Oscar Night: Giving Your Finances the Red Carpet Treatment
As the Hollywood stars walk the red carpet on Oscar night this Sunday, we may be reminded by all their glitz and glamour of how different the world of celebrity and fame is from ours.
Our evenings are probably more likely be filled with homework and baseball practice than red carpet couture. Still, there are some similarities between the celebrity world and ours when it comes to managing finances.
Most celebrities have a variety of people, from attorneys to agents, who manage their financial lives. With so many cooks in the kitchen, it can be difficult to know exactly where they stand financially.
Similarly, the average American uses several professionals to manage his or her money. Most of us have our investments with one firm, insurance with another, taxes done by a CPA, a lawyer handling our legal issues and so on.
The difference, however, between us and celebrities is that they have a manager to bring all their people together and ensure that everything is operating in the most efficient way possible. But the average Joe typically doesn’t pay someone to do this.
That’s why I bring everything together on paper for my clients and look for redundancies, lack of coverage, places they may be paying excess taxes or fees and other areas where they can make their financial lives run more efficiently.
For instance, I advise clients with homeowners insurance to always purchase an umbrella policy in addition to their homeowners insurance policy in case they are ever sued. While homeowners insurance will protect their home, without an umbrella policy their 401k and other savings could be at risk if they are ever involved in a lawsuit.
I like my clients to always look at the big picture, much the way a celebrity does. Famous or not, everyone deserves the red carpet treatment when it comes to overseeing their finances.
Jeff Romond is managing partner of St. George Financial Partners in Mountainside and New York City. To contact him, call (908) 228-8800 or email him at jromond@sgfinancialpartners.com
Jeff Romond is a registered representative of and offers securities, investment advisory and financial planning services through MML Investors Services, LLC. Supervisory Office: 530 Fifth Avenue, 14th Floor New York, NY 10036-5197 Phone (212) 536-6000. St. George Financial Partners is not a subsidiary or affiliate of MML Investors Services, LLC or its affiliated companies. CRN201402-157619.
Darren M. Baldo, Esq., CPA, LL.M.
11:19 am on Friday, February 24, 2012
The observation made by Mr. Romond dovetails nicely with the concept of "power of attorney", which gives someone that kind of authority to manage all of the financial stuff in one's life. You can have the power of attorney over limited things too. For example, if clients trusted you or someone else to manage their affairs, they could write a power of attorney that gives that person the authority to do so.