Written by: Corey Janoff
This post was originally published on our previous blog website on February 28, 2018 and has since not been revised and/or updated.
With every profession, there are often misconceptions about what a particular professional actually does. Not only the job duties, but how a typical day goes. People often forget that every working professional is also a human being with interests and hobbies outside of work. I remember when I was in high school I ran into my dentist at a P.F. Chang’s. I was surprised to see my dentist, of all people, out and about. I guess it never occurred to me that he existed in the world outside of his dental office.
When I interview college recruits that are looking to potentially work as financial advisors for our company, a common question they will ask me is, “What does your typical day look like?” I imagine that is what all college students are told to ask in interviews for any job.
Well, as professionals in any field can probably attest, no one day is the same as the next. Some days I have eight consecutive hour-long meetings with clients back-to-back-to-back and will be at the office until ten o’clock at night. Other days I have no client meetings and can dip out early in the afternoon. Some weeks I am traveling to give educational financial planning lectures across the country.
When I first started in this career, I was working 60-70 hours a week, trying to build up my client base. As time has gone on, I have been able to slowly consolidate my schedule to a more normal 40-50 hours/week if you include the time spent at home responding to emails, writing this blog, etc.
If I were to have a typical day, it would look something like this:
5:00 AM
Alarm goes off. I immediately turn it off and jump out of bed. Maybe back in my 20’s it was a jump out of bed. Now it’s more a roll and slide out of bed. Regardless, if I don’t get up right away, I will fall back asleep.
I go to the bathroom, wash my hands, grab a drink of water, throw on a sweatshirt and some sweatpants and head downstairs.
5:05 AM
Turn on some lights downstairs so I don’t trip over the toys on the ground (we have a 1.5 year old).
I turn on the TV to ESPN2 to catch my morning news discussion with Golic and Wingo (formerly Mike & Mike).
I then grab the blender out of the cupboard and start making a smoothie. Orange juice, almond milk, spinach, carrots, banana, frozen fruit & berries. I have to blend it in stages to it doesn’t all get stuck.
I don’t drink coffee. I’m not an Olympic athlete from Russia – no performance enhancing drugs needed here.
5:20 AM
Drink smoothie while emptying the dishwasher. It takes a little while to drink without getting a brain freeze. Wash the blender. Feed the dog. Fill the dog’s water dish. Clean the dog food bowl once she’s done eating.
Check some emails on my phone. Delete spam/unimportant ones. Respond to what I can from my phone. Flag important ones to respond to when I get into the office.
6:00 AM
Grab some socks and a beanie if it’s cold outside. Put on a jacket and shoes. Grab the dog’s leash. Turn off the alarm. Head outside for a short walk with the dog.
6:20 AM
Wipe the dog’s paws off and send her inside. Put my laptop and gym bag in the car. Change into my gym shoes and head to the gym on the way to work. I turn on Dan Patrick Show on the car radio.
6:45 AM
Arrive at the gym. Throw stuff in locker. Work out. It’s tough to get excited about exercising in the morning. I’m not training for a marathon. I don’t play sports competitively anymore. Really, the only reason I work out is so I can keep consuming pizza, burgers, beer, etc. without ballooning to 400 pounds and dying an early death. #Motivation.
Shower. Dry off. Change into my work clothes. Hopefully I remembered to pack underwear and socks today. Thankfully I did.
7:50 AM
Back in the car to head to work. Dan Patrick is back on. Best sports talk radio show out there. I hope he keeps working forever. On commercial breaks I flip over to Dan Le Batard. His show is an acquired taste but quite humorous and he doesn’t take anything too seriously.
8:15 AM
Park the car in the parking garage. Walk up the stairs to our office. Plug in the laptop. Turn on the TV to Dan Patrick show on NBCSN. Yep, it’s a televised radio show, as are most nowadays. I can’t work in silence, so something has to be on in the background. I like sports. Politics and world news are too depressing – they only highlight the bad stuff. And financial news isn’t any better.
You are probably thinking, “Why the heck isn’t a financial planner staying up to date on the daily financial headlines?”
First off, I have interests outside of my job. Like I said at the beginning, I’m a human like the rest of you. If you are a lawyer and all you do outside of work is read case studies and watch Judge Judy, you will go insane.
Second, I’m not completely ignorant. I get news alerts on my phone. The Wall Street Journal is my home page when I open my internet browser and I will read through articles that seem relevant when I turn on my computer. I get plenty of emails from financial companies with current events and trends highlighted. We get a weekly financial markets briefing via email from our investment team. And, if something is really important, our investment team will notify me (and all of the other advisors at Finity Group). I just prefer other topics to be on my radio and television.
I digress.
8:17 AM
I open my email – 22 new emails! Ugh. I dig through those. Respond to questions from clients. Reply to questions from our staff and other advisors. Delete spam and unimportant messages.
9:00 AM
Dan Patrick Show is over. I switch to FS1 to have Colin Cowherd on in the background. Yes, I like his show. Judge me if you wish.
Review my calendar and start preparing for client meeting for the day. Review notes from past meetings with the client. Review their net worth statement – double check it’s up to date. Review any investment accounts we are overseeing directly. See if any changes were recommended by our investment team. Put together a meeting agenda with important topics to bring up.
9:50 AM
Man, I’m hungry. That fruit and vegetable smoothie isn’t enough to hold me over to lunch. I head to the kitchen and make a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. Nobody is too old for a good PB&J sandwich. Did you know the average person will eat 3,000 PB&J sandwiches in their lifetime and the average adult consumes three per month?
10:00 AM
Meet with my assistant do go through projects we are working on. Get updates on where everything is at. Add new to-do items to the list. Cross off things that have been completed.
10:35 AM
A dozen new emails! It’s never ending. It’s like a game of Whack-a-Mole. You delete one email and another pops up.
One in particular is from a client asking how much they can contribute to their SIMPLE IRA this year.
I can’t remember off the top of my head. Is it $12,000? $12,500? Did the IRS increase it? I Google it to confirm. Google (via the IRS website) confirms it is $12,500 in 2018. If you are over 50 years old, you can add an extra $3,000. I reply to the client.
11:00 AM
Prep with one of our newer associates for a meeting with a joint client we are doing together today. He updates me. We make sure everything is updated and we are on the same page.
11:30 AM
Check in with a handful of clients via email. I try to touch base with everybody at least every two to three months in between meetings.
11:58 AM
Sprint to the bathroom before my next meeting. Wash my hands. Fill up my water bottle. Turn the TV off. Enough sports talk for the day.
12:02 PM
A couple of minutes late for meeting number one for the day. The client isn’t in the meeting room yet, so I give her a call.
We work with clients all over the country so pretty much all of our meetings are done online. Even many of our local clients prefer to meet online, rather than driving into our office.
This might be unique compared to other financial planners. Some will drive to meet all of their clients throughout the day. If the client doesn’t come to them, they will come to you. Seems a little inefficient spending that much time in the car, but to each his own. Other advisors only work with local clients and have all meetings in person at their office. We embrace the technology for clients who don’t have time to make it into our office and a clientele that potentially relocates from one state to the next as job opportunities change.
12:50 PM
Wrap up the meeting. Draft a summary email of the meeting with action items and send it to the client. Update my client tracker so I know when to schedule the client for the next meeting. Set a reminder for a week from now to follow up with the client on any homework assignments that remain outstanding.
We discussed opening an investment account to start investing for retirement beyond the company 401k. I email my assistant to prep the necessary account opening forms.
1:07 PM
I get a call from a client. They are (finally) getting their estate plan completed and need to update the beneficiaries on their retirement accounts and life insurance policies. I ask them to confirm with the estate planning attorney exactly how the beneficiaries should be titled and we can send them the necessary forms to sign to make those changes.
They also have a question on how to log into their accounts online, because they need to download their tax statements for their accountant. It seems like a lot of people only log into their accounts once per year (in February and March) when they are doing taxes and forget their username and password and lock themselves out.
1:15 PM
More emails! A client started a new job and sent me his new benefits information and retirement plan investment options to review. Depending on the number of funds available and the amount of time I have I will either run them through our screeners put together a recommended portfolio allocation myself, or send it over to our investment team to take a look at.
1:40 PM
I’m hungry again. I open the mini-fridge in my office and am delighted to find some leftovers from yesterday. I heat those in our 1-watt microwave and scarf them down.
1:50 PM
Quickly review notes for my next meeting. Respond to another couple of emails that came through while I was eating leftover Thai fried rice.
2:00 PM
Enter client meeting number two for the day. We review their goals and how to achieve them. They are expecting another child in six months, so we factor in anticipated childcare costs and review college savings projections to see how much more they will likely need to be investing for college. We compare the difference in costs of an in-state public university and a private college and try not to cry.
2:52 PM
Wrap up the meeting. Start writing a recap email with action items and save it to finish and send after my next meeting. Update the client tracker. Set a reminder to check in with them a couple of months from now.
2:59 PM
Get a call from the associate who I am doing the next meeting with. Get signed into the meeting room. Associate calls client and patches me in. We go through that meeting together. Get updates from the clients. Answer immediate questions that the client though of since our last meeting. Discuss the difference between Pre-tax and Roth contributions to a retirement plan and the pros and cons of each. Teach the client about diversifying their investments from an allocation, tax, and time horizon standpoint.
3:56 PM
Meeting ends. I go back to writing the summary email from my 2:00 PM meeting.
4:12 PM
I check my inbox. Delete a dozen emails. Flag a handful to respond to later.
4:17 PM
I check my phone and see a friend sent me a link to a funny video. I watch it. I smile and laugh to myself. I reply with the “haha” emoji on the iPhone where you hold your finger down on the message and a menu of emojis pops up.
4:19 PM
I call my wife to let her know I’m headed home and see if she needs me to pick up dinner. She is making dinner.
4:22 PM
I pack up my laptop, throw on my jacket, grab my keys, wallet, and cell phone and head to my car.
4:23 PM
Halfway down the hallway to the stairs I realize I left my laptop bag on the floor of my office, so I walk back to get it.
4:24 PM
In the car. I turn on music. I’ve already heard all of the sports talk topics for the day. Time to rock out to some jams while I fight traffic. I head the back way home to avoid the freeway at this hour.
5:05 PM
I park in the garage. Get out of the car. Open the door to the house. The dog runs to me to say hello. The toddler screams and toddles over to me to say hello. He starts crying as I am taking my jacket off because I didn’t pick him up immediately. I pick him up and say high as the dog is still vying for my attention.
“Welcome home!” my wife says as I bounce the kiddo up and down while he smiles and starts grabbing my ear.
I set him down. He starts fake-crying while I take off my shoes. “Hang on, dude! Let me just get my shoes off!”
I carry him upstairs with me, because if I leave him he’ll scream and follow me anyways, screaming the whole way. I change out of my work clothes and into sweats.
5:15 PM
We get the little guy seated in his high chair and put some dinner on his tray. He eats some. He feeds some to the dog. We put the dog in her crate to try to get the kid to eat more and feed the dog less. He throws some of the food on the floor. This continues for 20-30 minutes.
5:45 PM
We let the dog out of her crate. One of us keeps the kid from knocking over lamps and falling down stairs while the other cleans up the kitchen.
6:00 PM
Dog needs dinner too. Scoop dog food into dog food dish.
6:01 PM
Dog finished eating dinner. We put the bowl in the dishwasher.
We turn on some music as the kiddo likes to dance. His rhythm sucks, but he’s only one and cute enough to impress the ladies. He won’t need any real dance moves for at least another 14 years.
6:15 PM
Bath time! For the kiddo, not me.
6:30 PM
I fight the toddler to get a diaper on. Diaper changing a live one-year-old should be an Olympic sport.
We get him in his pajamas and pick out a couple of books to read. I read him stories while he tries to grab the book from me and crawl off my lap and out of the chair.
6:50 PM
Kiddo is in his crib. I head downstairs to finish cleaning the kitchen.
7:05 PM
I go into the home-office and crack open the laptop. 17 new emails! I respond to the important ones from earlier. Go through the new ones. Check my calendar to see what time I need to be in the office tomorrow. Read an article I saw that looked interesting.
8:00 PM
Plop down onto the couch. I either watch a show with my wife, turn on a game, or read a book.
8:45 PM
Let the dog outside to go to the bathroom before bed.
8:47 PM
Set the house alarm. Start the dishwasher. Turn off the lights downstairs. Head upstairs. Wash the bottles and pacifiers from today. Brush and floss my teeth. Wash my face. Go to the bathroom. Wash my hands. Crawl into bed.
9:15 PM
Lights out.
In Conclusion
As mentioned at the beginning. No one day is the same as the next. I know this post is a little longer than normal, but hopefully this gives you some insight into what a “typical” day looks like for a financial planner. Not just the financial planning part of the day, but the entire day.
If you think this sounds like a fun career, get in touch with me – we’re hiring!
