What to Expect in Your First Investment Management Meeting

Whether you’ve already scheduled your first conversation with us, are a current financial planning client interested in exploring investing, or you’re still considering setting aside some time to talk with someone from our team about your investment goals (and how we might be of service), I’m glad you’re here.

Today, I want to talk with you about what you can expect from an initial conversation with us about investment management with Sound Financial. In particular, we’re going to discuss what questions you can expect from us, our emphasis on empowering you with education, your specific investment goals and how those may shape your portfolio, and more.

🔎 Related: How Does Sound Financial Make Client Investing Decisions?

Of course, the specifics of your conversation will be dependent on the unique nature of your current circumstances. But, at the very least, my hope is that this article will help you feel more prepared and excited about speaking with us regarding investment management — we’re certainly excited.

Now, let’s dig into what you can expect in our conversation together.

Investing Questions + Conversation Topics

Just like you are coming to this conversation with your own goals, so are we. Our job is to serve you, and we believe that the real definition of investment risk is the chances of failure — and when we say “failure” we mean you not reaching your financial goals. 

🔎 Related: What Are the 4 Different Types of Investment Funds?

In fact, money's just a tool. And so we want to use it wisely. We want to use it properly. Investments fall in that category. With that in mind, here are the questions and topics we will want to cover with you.

What Do You Want to Accomplish?

What are your goals with investing? What does success look like to you? This is where we begin all of our conversations, so I really want you to think about that because your goals are important to us. 

Portfolio Questions

Second, we want to build a portfolio that fits you. This is fairly straightforward, as the right portfolio for me may not be the right portfolio for you. So, I may ask a lot of questions surrounding that, depending on the scope of our conversation.

Empowering You with Education

We want to educate you; this is very much a part of our “DNA,” so to speak, at Sound Financial. The more educated you are as one of our clients, the more confident and comfortable you are in the decisions you make to achieve your financial and investing goals. So, I want you to understand what you are investing in and why you are investing in it, and we will take the time to review that together.

🔎 Related: Financial Planning Process Guide for Investors and Families 

Your Level of Risk Tolerance

We talk about assessing one’s own risk tolerance quite a bit with our clients, because it will help us shape an investment strategy that makes the most sense for you. This is not an ego question in any way. Instead, we’re having a measured discussion around how much risk you’re willing to take? And how much risk makes the most sense for you, given the season of life you’re in?

What Investments You Like

Your investment strategy will be as unique as a fingerprint, based not only on your goals and risk tolerance, but also your individual perspectives on investing overall. Do you like a lot of trading? Do you really want a lot of risk mitigation strategies? Do we need to talk about tax loss harvesting and tax efficient strategies? Do we need to talk about really long term high quality, high value buy and hold type of strategies? 

🔎 Related: How Much Does Investment Management Cost?

Do you like to invest based on your values? Do you want biblically responsible investing or ESG investing or some combination of the two? Do you have a core belief system that you would like your investments to follow?

Our Investment Framework

We’ll talk through these rules in more detail with you, but at a high level, here are the rules that govern the investment decisions we make for our clients:

• Avoid large losses
• Invest in winners
• Manage your emotions
• Test everything
• Fit the risk

Again, we’ll talk through our investment framework with you in more detail, but this is a sneak preview of what you can expect from this aspect of our conversation. We’ll also discuss how we look at the markets and the U.S. economy. 

Is There Anything You Should Prepare in Advance?

Keep in mind, we'll only go as far in a meeting as you want to go. However, in a meeting like this, account statements of current investment accounts, account statements of funds that you're wanting to roll over, you wanting to transfer, you wanting us to plan around — or at least having a working knowledge of these dollar figures — those are very valuable in a meeting such as this. We want to deal with hard facts and data and figures. 

🔎 Related: What Are the 4 Risks of Investing? (+ Examples)

However, if there is one thing I’d encourage you to keep in mind as we enter this conversation together, let it be this. Money is just a tool. An investment portfolio is just a tool as well. It should be built to help you reach your goals. Investing involves risk, and so what are you risking? What do you see as your big goal or goals? Together, we’ll build a good plan to get you there.