I was watching a re-run of Jerry Maguire the other day and the ‘Help me help you’ scene reminded me a lot of my job.

You might remember the scene where Jerry is pleading with Rod: “I’m out here for you!  You don’t know what it’s like to be me out here for you. It is an up-at-dawn pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about! Okay?! Help me help you, help me help you.”

I often feel the same way as an independent financial adviser. I work in an industry that has little respect, and rightly so given the behaviour of the financial services industry at large. But I’m doing everything I can to change the industry I’m a part of. The wheel turns slowly though…

• Financial literacy is very low… they don’t teach us much about the way money works in the real world whilst we’re at school. We get the education we need to get a job, but little to no education on how to manage the money we earn from our jobs.
• Furthermore, only 8% of Australians under the age of 45 seek financial advice, even though this is when they are making THE KEY DECISIONS that will ultimately have the biggest impact on their long-term financial future.
• Only 14% of Australians overall seek financial advice, but this is heavily skewed to people over 55, by which stage they’ve missed out on the full benefits they could have received had they sought advice earlier in life.
• Most Australians then go on to retire and have to rely on the Age Pension.
• Sadly, less than 1% of the 25,000 financial advisers can put their hand on their heart and say they are TRULY INDEPENDENT.

Why do I do it? Why keep working in an industry in which every day I have to get out of bed and go to work knowing most people in the community think very lowly of my profession? I could quit and become a real estate agent in no time or open a café and sell the drink many of us can’t go a day without… everyone loves property and coffee. I’m not saying being a real estate agent or a café owner is easy (I know it’s not!), but people gladly part with many, MANY thousands of dollars to pay an agent to sell a house for them and gladly hand over a small fortune over time for small cups of caffeinated milk.

So why do I do it? I do it because I believe passionately in the value of financial advice. I believe REAL financial advice (i.e. not the kind that is dictated by which products to sell or how much money people have) changes lives!

I’m putting it out there…

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Quality, independent financial advice is right under your nose. For something around the price of a new iPhone, you can get advice that will make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars difference to your financial future. But I can only lead a horse to water. Much of my business is coming from people who have received conflicted advice in the past and want it fixed… that’s great as it gives me enormous satisfaction to help them. But my true passion in starting my own business was to provide a way for the 92% of Australians under the age of 45 who do not get financial advice to have a trusted source of advice they can turn to so that I could take them on a journey to financial freedom.

If you want to be a part of the future of financial advice then let’s have a chat. And if you’re not sure about why it’s so important that advice be independent, then give me a call and I’ll explain because when you’re a client of an INDEPENDENT financial adviser you can say “SHOW ME THE MONEY!” knowing that your adviser will be acting in your best interest, not theirs.

Cheers,

Daniel