Throughout the years, we’ve found that people tend to have a wide range of expectations that come to mind when they hear
the term “Financial Advisor.” And it’s no wonder that sometimes even the advisors themselves have differing opinions on
the term, and certainly different approaches to serving their clients. We would like to outline what it means for us to be a financial
advisor for our clients, and it’s not dissimilar to the relationship a golfer has with their caddie.
The Caddie’s Role in Golf
For a touring pro, there is a very unique relationship between them and their caddie. Not only does the caddie carry the
players bag, but they also carry with them a wealth of wisdom about the course, the weather conditions, the player, the
field, and the game in general. Perhaps more importantly, they also carry the player’s trust to give solid, actionable advice
even in tense situations when the stakes are highest. A good caddie provides a reliable sounding board for the decisions
ahead, and is often the voice of reason in difficult situations.
Our role as a Financial Advisor
While there is no official rule that states a golfer must use a caddie, playing without such a valuable resource can put the
player at a competitive disadvantage. Financially speaking, trying to “carry your own bag” by making your own
investments and financial decisions might not be the best idea either. The financial advisor, like the caddie can lend a
special knowledge of the course, the dangers, layup positions, club selection, and the sucker-pin placements. It’s handy
information to have when trying to decide whether to go for it or hold back, especially when everything is on the line. They
are also there to help you to eliminate mistakes and avoid unnecessary penalties or even disqualification. A trusted caddie
with intimate knowledge of all of the factors surrounding a golfer’s next shot is just as valuable as a good financial advisor
when it comes to evaluating your next financial move. And, it can make all the difference in determining where you finish.
Fuzzy Zoeller, after winning the 1979 Masters at Augusta remarked:
“I never had any thought the whole week. I figured my caddie (Jerry Beard) knew the course a lot better than me, so I put
out my hand and played whatever club he put in it. I’d say “How hard do I hit it?” He’d tell me and I’d swing. The guys who
come down once a year and try to get smart with Mr. Jones’ course are the dumb ones.”
Glittering generalities aside, sometimes the smart play is to simply take advantage of the resources available to you.
If you have had any previous experience with a financial advisor, chances are the conversation revolved around how much money you have, where it’s located, we can do a better job. It would seem that most investment firms share the same singular focus of trying to find better products that earn a higher rate of return which often take more risk. For all of the fancy analytics and mathematical acrobatics available today, nobody has yet figured out how to predict the future. Earning higher returns is certainly not a bad thing, and something we can help you with as well, however we believe we should help our clients avoid money they could be losing unnecessarily before considering options that require more risk. Return is not the only thing to consider when evaluating the efficiency of your own personal economic model. There are three types of money:
The money used to secure your financial future must somehow come from these three areas. Accumulated money represents the dollars you currently have invested and are currently saving. You could focus your attention on these dollars in order to find better investments that potentially pay higher rates of return.
Lifestyle money represents the dollars you are spending to maintain your current standard of living: where you live, what you eat, where you vacation etc. For many people, this is where the conversation ends. While everyone wants to solve their financial problems reducing their current standard of living is not a popular option.
What if there were a way to address the issue without having to incur more risk or impact your present lifestyle? I’m glad you asked!
Transferred money represents the dollars you may be transferring away unknowingly, and unnecessarily. Such as:
How you pay for your house,
What you pay in taxes
How you fund your retirement accounts
Non-deductible interest
How you pay for major capital purchases like cars, education, weddings, and other large expenses.
There are really only two ways a financial advisor can be of help to you:
By finding better products that pay higher rates of return requiring more risk
By helping you be more efficient by avoiding unnecessarily losses
I believe that there is more opportunity to serve my clients by helping them first avoid the losses, before trying to pick the winners. My focus with clients begins with eliminating the involuntary and unnecessary wealth transfers. Consider this. There are two ways to fill up a bucket that has holes in it. One way is to pour more in, and the other is to first plug the holes, then the bucket will fill up even if the flow is just a trickle. Which strategy more closely resembles the way you are currently approaching financial management?
“We just want to make people sleep better at night so that when they wake up in the morning, they can take a breath knowing that they’re going to be okay.”
Brian Peters:
Hi, my name is Brian Peters and I’m the CEO of Brian Peters consulting. I work with the top advisors around the world in all countries. Today I have the privilege and the pleasure of chatting with Tim Yurek of Tier 1 Capital in Pennsylvania. Now, Tim is a 35-year veteran in this industry and is really at the top of his game. We’re going to learn some great secrets and insights into financial services and the world today by speaking with Tim. So Tim, great to have you on. Thank you very much for joining and welcome.
Tim Yurek:
Well thank you, Brian. I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you.
Brian Peters:
I’m going to be asking you a number of questions. Some, that people have actually written in because they knew that we’d be speaking. So I’m going to start with question one, Tim. There’s so many different types of advisors. You’ve got advisor firms, investment firms, you got banks, you’ve got credit unions. You’ve got all sorts of types of advisors. So let me ask what makes you so unique or different?
Tim Yurek:
Well, you know, Brian, that’s a good question. What I found is, when you encounter a financial advisor, when you meet with them for the first time, they ask to see everything you have, and then the conversation usually goes somewhere to this point. “Well, everything you have needs improvement and my stuff is the best.” That’s because they’re focused on the product. What makes me different is when we sit down, we’re going to talk about how you’re using your money. We’re going to look for inefficiencies in how you’re using your money. To give you an analogy, let’s say you want to get better at golf, this is how the other guys would approach it. “Show me your golf clubs, your golf clubs stink. Come to my pro shop. I’ll sell you a new set of golf clubs.” My analogy is, “Hey, Brian, I don’t know if you need clubs, but I know the best way to improve your swing in golf is to take a look at the swing. So let’s go down to the range, take a look at how you can swing the club and then we can maybe make some recommendations.” What we do is we look for any inefficiencies in how you’re using your money and then make recommendations on how you can improve yourself financially.
Brian Peters:
Wow. That sounds much different than everybody else. So, what can you really help your clients achieve?
Tim Yurek:
Well, Brian, first and foremost, what we help our clients to achieve is having access to their money. That is the center of our planning because when you don’t have access to money, you have stress, you have frustration, you have anxiety, you can’t take advantage of opportunities. If a financial or a health emergency occurs, you don’t have access to money. That creates more stress and anxiety. Additionally, people come to us looking for confidence. You know, they’re rich on paper. They have a lot of money going through their hands, but they feel like failures because they don’t have access to their money. Our process shows them how to create greater access to their money. What they don’t realize is they have it within their power to achieve the freedom and the confidence that they want. They just don’t know how to do it.
Brian Peters:
That sounds great. That sounds like a real problem solver. So Tim, tell me, how did you come up with this process?
Tim Yurek:
Well, you know, Brian, I realized that following conventional financial wisdom doesn’t work for the client, it works for the financial institution. It works for the financial advisor, but it leaves your money inaccessible when you need it most. So I realized something had to change.
Brian Peters:
So, the change was, instead of taking on more things, the change was to use what they were currently using more efficiently. Is that right?
Tim Yurek:
Yeah, exactly. So, all we do is help people to analyze what they’re doing with their money and then determine whether or not it’s leaving their money accessible or inaccessible. Then if their money was inaccessible, we looked at a different way of doing things. So that their money can be accessible to them. Now, the financial institutions don’t like that, but it’s better for the client.
Brian Peters:
Now I’m going to ask you the $64,000 question. Why did you even bother trying to come up with this process? Why do it like this?
Tim Yurek:
I mentioned earlier that our clients come to us frustrated, stuck financially, and full of anxiety. Well, back in 1993, I was in the same spot. I was making good income. I was following conventional wisdom to the book and I didn’t have any access to money. I was stuck financially, and I was frustrated. I thought it was my fault because I wasn’t making enough money. The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t making enough money. How I was using my money was the problem.
Brian Peters:
Oh, that makes total sense. Do you think that today it’s mostly in America, or do you think that a lot of people are in that similar situation?
Tim Yurek:
Brian, it’s amazing. Every day we see people who are in the same boat. I just met with a client out in California. We did a virtual meeting and they were in the same boat. The husband said, “I’m making more money now than I’ve ever dreamed and yet I can’t pay my bills on a monthly basis. What’s going on, what’s wrong?” See that’s where people come to us. They don’t have confidence because they think it’s their fault. It’s not their fault, to a degree. It is because they’re following conventional wisdom, but they think they’re doing everything right by the book. They are, but it’s not in their best interest. That’s why they’re stuck, frustrated and full of anxiety.
Brian Peters:
I can tell you’re really passionate about fixing that for people too. That’s great, Tim, it’s all sort of sounding so simple and obvious and straightforward. So if that’s the case, why isn’t everyone doing it?
Tim Yurek:
You know, Brian that’s a great question. You know, the American actor Will Rogers has a quote. He says “The problem in America, isn’t what people don’t know. The problem in America is what they think they know that just ain’t so.” You know, what I found is when I meet with clients, they’re doing the best they can with the money they have, based on the information that they have. The problem is they don’t have all the information. So, one of the questions I ask my clients when I first meet them is, “What if what you thought to be true about finances turned out not to be true, when would you want to know?” They all say immediately. So, the problem is they don’t have all the information.
I met with a client and his wife the other day, he’s a business owner. He said to me during the meeting, why isn’t everybody doing this? I said, well, they haven’t met me yet. So we put this plan together for them and I just got a text the other day and he said, “Hey, we’re going to move forward with that plan and I just want you to know, last night was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in months.” That just gives me such pleasure to see that I’m making an impact for people on a daily basis.
Brian Peters:
Wow. That’s fantastic. That must’ve made you feel really, really great. That’s great.
Tim Yurek:
Absolutely.
Brian Peters:
So Tim, I can tell you’re really passionate about what you do. So when you wake up in the morning, what’s your mission statement?
Tim Yurek:
Well, Brian, it’s real simple. We just want to make people sleep better at night so that when they wake up in the morning, they can take a breath knowing that they’re going to be okay. They don’t have the stress of thinking that they’re living pay to pay or week to week. They don’t have the pressure of having to make a sale. We help our clients sleep better and we give them that confidence.
Brian Peters:
Great, fantastic. So Tim, I can tell you’re really passionate about what you do and you really do like helping people. Now, the world’s in a bit of a tough place at the moment for business people and everyday families. So I understand that you’ve got a special offer for any business owners who would like to chat with you over the next 30 days. Would you share that with us?
Tim Yurek:
Brian we’re going to offer a free, no cost, no obligation cashflow analysis for business owners to see if we can help them to free up some cashflow coming out of this pandemic. Additionally, for families, we’ll offer a free 30-minute phone conversation to answer any questions that they might have about their finances.
Brian Peters:
Great. So, anybody who’s really interested in a no obligation free 30-minute chat, just get in touch with Tim, and he’ll be more than happy to help you. So, Tim, it’s been really great chatting with you and great learning all about what you do. We wish you very well and continued success.
Tim Yurek:
Thanks, Brian. I appreciate it. Thanks for your time. You’re very welcome
What makes us so passionate about helping our clients become financially independent?
With over 35 years of experience in the financial services industry, we have seen how following conventional wisdom can lead you astray. What makes us so passionate about helping our clients become financially independent? Growing up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck really changed Tim’s perspective on life. After following some great advice from Don Blanton and Nelson Nash, Tim realized, maintaining the efficiency of your money and maintaining the liquidity use and control of your money, will let you have financial freedom. It is our goal now to help as many people as we can, become financially independent.
“It’s become our mission to help our clients become financially independent by using these concepts so that they could release the financial stress and pressure and maintain or attain financial engines”
At tier one capital, our mission is to help our clients become financially free. We believe that you should be in control of your money, not the banks, not the financial institutions, and certainly not the government. Today we’re going to tell you a little bit about why we’re so passionate about helping our clients to become financially independent and why liquidity use, and control of your money is the key to becoming financially independent.
A lot of times when we meet with clients, they say, this is so simple and so different, how did you guys come up with this process? Let me tell you a little bit about my journey over the past 35 years in the financial services industry and in order to do so, I want to take you back to my childhood. Growing up in Wyoming, Pennsylvania in a blue-collar family, my dad worked in the coal mines and Thursday night was pay day. On Thursday nights my mom would get my dad’s pay, go to the grocery store and cash the check to pay bills for the next day. Sometimes, however, my dad would come home on a Thursday night and he didn’t have his pay.
So now let’s fast forward to the Christmas of 1993, sitting around my parents kitchen table with my family, reminiscing about the good old days. It certainly came up about the few times where my dad would come home without his pay. It was those times when my mom would load my brother, sister, and I into the car and sit in front of my dad’s boss’s house waiting for him to come home, to get my dad’s pay. Now, as a kid, I had no idea why we were there. I asked my mom, what were we doing there? She said, waiting for dad’s pay. I asked, why didn’t you just wait until the next day? She replied, we lived pay to pay, we needed that money to pay bills. It was at that point that I realized that I was living pay to pay, despite the fact that I was making 10 times what my dad had ever made, despite the fact that I had no dependence. I had a 15-year mortgage, and I was maxing out my 401k.
Yes, embarrassingly, I had credit cards and there were even times when I had to go to my dad and borrow money to pay my mortgage. Why? Because I didn’t have any access to money. It was at that point that I realized that I was living pay to pay, despite the fact that I was making good money and I was following conventional wisdom by the book. I knew at that point that things had to change. It became, from that point forward, my mission to find ways to help people to become financially independent. I was able to figure some things out on own and then in 1995, I was introduced to a guy by the name of Don Blanton, who developed a whole financial planning system around making your money more efficient.
With this system, we’re able to identify where our clients are giving up control of their money, unknowingly and unnecessarily. We look at the five areas of wealth transfer; taxes, mortgages, how you fund your retirement plan, how you fund college tuition for your children and how you make major capital purchases. It was Don’s system that proved that the process of how you use your money is way more important than where your money is. Then in July of 1997, I met a gentleman by the name of Nelson Nash. Nelson taught me that the importance of having access to capital when opportunities come about. Being in a position to take advantage of opportunities only comes to those people who have access to their money. Nelson taught me the importance of being in control of the financing function in your life.
Think about conventional wisdom. It tells us to max out our 401k’s and put extra on our mortgage. But by doing those things, it only makes you look financially free on paper. You don’t actually have access to that capital. When opportunities or emergencies arise, our clients come to us, they look good on paper, they’re making great income, but they’re financially stuck because they don’t have access to capital when they need it most.
It’s in the combination of maximizing the efficiency of your money and maintaining the liquidity use, and control of your money so you have control of your cashflow. You have access when you really need it. Then financial freedom can emerge. It’s become our mission to help our clients become financially independent by using these concepts so that they could release the financial stress and pressure and maintain or attain financial engines.
