Keith Weber

A few years ago, a trio of analysts created a stir when they published two memos suggesting that the American economy had become a “plutonomy” – one that is highly and disproportionately controlled by the extremely wealthy. Keith Webber says that, when looking ahead to the millions of baby boomers who will be retiring in the next 15 years, it’s not hard to envision the idea of retirement turning into a “plutirement,” with two very different retirement realities facing your clients.

The Jones’s are alive and well, and keeping up with them just got more expensive.

When the concept of retirement was first mainstreamed in America in the 1930’s, it was largely viewed as having “one foot already in the grave.” For many baby boomers today, it might well mean the same thing.

A recent paper by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College suggests that in terms of actually being able to maintain one’s lifestyle in retirement, compared to other factors, the focus on asset allocation is largely misplaced.

It is often said that when men plan, the gods laugh. Nowhere is this perhaps more true than when it comes to planning for retirement. While we all acknowledge the risk that finances can play on our retirement plans, the reality is that threats to our retirement plans can come from all areas of our lives.

The tragic apparent suicide of former NFL superstar Junior Seau serves as a reminder to advisors that many of their clients will need more than just investment advice and guidance after they’ve retired.

As an advisor, your ability to engage in clients’ goal-setting conversations may well prove the difference between them staying with you or going elsewhere.

Understand the three levels of happiness and be ready to connect them with their financial-planning equivalents.

Author and consultant Keith Weber says financial advisors need to cater their messages and their services to different generations of clients who have divergent agendas but share many of the same retirement planning concerns.

Author and consultant Keith Weber doesn’t normally attend protests, but when the “Occupy Wall Street” movement showed up in Denver, he decided to go take a look. What he found was a group of diverse individuals who share a common set of values that are highly reminiscent of those expressed by the Socially Responsible Investing industry.

One of the hot topics in the field of behavioral finance is the use of heuristics -- simple rules of thumb or mental shortcuts often used to make decisions or draw inferences quickly and with minimal effort. While in everyday life these mental shortcuts help us to function quickly and efficiently, author and consultant Keith Weber says that when they’re applied to our personal finances they can often lead to poor investment decisions.

Last month the Insured Retirement Institute released yet another in the long line of reports indicating the majority of baby boomers are nowhere near ready for retirement. Since we can’t slow down the clock to give them more time to prepare their financial capital, consultant and author Keith Weber says maybe it’s time we start helping them prepare their human capital.

Retirement planning used to be easy. Ten years ago it was a simple mathematical calculation that you could apply across the board to just about everyone. But today, with so many different visions, versions and variables impacting each client, retirement planning has become both a financial planning puzzle and an emotional minefield.

For the past 25 years, a quiet but remarkable study has been going on at the School Sisters of Notre Dame convent in Mankato, Minn. What we’re learning might not only be the keys to happiness and long life, but have some interesting financial planning implications as well.

A recent report from HSBC shows that people across the West -- including the U.S. -- are generally pessimistic about their retirement prospects while those in the East are relatively optimistic. And yet, by every objective measure, citizens in Western developed countries control significantly more assets per capita than their counterparts in Eastern emerging economies. This inconsistency begs the question: Are we ever satisfied?

There's no doubt the baby boom retirement wave has created a tremendous opportunity for financial advisors. But those with less noble goals also see an opportunity, and they're putting financial advisors squarely in the crosshairs.

Like they’ve done with every stage of their lives, the Baby Boomers are changing what it means to be retired. But unlike other stages where leading edge boomers set the path that middle and second-half boomers followed, retirement is likely to be transformed throughout the boomer generation in such a way that second-half boomers and the generations that follow will experience a very different retirement than their leading edge siblings.

$7.5 Million. According to a recent survey by Fidelity Investments that’s the number it would take to make the average American millionaire feel wealthy. Considering less than 2% of the population has even $1 million in assets, how can we help our clients feel secure when they fall short of their own expectations? The answer may be in helping them first achieve financial maturity.

As trusted and respected advisors, clients often look to us for guidance. Successfully handling those situations where there is no financial solution requires us to recognize two things: First, our role changes, and second, a different skill set is required to preserve and strengthen the client relationship.

We’ve all got that crazy uncle. Within the financial planning community, its Thomas Leonard.