then, I moved to Northern California to join the Institute for the Future, a think tank in Menlo Park that built automated economic, demographic, and technological models to explore scenarios about the future.

An early understanding of the strengths and limitations of future-oriented financial planning tools

The Institute for the Future provided opportunities for me to apply my econometric, statistical, and political education to supposedly predictive, automated modeling projects. We used sophisticated projection methods to develop long range planning scenarios for Fortune 100 clients that incorporated financial, econometric, demographic, and technological factors.

Through my work experience at the Institute for the Future, I became convinced that the future is fundamentally unpredictable from the standpoint of forecasting reliably any specifics about the future. I came to realize through experience that the quality and comprehensiveness of any analytical projection model and its associated data will significantly affect the forecasting model’s usefulness in developing insights about what might happen in the future.

I also learned to appreciate the value of comprehensive and automated scenario planning. While any specifics about the future cannot be predicted reliably, computer modeling permits the evaluation of a range of internally consistent future projection scenarios. (And, when it comes to planning your personal lifetime finances, such a rigorous projection modeling approach is a heck of a lot better than relying upon uninformed, random guessing!)

While I did not expect my experience at the Institute for the Future to be useful 30 years later, the insights I gained have strongly shaped my approach to delivering comprehensive personal financial planning and investment services to clients. During the past several years, I designed and developed VeriPlan, which is a comprehensive, automated personal lifecycle financial planning application.

I use VeriPlan with clients who want to develop a comprehensive picture of their financial affairs projected across their lifetimes. In addition, for do-it-yourselfers, I have also made VeriPlan available for licensing through one of my other websites, Financial Planning Software. Individuals can buy a copy of VeriPlan for a very modest fee and do their own lifecyle personal financial planning, if the have the time and energy it takes to enter their data and do their own planning.

In designing VeriPlan, I knew that this Financial Software Tool must enable detailed modeling and rapid development of lifecycle scenarios in a highly personalized financial context. Over the last several decades, computer resources have vastly increased. The average PC today can handle the intensive computational demands of VeriPlan and still produce results instantly after any change is made to a family’s financial projection model. Thirty years ago you had to line up with all the other nerds to use some hulking room-sized computer in a distant building. You had only one chance to run your program correctly, before you went to the back of the line to restart the cycle.

Most days that I worked at the Institute for the Future, I peddled my bicycle across the Stanford University campus and huffed and puffed up Sand Hill Road. The Institute for the Future was nestled in the foothills along with all the venture capital firms that made Sand Hill Road famous.

My commute became much easier when I stopped halfway to attend Stanford Business School starting in 1980. At Stanford Business School, I developed expertise in business management and increased my knowledge of economics, finance, and investments.

Continue to Part 2 of this biography: Pasadena California Financial Planner >>>

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Larry Russell, Managing Director

MBA – Stanford University, MA – Brandeis University, and BS – M.I.T.

Lawrence Russell and Company Pasadena, California 91103

(626) 399-9579

A California Registered Investment Adviser — Certificate 133101

KNOWLEDGE — OBJECTIVITY — HONESTY — DILIGENCE — SATISFACTION

A truly independent financial planner and fee only investment advisor

(Regarding how I am compensated, I provide financial planning services only on a fixed fee or hourly fee for service basis, and only under a contract agreed upon with you. You do not have to pay any form of asset fee. Furthermore, in the interest of avoiding any conflict-of-interest, I do not accept commissions or compensation of any kind from the financial services industry.)

Start a conversation today — Send a message using this contact form

Financial Planner in Pasadena California

Serving clients throughout the greater Pasadena, California area including these cities: Altadena, Glendale, La Canada, Pasadena, Pomona, Rancho La Tuna Canyon, San Gabriel, San Marino, South Pasadena, Sunland, and Tujunga.

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Also, see: Pasadena CA Financial Planning >>>

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I am committed to the financial education of my clients. I strongly believe that financial education will help you to make much better personal financial planning decisions across your lifetime. Together, we can significantly improve the quality of your practices in family financial planning and your personal investment management.

We will work together cooperatively to analyze your financial affairs. We will develop a detailed lifecycle projection model of your family’s finances that will allow us to automate the testing of how different personal financial decisions might impact your family’s financial future.

I will help you to understand and adopt more durable, time-efficient, and cost-effective lifetime financial and investment strategies. I will advise you on improved methods for the long-term self-management of your family’s financial affairs. Your personal financial and investment plan will be designed for cost-efficiency, tax-efficiency, and time-efficiency. Once established, your financial plan should require minimal tuning over time.

As your personal financial advisor and independent investment advisor, I will also act as your financial consumer advocate.

I will help you learn how to be a highly cost conscious consumer of financial and investment products that are consistent with your personal financial goals and plan.

My financial and retirement planning services will be valuable and cost-effective to you. My financial consultant fees will be reasonable, clearly understood, and determined in advance. I can provide you with comprehensive, reasonably priced financial, investment, and retirement planning services on an hourly, fixed fee, or retainer basis.

I will never charge any fees in relationship to your assets. Simply put, your financial assets are yours and not mine. I believe that financial advisor fees should not be proportional to your assets.

Your family’s interests will always come first. I will work exclusively for you and your family. I will never accept any form of compensation from any third party.

When delivering my financial planning and investment advisory services, I will never tolerate any conflict of interest. No financial industry incentives will ever interfere with my development of an optimal long-term financial plan for you. My recommendations will focus exclusively on your family’s financial interests.

Get help from a fee only financial planner and independent investment advisor who will:

• Take the time necessary to understand your family’s personal financial and retirement planning situation in comprehensive detail
• Provide thorough, personalized, and specific financial action plans
• Put you at the center of decisions using a sophisticated and fully automated personal financial planning tool that projects across your lifetime the potential impacts of financial decisions you might wish to make.

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See: Pasadena Financial Planners >>>

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Larry Russell, Managing Director

MBA – Stanford University, MA – Brandeis University, and BS – M.I.T.

Lawrence Russell and Company Pasadena, California 91103

(626) 399-9579

A California Registered Investment Adviser — Certificate 133101

KNOWLEDGE — OBJECTIVITY — HONESTY — DILIGENCE — SATISFACTION

A truly independent financial planner and fee only investment advisor

(Regarding how I am compensated, I work solely on a hourly fee or fixed fee for services basis, and only under a contract that we would agree upon. I do not charge any asset fees. In addition, in the interest of avoiding any conflict-of-interest, I never accept commissions or compensation of any kind from the industry.)

Start a conversation today — Send a message using this contact form

Financial Planner in Pasadena California

Serving clients throughout the greater Pasadena, California area including these cities: Glendale, La Canada, La Crescenta, La Tuna Canyon, La Verne, Los Feliz, Monrovia, Montrose, North Hollywood, Pasadena, San Marino, and South Pasadena.

This website has been researched, written, and published independently. To ensure objectivity, no compensation of any kind has been paid by any third party to influence the editorial content of this website. All articles on this website were written by the Pasadena Financial Planner.

Do you want reasonably priced, comprehensive financial planning services from a responsive fee only investment advisor and personal financial planner?

My financial and retirement planning services will be valuable and cost-effective to you. My financial consultant fees will be reasonable, clearly understood, and determined in advance. I can provide you with comprehensive, reasonably priced financial, investment, and retirement planning services on an hourly, fixed fee, or retainer basis.

When delivering my financial planning and investment advisory services, I will never tolerate any conflict of interest. No financial industry incentives will ever interfere with my development of an optimal long-term financial plan for you. My recommendations will focus exclusively on your family’s financial interests.

.

Larry Russell, Managing Director

MBA – Stanford University, MA – Brandeis University, and BS – M.I.T.

Lawrence Russell and Company Pasadena, California 91103

(626) 399-9579

A California Registered Investment Adviser — Certificate 133101

KNOWLEDGE — OBJECTIVITY — HONESTY — DILIGENCE — SATISFACTION

Start a conversation today — Send a message using this contact form

Pasadena Financial Advisor

The best personal financial planner for people who live in the San Gabriel Valley, including those who live in or near Alhambra, Altadena, Arcadia, Azusa, Baldwin Hills, Burbank, Duarte, Eagle Rock, El Monte, Glendale, La Canada Flintridge, La Crescenta, La Tuna Canyon, Los Feliz, Monrovia, Montrose, North Hollywood, Pasadena, San Gabriel, South Pasadena, Sunland, Studio City, Sun Valley, Temple City, Toluca Lake, Tujunga, West Los Angeles, and West Toluca Lake.

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