Nearly 70% of all married female Baby Boomers will experience widowhood.¹ Death is a natural part of life, but that doesn’t preclude it from having a jarring impact on the surviving spouse, especially when it comes to her finances.

Just like their financial situations, each client’s personality is unique. Some you have a terrific rapport with; others are more challenging. While there are times when stepping away from a client relationship is warranted — when a client is a liability risk or verbally/physically abusive, for example¹ — “firing” clients based solely on personality clashes isn’t necessarily a good business practice. However, simply gritting your teeth and tolerating a difficult client probably isn’t enough either.

No matter the goal — whether trying to lose weight or gain financial freedom — writing down a plan greatly increases its likelihood of success, anywhere from 1.2 to 1.4 times more than when not written down.¹

The numbers are alarming. In the past five years nearly 3.9 million records were stolen from cyberattacks and breaches — equating to 158,727 per hour, 2,645 per minute and 44 every second of every day.¹ Paired with the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the anticipated 200 billion devices that will be connected to it by 2020, the wariness about and likelihood of encroachment increases exponentially.¹

Retirement can be exciting, but it’s also a major life and financial transition. The stress brought about by the inevitable changes surrounding retirement can cause rifts significant enough for people to contemplate divorce.¹ To a lesser degree, it can make the estimated 1 in 3 married couples who don’t have a shared vision of their golden years² confront what could be difficult realities, including financial discord.

Investor demographics are shifting, and that should be a wakeup call for the financial industry. Over the next five years, the whole of Baby Boomer clients is estimated to drop from 46% to 43%, and senior clients are estimated to make an even sharper drop from 23% to 14%.¹ On the other hand, Gen X and Millennials are poised to represent a collective 41% of financial clients — a jump of around 11% over current statistics.¹

For money they won’t need for at least a decade, only 23% of Millennials prefer putting it in the stock market to amassing a cash nest egg.¹ Coming of age amid significant financial crises — the stock market upheaval in 2008 and the dot com collapse in the early 2000’s — have 46% of Millennials convinced that “investment earnings aren’t worth the risk.”²

It happens. Through luck, inheritance, settlement or some other random twist of fate, a client “strikes it rich” and suddenly assumes money is no object in their world. In rare cases, this assumption is true. More often than not, recipients of a substantial financial windfall succumb to what some financial advisors term “Sudden Wealth Syndrome” and mismanage their newly found fortune.¹ Case in point? The one in three Americans who recklessly spend inherited money, or the 70% of rich families who lose their inheritance by the second generation,¹ or the multi-million dollar lottery winners who declare bankruptcy within three to five years of landing their fortune.²

Despite some debate over the degree of wealth necessary to be considered a High Net Worth individual (HNW), it’s generally accepted that a minimum of $1 million in liquid assets is required for a person to fit into this category.¹ The broad definition may be true, but it’s also pretty stark. What other characteristics do HNWs possess?

You’re probably familiar with the reasons why clients choose a financial advisor: