The Financial Problems You Don’t Know You Have: What a Good Financial Advisor Really Does

The Financial Problems You Don’t Know You Have: What a Good Financial Advisor Really Does

Most people don’t hire a financial advisor because they have a financial problem.

They hire one because they want to invest better, retire comfortably, reduce their taxes, or simply feel more confident about their financial future.

But here’s the interesting part:

Some of the biggest financial problems aren’t obvious.

They are buried inside your tax return, investment portfolio, estate plan, insurance coverage, retirement accounts, business interests, or even the way your income is structured.

You may not know they exist because everything appears to be working just fine.

That’s where good financial planning can make a difference.

You Can’t Solve a Problem You Don’t Know You Have

Imagine taking your car to a mechanic and saying, “It drives fine.”

A good mechanic doesn’t simply change the oil and send you home.

They look under the hood.

They check for things you may not notice. A small issue today could become an expensive repair tomorrow.

Financial planning should work the same way.

My job isn’t simply to look at someone’s investment account and determine whether they own enough stocks or bonds.

It’s to look at the entire financial picture and ask questions that may not have been asked before.

Where are the potential tax problems?

Are you taking more investment risk than you actually need?

Could your retirement income be structured differently?

Are your accounts positioned efficiently for your future?

What happens if one spouse dies?

Are you accidentally creating a large future tax bill?

Could a Roth conversion make sense?

Are your beneficiaries still correct?

Are you paying for something you don’t need?

Could your Social Security strategy be improved?

What happens to your portfolio when the market falls 20%?

And perhaps most importantly:

What haven’t we thought about yet?

The Hidden Cost of Financial Blind Spots

One of the biggest mistakes investors make is focusing exclusively on investment returns.

Of course, returns matter.

But your financial life isn’t a single investment account.

It’s a system.

You can have an excellent investment portfolio and still have a poor financial plan.

For example, someone could have $2 million invested and be earning solid returns, but they might also be:

• Paying significantly more in taxes than necessary

• Holding too much money in the wrong type of account

• Taking unnecessary investment risk

• Missing opportunities for strategic Roth conversions

• Claiming Social Security at the wrong time for their circumstances

• Carrying an outdated estate plan

• Failing to properly coordinate retirement income

• Creating unnecessary Medicare-related costs

• Leaving their heirs with an inefficient tax situation

None of those problems necessarily show up when you open your investment statement.

That’s why financial planning has to go deeper than investment management.

Sometimes the Best Answer Is a Question

One of the most valuable things a financial advisor can provide isn’t an answer.

It’s a question you haven’t thought to ask.

I’ve found that some of the best financial planning conversations start with something completely unrelated to investments.

A client might come in asking:

“How should we invest this $500,000?”

But the better question might be:

“Why do you need the money invested this way in the first place?”

Or someone might ask:

“When should I retire?”

But the real question could be:

“What does your ideal retirement actually look like, and how much does it cost?”

Someone may ask:

“Should I pay off my mortgage?”

But the real question is:

“What is the best use of this capital given your taxes, liquidity, cash flow, risk tolerance and retirement timeline?”

That’s the difference between answering a financial question and actually solving a financial problem.

Your Financial Life Is Connected

This is why I believe financial planning should be comprehensive.

Your investment decisions affect your taxes.

Your taxes affect your retirement income.

Your retirement income affects how much you need to withdraw from your portfolio.

Your withdrawals affect your taxes.

Your taxes can affect Medicare premiums.

Your estate plan affects what happens to the money you’ve spent decades accumulating.

Everything is connected.

Changing one piece of the puzzle can create consequences somewhere else.

That’s why I don’t want to simply manage an investment account in isolation.

I want to understand the entire picture.

The Goal Isn’t to Find More Problems

This isn’t about creating problems where they don’t exist.

It’s about identifying opportunities and risks before they become expensive.

Sometimes the answer is, “You’re doing everything right. Keep going.”

That’s a good financial planning outcome too.

But sometimes we uncover something that can be improved.

Maybe there is a tax opportunity.

Maybe your portfolio is taking more risk than necessary.

Maybe your retirement income strategy needs to change.

Maybe your estate plan hasn’t kept up with your life.

Maybe you have accumulated significant wealth but don’t have a clear plan for turning that wealth into sustainable income.

Those are the conversations that can have a much bigger impact than simply trying to squeeze another percentage point out of an investment portfolio.

Think of Your Household Like a Business

I often encourage people to think about their household the way a successful business owner thinks about a business.

A business doesn’t try to do everything itself.

It hires accountants.

It hires attorneys.

It hires technology experts.

It hires marketing professionals.

It hires people who understand areas that the owner doesn’t specialize in.

Why?

Because the cost of making a major mistake can be far greater than the cost of hiring someone who knows what they’re doing.

Your household is no different.

You’ve probably spent decades becoming very good at your career.

You don’t need to become an expert in tax law, portfolio construction, estate planning, Social Security, retirement income, Medicare rules and financial markets just because you’ve accumulated wealth.

Your job is to live your life. My job is to help you make better financial decisions.

The Real Value of Financial Planning

I don’t believe the value of a financial advisor is simply picking investments.

Information is everywhere today.

You can find an ETF online in seconds.

You can calculate a retirement withdrawal rate with a search.

You can ask artificial intelligence to explain a Roth conversion.

The information isn’t the scarce resource anymore.

Judgment is.

Knowing what questions to ask.

Knowing which opportunities matter.

Understanding how different financial decisions interact.

Recognizing a potential problem before it becomes a major problem.

And having someone who can step back and look at the entire picture rather than focusing on one account or one financial decision.

That’s where I believe financial planning creates real value.

What You Don’t Know Can Cost You

The biggest financial mistakes aren’t always dramatic.

Sometimes they’re small decisions repeated for years.

Sometimes they’re opportunities that were never identified.

Sometimes they’re taxes that could have been reduced.

Sometimes they’re risks that weren’t necessary.

And sometimes they’re simply the result of having no one looking at the entire financial picture.

My job isn’t to convince you that you have financial problems.

My job is to help determine whether there are problems, opportunities or blind spots that you haven’t identified yet.

Because the best financial plan isn’t necessarily the one that gives you the highest return.

It’s the one that helps you make better decisions with the money you’ve worked your entire life to accumulate.

You don’t need someone who simply manages your money.

You need someone who understands what your money is supposed to accomplish.

And sometimes, the most valuable problems to solve are the ones you didn’t know you had.

Click here to schedule a meeting — I’m here to help you take the next step toward financial freedom.

Colin Symons, CIO Lloyd Financial Group

I feel like I reference time horizon quite a bit while talking about markets. That’s because my time horizon is significantly longer than most people. The people I largely see in the market and discussing the market are usually talking in terms of days. This can lead to miscommunication between myself and others, where I’m talking about a stock being a good buy over a period of months while the others care if a current downturn goes for another day or two.

To be clear, for most of our positions, I’m trying to hold them for a year or longer. There are some who try to hold a position literally forever, which is great, but hard. At some point a stock is likely to become overvalued, then what do you do? For instance, one of my favorite buys of my career was buying Consol (CNX) back in 2000 at a 10x P/E and 10% dividend yield. I thought I’d hold it forever, but after it more than tripled in short order, it became too tempting to sell for something else.

For starters, why do I focus on that relatively longer time horizon? There are a few reasons. Perhaps the most obvious reason is taxes. If you can hold for over a year, something we target with most of our holdings, you can lower your tax rate, so you get to keep more. Giving less to the tax man is good, and deferring taxable events gives you more buying power.

There are plenty of other reasons to favor a long holding period, though. Stocks are a positive carry asset; they tend to go up over time. Interrupting that by selling both increases trading costs and makes you prone to missing good days, as most sell after a decline-- that’s what most systematic strategies do. Shorter-term moves are also often non-fundamental, so arguably you’re trading noise.

Ultimately, the question is how much you want to worry about the wiggles in a chart? It’s easy to be dismissive of small downturns in a historical chart, because you know how it turns out. At the time, those small wiggles can feel pretty bad. Why is my stock down while the market is doing fine? There’s almost certainly a reason, though it could be temporary. Then again, every big decline starts as a small decline.

There’s nothing wrong with trading the wiggles, though. Admittedly, it doesn’t help that trading those wiggles is a crowded space, as many are trading with you, but one problem with long-term holds is there’s almost certainly going to be a time when your stock has a temporary downturn. In theory, a shorter-term horizon can avoid those times. Even with a long-term horizon, trimming a position after a big run can make sense.

Let’s look at something like Nvidia (NVDA) over the last five years, as it’s moved a lot and had some volatility, which is common with big gainers. Even on a long-term chart, there are plenty of small downturns that probably didn’t feel good. If you squint, November of ‘22 saw the stock go down after an earnings report that wasn’t loved. Wouldn’t it have been nice to sell at $16.30 (split-adjusted) to avoid the drop to $15.41? That 6% decline probably didn’t feel good, but hopefully you got back in to enjoy the run to triple digits.

As usual, the best idea is to come in with a plan and not just react. For instance, our latest sale (Intuit (INTU)) was sold at a good price because we didn’t react to the price holding up but because earnings violated our expectations to maintain it as a hold. That doesn’t guarantee we made the right choice that time, but it’s part of a system to help a portfolio move up over time. We ignore most wiggles and look for bigger events to see if we’re likely on the right path.

Oil was up another 2%, to $95, as Iran attempted to strike US warships and the US destroyed five Iranian oil tankers.

Chinese CPI was 0.4% m/m vs. exp. 0.3%. Even Chinese inflation is starting to show signs of life.

The US 2Y yield hit 4.43%, the highest since January 2025.

Constellation Brands (STZ) was down -5% yesterday after saying logistics and commodity costs will hit H2 margins.

Stryker (SYK) was -9% and at 52-wk lows after citing persistent challenges in the vascular business.

Softbank is up 4% as it refinances a $40B loan it took earlier this year to finance their investment in OpenAI.

ADP Employment should be today.

Bottom line: Seems like we’re all oil traders, now.

Click here to schedule a meeting — I’m here to help you take the next step toward financial freedom.

Disclosures/Regulation:

This content is intended to provide general information about Lloyd Financial. It is not intended to offer or deliver investment advice in any way. Information regarding investment services are provided solely to gain an understanding of our investment philosophy, our strategies and to be able to contact us for further information.

All information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed. There is no representation or warranty as to the current accuracy, reliability or completeness of, nor liability for, decisions based on such information and it should not be relied on as such.

The views expressed in this commentary are subject to change based on market and other conditions. These documents may contain certain statements that may be deemed forward‐looking statements. Please note that any such statements are not guarantees of any future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected. Any projections, market outlooks, or estimates are based upon certain assumptions and should not be construed as indicative of actual events that will occur.

Past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk. Therefore, it should not be assumed that future performance of any specific investment or investment strategy will be profitable

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