How do you choose an advisor with so many options? The Retirement Architect, David Reyes has been in the industry for over 24 years. This experience has created and developed our signature three meeting process. Our office spends over 15 hours on your portfolio FREE OF CHARGE to ensure we have covered every angle with your desires in mind to create the best possible outcome to increase your earnings and reduce your risk.

Hi everyone thanks for joining me. Today, I was thinking about a topic that I think is important. And when you are meeting with an advisor, or anybody relative to their services, is what is their process? We have what is called a “free meeting process.” This has been developed over 24 years of doing this as an adviser. So try to make it really client-friendly. Obviously, it’s not about me. It’s about you. And I truly mean that because the planning side is easy. It really is. It’s the people that make it unique. And over time, I have learned that everybody is interesting.

Everybody has a story. So if you come from that mindset, then it’s a lot more fun. So in our first main – I call it a rapport meeting, first date, whatever you want to call it. And that’s really just getting to know you on a personal level. I always use that saying, “I am half camp counselor and half adviser.” And really I mean that because we’re talking about a very personal thing. Money is a very personal issue. I call it the mistress. We have a relationship with our money just like we have a relationship with our kids, and our wife, and our friends and family. So it’s a whole relationship.

Part of it is, how do you perceive your money? What does it mean to you? Do you really care about traveling the world? Do you want to give it to your kids? Do you want to spend every last dollar? All those types of things. The first thing is really just about you. I spend about 80% time listening and about 20% talking because I have to be able to be a good listener to help you to understand what’s most important. So in that first meeting, it is usually about an hour and a half, can be longer, can be shorter. But right around 90 minute meeting.

Then what happens if we decide to go forward – and I’m not charging you to do this, so our whole second opinion process is complimentary. So the second meeting is where we kind of get into the real meat. And I’ll have received from you in the first meeting your statements, your tax returns, your trust, Social Security. All these types of statements that I need to do a thorough review.

So in the second meeting, I am prepared to review your portfolio. We will go over the risk of your portfolio. Most of you have a lot more risk in your portfolio than you think than you do. Typically, most of you have what I call 30% risk, meaning that in a traditional down market like 2000 or 2008, with your current portfolio would lose about 30% or $300,000 per million. Now, I know none of you want that kind of risk because I meet with you every day.
I always say, “How much do you want to lose in retirement?” Everybody says zero, right?

So your portfolio aren’t designed that way. So I get into the risk of your portfolio, the true risk of the portfolio. Secondarily, we talk about the fees that are inside of your investments. Most of you have a lot of mutual funds. Mutual funds can be very expensive. There are a lot of better ways to manage money. You can use stocks. You can use exchange rate funds, which are kind of the new iteration of a less expensive, more liquid mutual fund alternative. There’s many other different ways. So in that particular meeting, we’re going through the fees, we’re going through the risk that you have in the portfolio, and at that point in time, I’m all ready to do a little mini plan for you. Mini retirement plan.

So what happens in the next meeting, the third meeting, and it depends on how fast we get through these things, but typically it’s three meetings. Sometimes it is only two. But in the third meeting we’re going through the retirement plan and I put together a proposal, or draft plan, where I use what I know about you and I have put an investment plan together to meet those needs.

I call it reverse engineering, the plan. So meaning we start with the end in mind. And what that is is what is the goals? And then I’m going to back fill. I’m going to reverse engineer. So, okay, what is the safest way to achieve our goals to make sure we never run out of money? And that’s really important because the investments are purely a means to an end. They are not the end. Most of you go to an adviser saying, “Here’s the best portfolio ever. Here’s what we do.” If you’re walking into a room and an adviser tells you that, run the other way. Because they are selling you something.

The only way to truly understand what type of investments that you need – First off, you have to do it with an adviser that works annuities, stocks, bonds, alternative investments – like real estate – that do not have an invested interests in a single type of stock, bond or an annuity, that type of thing. So if you have these types of I would say options to put together for a client, you could be much more free to just tell you, “Hey, based upon the income that you need, based upon your risk, this is one of the best portfolio for you to have to make sure the best quality of life with the least amount of risk. And make sure you never run out of money.”