Career
management important to financial plans
Financial planner Haubrich makes
clients' career goals part of their portfolios
The Business Journal of
It was a several years ago when financial planner Michael Haubrich began to notice a new trend among his clients.
Many were asking for advice on how to retire at a relatively young
age -- and they wanted to stop working immediately.
The trend puzzled Haubrich, president
of The Financial Service
Group,
What he soon discovered was that many of his clients who wanted
to retire early viewed retirement as a way to get out of a failing or
unsatisfactory career.
Haubrich realized he
needed to look at his clients' careers as more than just a way to make money.
He needed to view his clients' careers as an asset and a key part of any
financial plan.
"Career is the financial engine that drives the
machine," he said. "You can treat it as an investment."
But when he looked for guidance on how to incorporate career
planning into financial planning, he came up empty.
So he devised a method to calculate a client's career asset and
has begun working with career counselors to create a fuller financial plan for
his clients.
"We're looking at where we can add value," he said.
Haubrich, a certified
financial planner, incorporated Financial Service Group in 1981.
Several
sessions
It costs $4,000 to $6,000 for the combined career and financial
planning, which Haubrich began providing about a year
ago. That includes three to four sessions with Haubrich
and his associate, and four or five meetings with a
career counselor as well as one session where the client, financial planner and
career counselor sit down together.
Fifteen percent to 20 percent of Haubrich's
140 clients are receiving the combined planning services, he said.
Linking career planning and financial planning is a new
direction for the financial planning field, and an appropriate one, said Bob Veres, an industry analyst in
"What Mike is doing is recognizing an asset that really
hasn't been tended by the profession," Veres
said. "It has the potential not only to improve peoples' lives, but also
to allow people to earn more money or extend their working life."
The Lindisfarne Group, a
Working with financial planners makes sense for career
counselors because people often are afraid to leave jobs in which they're
unhappy because they don't know how it will affect them financially, Foster
said.
"If a financial planner and a career coach can work
together with the client, then those links can be made," she said.
"The person can reach the life goal that is going to make them feel good
about themselves."
Standard
practice
Haubrich, who would like
to see the financial planning industry adopt the concept of melding career
counseling and financial planning as standard practice, is speaking about his
methods with other Milwaukee-area financial planners.
Bruce Heling, of Heling Associates,
Heling said he also has
experienced clients whose desire to retire immediately masks job
dissatisfaction. He said he has suggested to those clients that they seek
career counseling, but then left it up to the client to find help -- just as he
would have if a client had marital or mental health problems.
What's unique about Haubrich's method
is that he has found a way to structure the discussion of a client's career and
how it fits in with the financial plan, Heling said.
It also makes it all right for planners to address such issues with clients, he
said.
"I'm of the school of thought that financial planning
exists as a means of helping people lead a more fulfilling life," Heling said. "Mike's taken the whole area to a new
level and I think it's got some excellent applicability."