TRANSCRIPT:
I hear this all the time. Someone will say, “I don’t really need an adviser. I just buy ETFs.” And honestly, I usually agree with the first part of that statement more than they expect. Buying lowcost index funds or ETFs is a smart move. It already puts you ahead of a lot of people who are chasing hot stocks or trying to time the market. But here’s the part that usually gets missed. Picking investments is the easy part. That’s not where most financial mistakes actually happen. The real work is everything that sits around the portfolio. It’s taxes. It’s which account you’re using. It’s when you pull money out. It’s how income shows up on your tax return. It’s what happens when life changes.
Those things matter more than whether you own one ETF or another. I’ve seen people with very simple, lowcost portfolios lose way more money to bad tax decisions than they ever would have paid in fees. They sell something at the wrong time and trigger a big tax bill. They put money in the wrong type of account. They take income in a way that pushes them into a higher tax bracket. They miss opportunities to use Roth accounts more effectively.
One small decision in the wrong year can cost more than a decade of advisory fees. And it’s not because they weren’t smart. It’s because nobody was looking at the whole picture. Life is another big part of this. Markets go up and down. That’s normal. What really moves the needle is when something in your life changes. You get married. You have kids. You sell a business. You inherit money. You change jobs. You start thinking about retiring. Each one of these moments creates new tax rules, new planning gaps, and new risks. An index fund doesn’t know any of that happened. Your portfolio doesn’t automatically adjust when your life changes. And then there’s behavior, which is probably the biggest one of all. I’ve watched really smart people hurt their own results by panicking during bad markets, chasing whatever just did well or never rebalancing when they should. They didn’t lose money because they picked the wrong ETF.
They lost money because they were human. A good plan isn’t there to beat the market. It’s there to keep you from making decisions that quietly undo years of progress. That’s really what my job is. Not to find some magic investment, not to outsmart the market. My job is to make sure your entire financial life is working together. That your investments, your taxes, your income, and your long-term goals are all pulling in the same direction. ETFs are a great tool, but a tool without a plan doesn’t build anything. If you’ve been doing everything yourself and you’re feeling pretty good about your investments, that’s great. The real question is whether everything else around those investments is as dialed in as it could be. If you want to take a look at that together, there’s a link below where you can schedule a conversation with me.
