Can’t we all get along? I’m laughing after reading this article about our firm in this month’s Financial Advisor Magazine, see below. It is written by a well known expert on technology and advice tools that help advisors.

I’m proud about his nice comments about our technology and how Social Security is important for advisors. He is very complimentary about our application and talks about many of the powerful features. However, at the end of the story he talks about how advisors may not want to use our software because we also help consumers directly. Hmmm?

Well, I have some experience in this topic first working at Charles Schwab that has a direct-to-consumer business and the leading platform independent advisors use (tools and services to support advisors). Also, this topic has come up in a number of larger firms I have provided consulting services to. Anyway, most advisors worry about the wrong thing. The personalized and expert service good advisors provide is always better than an online tool!!!!!

Some consumers may want to go online and play around…learn. Some people will want to “validate” ideas before they make a decision. Others, will just hire an advisor and let them take care of all their affairs. My experience is most consumers who use online tools are not the typical “delegating” type where they just hand everything over to an advisors. So, I say, “can’t we all just get along.” Our services to consumers are designed differently for individuals. And, our application to advisors is designed for advisors to help their clients.

I can tell you our mission is simple….help as many people as we can get more benefits from Social Security. I don’t care if it is through our company or through an advisor that uses our tools. Actually, I’m even good if a consumer or advisor just reads our research or learns techniques from us where we make no money. At the end of the day, this is about making smart informed decisions. It might be a better move for us to focus on only servicing financial advisors…we definitely would make more money. But, we will never do this! Again, we simply want to get the word out on how important Social Security is and help as many people as we can make a better decision.

http://www.fa-mag.com/component/content/article/10775.html?magazineID=1&issue=190&Itemid=73