One of our Financial Zen Members sent me this article last year as a blog idea (Thanks Bea!)
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/18/reddit-founder-alexis-ohanian-on-his-biggest-mone
Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian on his biggest money mistake: Hiring a financial advisor
It’s a quick interview with the Founder of Reddit who said his biggest financial mistake was hiring a financial advisor.
I have a feeling she thought I should lay out a counterargument, but in all honesty I think he’s 100% correct.
Hiring a financial advisor is a TERRIBLE IDEA.
***record needle screech***
Wait, what?!
Things you can’t outsource
Yup, terrible idea.
Within the interview he talks about how he used hiring a financial advisor as a crutch.
Instead of learning a baseline of knowledge first and THEN hiring someone to execute a higher level strategy, he hired someone as a substitute for learning anything himself.
Speaking from experience, that never works out.
My parallel experience with marketing
I’ve hired a lot of marketing consultants over the years. Like A LOT.
All I wanted was someone to teach me what I needed to know and then execute.
But that was all money down the drain. Sure, I learned a few things, but I didn’t form any type of foundation.
Contrast that with 2021, where I rolled up my sleeves and taught myself what I needed to know.
That knowledge came with the help of others, no doubt, but I took responsibility to learn the foundation.
Now I know what I need and can think critically about my marketing. I’m not an expert, but I also know enough to weigh the value of actual marketing experts.
Don’t hand over your shoebox
So full circle – if your intention in hiring a financial planner is to handover your “shoebox” for them to sort through and piece together, then you should NOT hire anyone yet.
You need to sort your own shoebox and THEN hire someone to keep it clean and take you to the next level.
That’s why we strongly emphasize education in our Foundations Program. We’ll do the heavy lifting on the technical stuff, but the largest benefit of the program is learning and forming your foundation of knowledge.
Why you should NOT hire a financial planner
So do NOT hire a financial advisor if you don’t WANT to know which end is up.
If you don’t know, but WANT to know, then that’s another story.
