Archive for Accounting Advisors
November 19, 2008 at 3:57 am · Filed under Accounting Advisors
For those who seek professional investment management, the most important decision they will make is the individual or organization with whom they choose to work. A quality Fee-Only Financial Advisor must realize the significant degree of discretion, trust and confidence that is involved in the advisor/client relationship. They must make it a priority to continually earn your confidence and respect.
No Commissions
Reputable Fee-Only advisors align their goals with yours. Rather than charge commissions on individual transactions and charge separate fees for other services, a fee-based managed account lets you know up front what your fee will be. The fee is based on the value of the assets in your portfolio.
Wise Fee-Only managers specialize in building portfolios with low-cost, no-load mutual funds and Exchange Traded Funds. You thus have access to a broadly diversified portfolio tailored to your personal risk tolerance, goals and investment horizon, and it is professionally managed on an ongoing basis at a very low cost.
Fee-Only investment firms should be a Registered Investment Advisory firm that has built its business by offering prudent advice and good service, and by relying on our clients to refer their friends and family (with most firms referrals are rewarded).
Investing Requires A Steady Approach - Take The Emotion Out Of Your Portfolio
If there is one thing that the last few years have shown, it is that markets are unpredictable, and guiding your portfolio through turbulent times requires experience, patience and vigilant management. Fee-Only financial management must be committed to helping you meet your investment goals through sound advice and diligent oversight of your investment portfolio, customized to meet your individual goals and structured around your risk tolerance. Because investing involves a number of risks that are often impossible to predict, Fee-Only financial advisors moderate these risks by diversifying each portfolio across multiple asset classes to improve its risk-reward characteristics. Using a combination of in-house and independent third-party analysis, Fee-Only advisors will build a dynamic investment strategy and then select mutual funds that meet stringent criteria and that are aligned with your goals and needs. Ongoing due diligence of both the broad markets and your individual holdings will help ensure that your investment strategy stays on track.
With A Fiduciary, Your Interests Come First - Responsibility In Serving You Is Clear
Fee-Only financial advisors embrace their role as a fiduciary, a responsibility that means they must always act with your best interest in mind. As a fiduciary, they are different from traditional personal financial advisors who are brokers. It’s a distinction that benefits you.
* Unlike a broker, Fee-Only advisors are not typically licensed to sell you securities and are not salespeople.
* They are a Registered Investment Advisor and only sell you their advice.
* You need not worry about hidden fees or a hidden agenda because typically, as an RIA, they are required by law to fully disclose any conflicts of interests they might have in serving you.
* These financial advisors earn their fee not by charging you commissions on securities trades like stockbrokers, but by levying a fee for ongoing money management.
* You avoid the conflict of interest that arises when a broker receives better commissions by selling you one product instead of another or makes money by making more trades in your account.
* Fee-only financial advisory firms do not accept fees from third-party product providers.
The Freedom Of Choice - Independence Is Its Own Reward
It has been my experience that independent advisory firms are not pressured by a parent company to direct you into their proprietary products. Fee-Only independent firms have the freedom to choose the financial products that are best for you from the wide universe of products that the financial services industry has to offer. Unlike traditional stockbrokers, they are not employed by a Wall Street firm. They are an independent advisory, with a business model that allows them to find solutions suitable for you.
Independence Matters - They Work For You
You need an advisor you can trust. Check to see if your Fee-Only Financial Advisor is registered with the local state Department of Corporations as a Registered Investment Advisor. Choosing to practice as an RIA demonstrates that they want to provide you investment advice as a fiduciary, which by law requires them to always put your best interests first when advising you on investments. Not all advisors are RIAs, but some have taken this extra step so that you can rest assured that their advice is objective and based exclusively on your personal goals. There are no hidden fees, and your fees are their only source of income. Period. Thus, their singular motivation is your success.
A quality Fee-Only financial advisor likes to stick with a rational investment plan that reflects the individuals time horizon, their goals, and their appetite for risk. We feel these are the keys to long-term success.
Article Source:
http://www.bestmanagementarticles.com
http://investment-management.bestmanagementarticles.com
About the Author:
brad Vollstedt is a Fee Only Financial Advisor at La Jolla Investment Finance, a suburb of San Diego. He serves clients nationwide as a licensed San Diego Investment Manager.
November 17, 2008 at 5:54 am · Filed under Accounting Advisors
What distinguishes highly successful people is their ability to capitalize on the right opportunity when it presents itself. Being an established Financial Adviser, you can run your business, determine your compensation, and redefine your future.
We take a personal approach to business that starts with a face-to-face meeting between a Financial Adviser and an individual investor. As we continue to grow, we are looking for individuals who are self-motivated, sales-oriented and enjoy working independently.
Are you ready to receive one of the most competitive compensation package in the industry?
http://www.telecommutejoblist.com/entrepreneurial-established-financial-advisors
November 14, 2008 at 1:28 am · Filed under Accounting Advisors
It’s hard to believe Barack Obama would even think of calling this change.
Take a good look at some of the 17 people our nation’s president-elect chose last week for his Transition Economic Advisory Board. And then try saying with a straight face that these are the leaders who should be advising him on how to navigate through the worst financial crisis in modern history.
First, there’s former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Not only was he chairman of Citigroup Inc.’s executive committee when the bank pushed bogus analyst research, helped Enron Corp. cook its books, and got caught baking its own. He was a director from 2000 to 2006 at Ford Motor Co., which also committed accounting fouls and now is begging Uncle Sam for Citigroup- style bailout cash.
Two other Citigroup directors received spots on the Obama board: Xerox Corp. Chief Executive Officer Anne Mulcahy and Time Warner Inc. Chairman Richard Parsons. Xerox and Time Warner got pinched years ago by the Securities and Exchange Commission for accounting frauds that occurred while Mulcahy and Parsons held lesser executive posts at their respective companies.
Mulcahy and Parsons also once were directors at Fannie Mae when that company was breaking accounting rules. So was another member of Obama’s new economic board, former Commerce Secretary William Daley. He’s now a member of the executive committee at JPMorgan Chase & Co., which, like Citigroup, is among the nine large banks that just got $125 billion of Treasury’s bailout budget.
There’s More
Obama’s economic crew might as well be called the Bailout Bunch. Another slot went to former White House economic adviser Laura Tyson. She’s been a director for about a decade at Morgan Stanley, which in 2004 got slapped for accounting violations by the SEC and a month ago got $10 billion from Treasury.
That’s not all. There’s Penny Pritzker, the Obama campaign’s national finance chairwoman. She was on the board of the holding company for subprime lender Superior Bank FSB. The Chicago-area thrift, in which her family held a 50 percent stake, was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 2001. The thrift’s owners agreed to pay the government $460 million over 15 years to help cover the FDIC’s losses.
Even some of the brighter lights on Obama’s board, like Warren Buffett and former SEC Chairman William Donaldson, come with asterisks. Buffett was on the audit committee of Coca-Cola Co.’s board when the SEC found the soft-drink maker had misled investors about its earnings. Donaldson was on the audit committee from 1998 to 2001 at a provider of free e-mail services called Mail.com Inc. Just before he left the SEC, in 2005, the agency disciplined the company over accounting violations that had occurred on his watch.
Telling Stories
So, by my tally, almost half the people on Obama’s economic advisory board have held fiduciary positions at companies that, to one degree or another, either fried their financial statements, helped send the world into an economic tailspin, or both. Do you think any of that came up in the vetting?
Let’s say we give Buffett a pass — smart move he made, skipping the group photo-op last week in Chicago. What about the rest of them? Donaldson, for one, was chairman when the SEC voted in 2004 to let the big Wall Street banks, including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos., lever up their balance sheets like drunks. Talk about blowing it.
And whom did Obama tap for White House chief of staff? Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois congressman who was a director at Freddie Mac in 2000 and 2001 while it was committing accounting fraud.
Ideally, this job would go to someone who can’t be easily fooled. Think about it: Of all the people Obama could have chosen as his chief of staff, couldn’t he have found someone who wasn’t once on the board of Freddie Mac?
Renewed Confidence
The president-elect needs some new advisers — fast. We are in a crisis of confidence in American capitalism. These aren’t the right people to re-instill its sense of honor.
Many of them should be getting subpoenas as material witnesses right about now, not places in Obama’s inner circle. Did Obama learn nothing from the ill-fated choice of James Johnson, the former Fannie Mae boss, to lead his vice- presidential search committee?
Does he think people like Robert Rubin or Richard Parsons will offer any helpful advice on how to stop crooked bankers or sleep-walking directors from sinking our economy? Or that they won’t mistake the nation’s needs for their own corporate interests? Or that the people who helped get us into our long financial nightmare have any clue how to get us out?
Obama has created hope that our nation can stand for all that is good in the world again. It’s not too late to change course.
Start by scrapping this board.
(Jonathan Weil is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Jonathan Weil in New York at jweil6@bloomberg.net
http://kayakman.livejournal.com/116766.html
November 13, 2008 at 12:19 am · Filed under Accounting Advisors
After setting aside a dream of becoming a high school math teacher (can you see my “nerd” propeller spinning?), what really attracted me to accounting as a profession was security. As a teenager, I had already been indoctrinated that the parental pocketbook was closing as soon as I walked out the door to head to college, and accounting seemed like a good way to support myself. Mine was about the last generation raised on the Alex P. Keaton vision of business careers (hopefully with a little more compassion,) prior to the information technology boom of the later 80’s.
The word on the street about accounting in the early 80’s was that it was a “recession-proof” career. As an engineer working in the defense industry, my father had faced the closing of the aerospace division of his employer, but somehow the accounting profession seemed more resistant to business change. Current summaries of the best careers for uncertain times continue to include accounting and finance among the most secure.
As we face current financial market meltdowns, do we expect any slowdown in the demand for accounting professionals? A CFO.com article from early 2008 dissects anticipated demand for various corporate financial careers, and its conclusions appear relevant today.
It’s certainly a reality that many businesses are looking to cut costs in the current market, and are investigating options such as outsourcing or eliminating redundancy through shared services. Corporate employers have also streamlined their SOX processes, reducing the growth that had previously been seen in this area.
Some Ohio Society members in public accounting have commented on growth in assurance services, as lenders increase their levels of scrutiny, but may be seeing some strain in specialty services if clients are facing changing priorities with tighter budgets.
As the profession prepares itself to break through the recession ahead the pack, what are some growth opportunities in the current environment?
· International Business – those who are best prepared to assist a client or employer with competing in an increasingly global business environment and dealing with the challenge of IFRS will lead the pack.
· Tax policy – we are certain to see regulatory change with a change in the White House, and CPAs will be the lead advisors to business in a period of change.
· Risk management – as businesses seek to streamline operations, this specialty increases in value.
Continuing to investing in expanding skills, including in personnel management and communications, and adding to the creative value a CPA provides to one’s client or employer as a trusted advisor, will assist in providing security in the accountant’s current role.
http://oscpa.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/is-accounting-a-recession-resistant-career/
