Why I Became a Financial Advisor

I became a financial advisor because I love to help people reach their financial goals and dreams.

Most people really do not know where they stand relative to their most important financial goals. For instance:

• When can you afford to comfortably quit your full-time job?
• What investment rate of return do you need to earn to not run out of money in retirement?
• Are there moves you could make to pay less in taxes?
• Is my money invested wisely?
• When should you take social security?
• What are the best ways to transfer money to our kids either now or when we die?

Given the importance of these decisions, these are all potentially HUGE questions people should have a professional help them navigate. It’s not that people aren’t able to research and figure some of this out, but most either don’t have the time, talent or desire to do it themselves.

Helping people create strategies to solve their financial planning related issues is incredibly rewarding.

That’s why it is my life mission.

How I got to be a financial advisor:

When I began studying finance at the University of Iowa, I thought I was going to be a stockbroker. This would lead to me being a big shot on Wall Street buying and selling stocks as a polished professional.

It turned out, my first job out of college was as a Penny stockbroker making 300 cold calls a day, usually getting hung up on. Every now and then getting into a conversation and sending out information in hopes of getting a speculative investor to bite on buying say 100,000 shares of a $.05 per share company’s stock. These stocks were traded on the “pink sheets” and usually didn’t pan out. I lasted only three painful months. This wasn’t at all how I imagined life as a broker.

I moved on to a huge mutual fund company (at the time), Dreyfus and was part of their two-man retail team at their LaSalle St. office in Chicago.

That’s where I got started counseling people regarding their serious money as it related to investing within a large family of mutual funds. I realized how rewarding it was to help people and decided that’s what I wanted to do for my career. At the time, a new organization (College of Financial Planning) had started an accreditation program for comprehensive financial planning. I enrolled in their six-course program and earned my Certified Financial Planner certification.

I then ventured out and worked for a small financial planning firm in
Schaumburg thinking I could bring some of the client relationships with me from people I had helped at Dreyfus. They didn’t come with me, and that job only lasted about six months. I learned plenty about how to run a financial planning firm while I was there.

Then I got a break from a firm called GCG Financial in Northbrook because a friend of my parents worked there. It was a family-owned business that was a general agent for Minnesota Life Insurance. Luckily, they gave me some very good sales training, and although life insurance was their main product, they did some basic financial planning.  I was 26 years old and my goal was to be there for five years and then branch out completely on my own.

In year five, I happened to meet my future wife, Soni, and that led to me waiting one more year until we figured out where we would settle down. We closed on our home on Halloween in 1996 and my office opened in Glen Ellyn, IL the next day.

The biggest business change I made was to embark on a very new way of charging clients for my service. Instead of getting paid commissions by the companies that I placed client money, I went to a fee model where clients paid my firm directly. This was terrific foresight as most of the planning industry has followed this same path. I was just very early.

I decided to partner with Charles Schwab as a platform for investments and that was a great decision. I later added SEI Private Trust as Institutional Money Manager and with those two firms at my disposal I could compete with anyone in my field. Equally important was to step up the technology improves that were rapidly happening with planning related software and internet growing options like crazy. While starting and stopping with a couple different firms, I jumped at the chance to embrace MoneyGuidePro and haven’t looked back.

Goals-based planning with their software to drive goals and needs analysis has been a big winner for my firm’s clients for over a decade now.

The key questions I mentioned above are addressed and I can direct clients to prudent decision making with its help and all the years of my experience.

I’m feeling very blessed to have created the firm I have and it inspires me every day to help the people I work with.

Along the way, I’ve worked with many wonderful people from a huge variety of backgrounds and professions. I’ve tried to share my knowledge with others by writing probably 100 blog posts at www.bradrosley.com, creating an educational Brad’s youtube channel link  and writing an Amazon Bestseller book, Beyond Money.

I am Blessed to have chosen this wonderful profession.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Brad Rosley