Page Text: Consumers
Vendors Who Serve Financial Advisors
Welcome to Kitces.com, home of the Nerd’s Eye View blog, and much more, too! This page will help you understand why we give away so much valuable content for free, how to get the most out of it, and the additional resources we offer if you need more help. Make sure to read to the bottom of the page so you don’t miss anything!
But first, let me introduce myself…
Hi! I'm Michael, and I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to financial planning.
Just to be clear, I don't mean I'm nerdy in the "socially awkward" way... though I suppose I am sometimes! I mean I'm just a little obsessed when it comes to learning everything I can possibly learn about financial planning, from strategies to improve your financial situation in all stages of life, to ideas on how to better run a business providing financial advice.
And as a lifelong learner of all things financial planning, I know how hard it is to find good information. The internet is an amazing place… but it can take a lot of looking to find a credible, authoritative, trustworthy source you can really trust to give you the right answer.
In fact, for the first decade of my career (I started in 2000), I would spend incredible (or even "absurd") amounts of time searching online to find good financial planning answers to complex client situations. It took a lot to piece together facts, information, and research from a wide variety of different sources, filtering out the noise to get to the best ideas.
Yet after years and years of searching for and filtering through information to find the best solutions for my clients, I had a Eureka moment. A revelation. A life-changing realization.
This is my Why.
I have a special gift in my ability to gather scattered information and bring it all together in an organized, well researched, and actionable way.
“My Why is to continuously learn, and then share the ideas I’ve learned for anyone to implement!”
Accordingly, in 2008, I launched Kitces.com. As a way to share this continuous learning journey that I'm on, and provide anyone and everyone who can find their way here that source for intellectually honest, knowledgeable, thoughtful information that I was always looking for. As a way to share my "Nerd's Eye View" on all things financial planning.
From Financial Advisors To Financial Advicers
When I started my career as a Financial Advisor more than 20 years ago, I couldn't believe the company that hired me would let me put "Financial Advisor" on my business card. Because the reality was that I didn't actually know anything about giving financial advice. Or economics. Or money. I was a psychology major, theater minor, pre-med student, who had only figured out by my college graduation that I didn't want to go into psychology, theater, or medicine!
In truth, though, I wasn't really starting out as a Financial Advisor. It said "Financial Advisor" on my business card, but the truth was that I was a life insurance agent. My job was to sell the insurance company's (variable universal) life insurance policies to anyone and everyone I met.
It was only as I reinvested into myself and my education and "upped my game" as a financial advisor by earning my CFP marks (and ultimately a veritable alphabet soup of additional degrees and designations) that I finally reached the point where I knew I could deliver valuable financial advice and be paid for it.
In other words, by "nerding out" on financial planning, I made the transition from selling products to selling advice. I had transformed myself from a Financial Advisor to a Financial Advicer.
Notably, a Financial Advicer is not a legal or regulatory title . It’s a way of being, an approach to the business of financial advice that recognizes the impact we have in the lives of our clients, and the sacred duty that we have to serve our clients to the best of our abilities.
And it's Financial Advicers that we serve here on the Nerd's Eye View blog. Those who want to improve not their ability to sell products, but their ability to deliver quality advice. To transform themselves from Financial Advisors to Financial Advicers, and to elevate the quality of their advice and their career or business success when delivering it.
The Mission of Kitces.com is to make Financial Advicers better, and more successful!
Accordingly, as the Nerd’s Eye View blog has grown over the years, there are now a lot of resources available on this site to help make Financial Advicers better and more successful (and more are being added all the time!). The sections below are intended to help you understand everything we have to offer, so you can figure out what might be of interest to you!
Step One: Get Content You Can Trust The Moment It Is Released...