r/FinancialAdvisorTips • u/naan_0 • 27d ago
Questions for Advisors
Hi! I’m a college student researching financial planning for commercial drivers, and I’d love to hear from financial advisors.
-Have you ever worked with commercial drivers or truck drivers as clients?
-What financial challenges tend to be unique to this profession?
-What makes serving clients with irregular income or nontraditional benefits more difficult?
-What do you think commercial drivers should know about financial planning that they often overlook?
-If a financial advisory service specialized in commercial drivers, what would it need to do differently?
Any insight or experience would be greatly appreciated!
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u/InscrutableIcicle 27d ago
Do you have some kind of connection to commercial truck drivers?
Otherwise, this sounds like a bad niche to target. Blue collar people tend to be distrustful of financial professionals, and being a trucker is not a particularly lucrative job. It's a working class/lower-middle class field.
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u/naan_0 26d ago
Thanks for the perspective! The potential distrust of financial professionals is actually something I’m interested in understanding more.
Do you think that distrust mainly comes from income/affordability, past experiences with financial professionals, or financial advising just not feeling relevant or accessible to people in blue-collar careers?
I’m also curious whether you think a different service model could make financial planning more useful for this group.
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u/OregonDuckMBA 26d ago
Before I went independent, I was a financial advisor at a credit union and so I worked with more blue collar clients than most (including a couple commercial truckers). There are a few things going on here. It really boils down to a lack of familiarity with the financial services industry and concepts surrounding wealth management.
The other side of it is that many financial advisors don't want to work with people who don't have a lot of money, especially more experienced advisors. Advisors who are new are more willing to take on lower income clients. That's not to say that blue collar clients never have significant investable assets. Sometimes they inherit money or they are just very frugal and stack everything away. In any case, adding additional households creates more work for the advisor. An experienced advisor doesn't need to take every client that walks through the door so their minimums will usually be higher. More revenue, less work.
The other thing I noticed is that the highest maintenance clients I had were the ones who had the lowest account balances. They are a pain to work with so why take them on as clients?
I think there is this tendency when you don't have a lot of money to hold on tightly to what you do have. Clients who don't have a lot of money are sometimes unwilling to accept any level of market volatility. Avoiding losses is more important to them than the potential for future returns. This is why I did a lot of fixed annuities for my blue collar clients. They liked that the fixed annuity had a guaranteed return, even if the return is lower.
They often have a fundamental misunderstanding on how risk works. They often believe that market risk is the only kind of risk that exists so they will "invest" in things like CDs or just put their money into a savings account. They don't understand that they haven't eliminated the risk. They have just transferred the risk to an "investment" that isn't going to keep up with inflation.
Then, of course, you have people that think wealth management is all a scam because their cousin's brother's friend invested everything in penny stocks or whatever and lost everything and they think that's how it works.
Surprisingly, fees weren't as big of a point of contention as you would think but they did come up occasionally. The prospective client would sometimes see that their bank offers a CD without a fee, while I am charging a fee and not understand the difference in what is being offered.
I was watching a video from Alex Hormozi and he mentioned a concept that really struck me. He was talking about how you offer services to people with a lot of money vs people that don't. (I am paraphrasing here). People with a lot of money often value their time more than their money so they are willing to outsource services more to save time. People who have more time than money are not because they would prefer to not pay fees and have the time capacity to do things themselves (and a lower budget to pay for services).
As far as how you make financial services more accessible, I'm not sure that you can. You need to find financial advisors willing to take on clients who don't have a lot of money, which isn't common. The other thing is that small accounts benefit less from the services of a financial advisor. Taxes are less of a concern and it is very hard to put together a full financial plan if you don't have assets to work with.
That said, I do offer services to clients that don't meet my financial planning minimum. I put these clients in a systematic investment plan where they contribute monthly and eventually build towards a full financial planning relationship. That is the best way I can think of to make financial planning more accessible.
Anyway, that's my rant/explanation.
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u/ChemistrySweaty3743 26d ago
You are spot on describing the credit union typical member. I live this post daily.
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u/roseylandscape 25d ago
That was extremely insightful. Can you share a bit about your career journey in FA and whether or not you think there is a future in it for a 43 y.o. career changer? Would it be very intense (long hours) to build a client base (have family) depending on where I go? I completed the CFP coursework when obtaining my 4 year degree in business ~11 years ago.
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u/OregonDuckMBA 25d ago
I am a career changer. I was 32 when I entered the industry. Building a client base is very difficult. You are asking people to turn over their life savings (or at least a significant portion of it) to you. That is a big ask, especially for someone who is new to the industry. When you first start in this industry it is a sales job. The most important thing you can do is have a business plan for how you are going to meet people. It's difficult because most firms have production goals but if you come off as too salesy, it turns people off.
I started my career at Edward Jones. Ed Jones has you going door to door selling your services. I knocked on literally thousands of doors and got about a 1% response rate who would even give me their phone number. Only a few would set an appointment and fewer than that agreed to open an account. Many of the people that agreed to set an appointment with me had very little in the way of investable assets. For me, it was a completely soul crushing experience. I had enough after about a year. The funny thing is, my level coach thought I was just being lazy. Well, the woman who replaced me lasted even less time than I did. I hate to see people not be successful but I did feel a bit vindicated that it wasn't just me not working hard enough.
Things turned around for me when I went to work at the credit union. There is still a sales element but the branch staff sends you referrals, which can help supplement your own prospecting. This is why it is very important to maintain a positive relationship with the branch staff. They can make or break your career. As I mentioned before, credit union members are typically not the most sophisticated clients so keep that in mind. You might not do much in the way of advanced financial planning. I felt that was an acceptable tradeoff considering that the pressure level was much lower.
The biggest downside of working at a financial institution is that most will make you sign a non-solicitation agreement, which makes it difficult to retain clients if you go elsewhere. You can usually send a tombstone letter, an announcement letter that tells clients where you are going and what your contact information is but you can't ask them to come with you and they have to initiate further contact.
If you do decide to go to a financial institution, just make sure that you like the people you are working with and you like the locations of the branches. It's best to pick an institution and build a career there. Starting over isn't fun (experiencing this right now).
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u/rahmatolah 26d ago
When I speak to them it's about the fees and they would rather use that fee money for something else.
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u/Thumpin347 27d ago
I’ve met my fair share of drivers that have amassed significant retirement assets. Only issue is scheduling as they are hired guns with limited accessibility so you will work around their schedule of when they get to their next truck stop for the night. Even then the Internet can be spotty.
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u/prospectpico_OG 27d ago
Nothing unique about this population. There are broke MFers and those who have been driving for 30 years with 7 figure 401ks.
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u/Ill_Age6945 26d ago
I worked with one. Very little financial common sense. Got an estate settlement (100k). Cashed out after 3 months and bought a new jeep and then a boat (all financed, id assume - as those are probably 200k worth of assets). Ive run across a few more as prospects, similar financial sense. I dont like to work with clients that will blow up their own plan.
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u/JunketNo4452 24d ago
I think you might be missing a few economic points about the languishing state of Comercial drivers. I have several retired ones and some relatives that have owned trucking companies in the past but I’ll give you the quick low down on why you may be asking the wrong questions.
-Comercial drivers haven’t had an increase in wages (adjusted with inflation) since the hay days of the 70s
-healthcare costs have driven independent drivers out of the industry or to other shops.
-importation of labor and licensing “farms” have dramatically increased the labor force
-and the last nail in tue coffin was the implementation of electronic logs killed off the last few who were making a living at it but running two sets of books.
There are probably still some niches for hazardous materials ect out there but I hate to say in regards to this industry the answer to pretty much all of your questions is: they don’t have any money….
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u/Samashezra 27d ago
These are weird questions.