Published on 11/4/2021

The Truth About Financial Professionals

First let us define our terms…

• Financial Advisor – A catch all term that can refer to any of the following…
  • A person who gives financial advice in exchange for compensation
  • A person who provides estate planning services, tax planning services or investment management (This post will typically refer to the investment management definition)
• Financial Broker – A Full-Service Broker is authorized to trade assets in the market on the behalf of others. Think hedge fund managers, investing software’s and the apps on your smart phone like Robinhood and Webull.
• Wealth Manager – A high end service for those people who have a lot more money than the average bear and need help managing it so things do not get “lost.” (Not an official definition but the one I personally find to be the most accurate.)
• Financial Coach – This is typically a person who helps people find their financial freedom and get out of debt. These coaches are rarely someone who is also helping their clients invest in stocks or other tradeable assets. The financial coach term usually equates to a financial mentor of sorts.

It is interesting to see the reaction people give when they hear the term financial advisor or financial broker. Some people swear by them, some people hate them, some people have a mild hesitancy and slight distrust of them, and others have no opinion whatsoever. The interesting thing here is why do different people have such wildly different reactions when they hear these terms? Well, the answer is very nuanced, but it can be boiled down to the fact that there are some excellent advisors and brokers out there and there are some who are just terrible. This fact paired with the reality that every person’s financial situation is completely unique to them make it near impossible to put the right broker or advisor with the right client.

What is the point of this post? The point is most financial brokers, advisors and wealth managers do not provide services that most people need. The services provided are great for people who have a lot of excess wealth, but most people are just barely getting by or have modest savings. Most of the time these financial professionals just want your business so they can package some life insurance policy in with the services you buy from them, and they make passive income off it while just putting your money in some safe and slow growing assets that they never have to look at again. Nothing incredibly wrong with this, but we at C3 believe there is a better way.

For many people, the only thing that is needed for investing is quality information!! Think about this for a second, there are a bunch of apps and programs out there that offer commission free trading and a bunch of other perks. If you are just investing a few thousand or even a few hundred thousand you do not need to pay someone to do that for you. Investing in today’s world is simple, easy, and very straightforward. And nowadays you can buy life insurance anywhere and everywhere for cheap!

It takes mere minutes if not seconds to just download Robinhood or one the apps like it and connect it to your bank account and start transferring money and buying up various assets. The real question is what do you buy? This is that quality information I am talking about that most financial professionals keep secret. Now there are a few people who give away this information but none of them are mindful of Christian Values and a lot of them charge ridiculous amounts of money for the information. This is where C3 comes in. We wanted to give away the information for a price that everyone could afford and have it TRULY centered on Christian values. One day we hope to make it free, but this is still just a dream that is going to take a lot of work to make into a reality…or maybe just one really generous investor (We can hope right?).

The bottom line here is not, all financial professionals are bad or anything like that. C3 just wants to let the public know that they can make investments and financial decisions that are wise and morally acceptable if they just have high quality information at their disposal. The good news here is that the information is more attainable than you think. Just check out the rest of the C3 website. You will find, mock Portfolios, stock picks, educational materials, and a bunch of other great resources.

One caveat here is that C3 does encourage everyone to get a financial mentor of sorts. There are professional financial coaches out there that are great at just departing wisdom and helping people avoid debt, get out of debt, make sound decisions and/or save for future goals. However, this does not mean that you must start paying someone to invest for you because you think it is too complicated. Trust us when we say it is not complicated and if you ever have any questions or concerns feel free to reach out to us here at C3. We are not licensed financial advisors, but we are well versed at putting you in touch with people who can help you with your unique financial situation.