Welcome to a new week and a new theme here on the One Minute Retirement Tip! 

Back in 2013, University of Chicago social scientist Harold Pollack asserted that you can fit all the financial advice you'll ever need on a single index card. The result was a photo of nine pieces of advice that he squeezed onto one 3x5 index card. The photo went viral and Pollack wrote a book about it:  The Index Card: Why Personal Advice Doesn't Have To Be Complicated. 

It’s a really interesting concept - forcing you to choose what’s most important and also discarding other things that might seem important, but in reality, maybe you shouldn’t worry too much about it. So this week, I’ll borrow a couple of Pollack’s ideas and share with you a few of my own in this week’s theme - index card personal finance. 

Let’s get into it with rule #1, which is borrowed from Pollack’s list: Make your financial advisor commit to a fiduciary standard. A fiduciary is required to put their client’s interest ahead of their own, avoid conflicts of interest, they cannot accept commissions, and generally are held to the highest standard possible. 

The reality is that the vast majority of financial advisors are NOT fiduciaries, and that’s a problem for consumers. When your advisor doesn’t act as a fiduciary, you better make sure you trust your advisor to do the right thing - navigating that is a mine field though, because non-fiduciary advisors who sell insurance and different mutual fund products have disordered incentives to sell you something that will pay them more but may not be in your best interest. 

So be sure that if you’re interviewing an advisor you ask if they are always acting as a fiduciary and get that in writing. I strongly believe in the fiduciary standard for all advisors, and I don't think we’ll get there until  more consumers are aware of the differences and demand that their advisor be a fiduciary in all circumstances at all times. 

That’s it for today. But before you go...you probably know someone who is close to retirement and could benefit from listening to this podcast. If so, please share this podcast with them and encourage them to check it out by adding it to their flash briefing in Alexa or subscribing wherever they listen to podcasts!

Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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