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Plan With The Tax ManAuthor: Tony Mauro
Financial, tax and retirement planning guidance from Tony Mauro. Tony is the original Tax Doctor, serving central Iowa. Well teach you how to properly plan for retirement, minimize your tax burden and attain a successful financial future. Language: en Genres: Business, Business News, Investing, News Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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What It’s Really Like to Be A Client Of A Financial Advisor
Episode 136
Thursday, 9 October, 2025
Here on the show, we often talk about what it’s like to become a client. But what about what it's like to be a client of a financial advisor? Tune in for a behind-the-scenes look at what it looks like to be a client at Tax Doctor Inc. Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com Call: 844-707-7381 ----more---- Transcript: Walter Storholt: Well, here on the show, we often talk about what it's like to become a client, but today we're going to talk about what it's like to be a client. On Plan with the Tax Man, what's it really like to be a client of a financial advisor, we'll give you all the details coming up. I'll grab Tony and we'll get started. It's another episode of Plan with the Tax Man, I'm Walter Storholt filling in for Mark Killian, but as always, joined by Tony Mauro, a certified financial planner and CPA with more than 30 years of financial planning experience. Find us at Yourplanningpros.com. Based out of the Des Moines area in central Iowa, serving everyone throughout the community there, you can find him certainly via the phone as well, 844-707-7381, all the contact information for Tony is in the description of today's show. Tony, before we dive into the topic today, everything going okay with you? Tony Mauro: It's going good for us, just got back into town from a family wedding, and yeah, still tackling fall, so everything's good. Walter Storholt: Nice. Where was the wedding? Tony Mauro: It's actually over in Chicago. Walter Storholt: Nice. Good trip to the city? Tony Mauro: It was. I don't get over there very much for as close as we are, but there's a lot of stuff to do, a lot of stuff to eat, and all that, so yeah, it's always a good time. Walter Storholt: Did you get down to the riverfront or down to the lakefront at all? Tony Mauro: We did, we went down to, familiar with the Navy Pier area. Walter Storholt: Yeah. Tony Mauro: We were there a little bit, and then kind of walked around downtown a little bit. It's spent a long time since I had a good old-fashioned deep dish pizzas, so we had a little of that. Walter Storholt: I was going to say. Who did you use, was it Lou Malnati's or what's the other one- Tony Mauro: Yes, it was whatever that one is. It was highly ranked, so we thought, well, we'll go try it, and it was very good. Walter Storholt: Yeah, it's hard to beat a meat pie, right? Tony Mauro: That's right. Walter Storholt: Pretty good stuff. One of my favorite things ever was doing the river tour, the riverboat tour in Chicago, just the architecture tour from the boats, I think it's just one of the- Tony Mauro: I've never done that. Yeah, but that sounds good. Walter Storholt: Oh, you got to do it. Next time you're in the city, just do the riverboat tour, the architecture tour, and they take you all up through the river, and they point out all of this just fascinating information, all about the architecture of all the buildings right there along the river front. And it's a fun ride, they put on a great show, lots of amazing information. Every time I've gone to Chicago, I've done the tour, so. Tony Mauro: I'll have to do that. Yeah. Walter Storholt: It's really cool. I think you can pick it up right there from Navy Pier too, so you hop on the boats that are right there, they take you right through, and just easy. Tony Mauro: Cool. Walter Storholt: Very cool. Tony Mauro: Yeah. Walter Storholt: I would do it when the weather is warm. It'd probably be a little brutal in the colder temperatures, but good summer activity for sure. Well, let's dive into our conversation today, Tony, what it's really like to be a client of a financial advisor. So, again, a lot of our focus is on becoming a client, but let's talk about once we've turned that page and we are a client, set some expectations for folks, what's that relationship then going to look like beyond just the first couple of visits and meetings? So, when somebody's been a client for many years and they already have a solid retirement plan in place, what are your discussions look like when you get together for periodic reviews, and how often do those happen? Take us under the hood, if you will. Tony Mauro: Sure. Well, normally, depending on the client's situation, how complex it is, and really whether they're in the... I try to divide it up into two main areas. You're either in the accumulation stage or the distribution stage, that's what our clients are in. So, that number one depends on how many times a year we get together. It's anywhere from one to four times that we'll get together, because some clients will say, believe it or not, hey, I think four is too much, I don't really want to get together that often. And some really like it. So, everybody's different there, but once we get a plan in place... And for us, a plan isn't just lip service and talking, we actually use, and I think a lot of advisors do today, some sort of formal financial planning software that they can take and develop a plan for the client, top to bottom. Everything they own, everything they owe, what their goals are, everything from retirement, to college planning, and everything in between. And basically, kind of function off that plan as their financial quarterback, and make sure that plan, we're progressing, number one, and then number two is in the reviews that we've had with clients who've been with us a long time, it's really reviewing the plan, are the goals still the same? Anything drastic happen in your life? And just talk about that. And then, we'll touch on investment performance and how things have done over the last quarter, last year, two, three years, that kind of thing. Obviously that's important too, but that's really not why we meet, just to go over, hey, your returns this quarter were this much or this little type of thing, it's much more than that. And as you get into understanding what the client's about and wants to achieve, the more we know about them, the more we are involved with their life, at least on the financial side. So, a lot of them have been with us for a long time, we know everything about them, we try to get their children involved, if they're adults, especially in the distribution stage, because we talk about end of life and what's going to go on there, so that's kind of our reviews process in a nutshell. Walter Storholt: Makes sense, and I think helpful to get that peak. Can you go over a little bit more of how often you meet with your current clients to review their situations? Is it always in person? Do you have remote meetings? Sometimes? What's usually the right mix for folks? Tony Mauro: Yeah, it's totally client-dependent, it used to be everything, of course, was in person, now more and more of them want the video call, they're comfortable enough with that, they've done them enough that they don't have to come to the office. Obviously people that live a long way away, they love that. And so, I would say probably right now for us, I give the client the choice, but we probably do 60, 70% of our meetings virtually now. We hop on, we could see each other, and we talk through it just like you and I are doing, except you could see our faces. And then, once in a while they'll come in, if we've got some things to do that way, but like I said, most of the time we're generally two to four times a year, depending on the client. In between that, of course, if they call or email or things like that, we certainly want them to reach out if they've got questions about anything they've seen or heard. And if you listen to our last podcast about some of the funnies that we did, we get a lot of calls about that kind of stuff about, hey, I heard this, what do you think? Type of thing. And we can address those things, just one-off off the cuff type of things. Walter Storholt: Yeah. Those are some pretty good examples of things that are from outside what somebody would think of as probably the normal services of a financial advisor, I would think. Like, calling you up and being like, hey, is this a scam email? That's not what I would write down is usually in the description of a financial advisor, but it's outside of that realm of just helping you with your portfolio. Tony Mauro: It is, and we get a lot of that, we get a lot of people asking tax questions, obviously we've always prepared tax returns, and so they look to us, many of them, we do their taxes- Walter Storholt: That's something that not every financial advisor does though, right? That's sort of unique for you guys. Tony Mauro: Right, Yeah. So, we can kind of take the tax angle perspective as well to work that into the plan, and let them know, hey, not only are we trying to achieve your goals, but we're trying to do it in this much of a tax-efficient manner versus other things. But beside that, the clients will call up and they're changing jobs, they're doing this, they're doing that in their lives, and so they generally have a lot of tax questions that we'll answer for them. And a lot of them, of course, as they get a little older, they're asking about Social Security, and when to take that, and again, we can certainly help them with that. That's in the scope of the financial services, but kind of outside of it. But the bigger ones really are, they'll ask us a lot about passing money on, end of life, things like that, that we've really tried to help them with in addition to just keeping the plan in progress. Walter Storholt: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. I'm curious if you can maybe share with us some memorable victories or happy occasions that you've been able to celebrate with your clients over the years, since you're describing a relationship that then stays in place throughout their retirement. Tony Mauro: Yeah. Well, we track every goal that they give us, and we sometimes have to push them a little bit and make sure it's still an important goal. But it's always great to see when they hit their goals, as small or as big as are, we actually celebrate it with them. If it's a big goal, we'll actually send them things. If it's a small goal, we'll call them up or send them a pre-recorded video, and congratulate them, and have some fun with it. But it's anything... Some of the biggest ones, obviously if you were working with a client a long time and they get to the end, and we've monitored the plan a long time and they're where they want to be. They're so excited to retire, and have the kind of life they thought they could have, and when they tell you they never really dreamt that this was possible, and really it just was a matter of them taking our advice, and actually executing, which really on their end generally means you got to save some money, you got to postpone spending to accomplish these goals. And sometimes I think we act more as a coach/consultant, that, hey, okay, you got to stay on goal here type of thing, those are the happiest really occasions. Even, I met with a lady yesterday, we just started a new goal, she needs some [inaudible 00:10:01]... She's retired, but she says, "I need to reside my house, it's just getting old, it's falling apart." And we said, "All right, well, let's set a goal, and how long do you think you want to take to save for it?" And she told me, and so we'll celebrate that, even though that's a small non-financial goal, it's one of her goals. And so, I believe our job is to help them try to achieve those goals even outside of the planning realm a little bit. Walter Storholt: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And those are some good stories when you get to track those goals and see them succeed in those goals throughout their financial life, and through their retirements. Can you maybe describe for us, one more story since we've slipped into a storytelling mode here, maybe a time when something in life happened to drastically change a client's financial situation for the worst, and how you were able to help? Tony Mauro: Sure. There's a lot of these as well, and most of them occur around a couple of things in our realm, it's either a loss of a job or loss of a loved one. And I can think of one in particular where, lady lost her husband, they were relatively young, a drastic change in their life, they had two young kids at the time, these stories are all over. But luckily she came in to see us, he did have some life insurance, which was great, so she was able to, with our assistance, take that and invest it, get totally debt-free, and invest the course of the rest. And she just retired about a year and a half ago, she's still with us. And now she's enjoying her retirement, as happy as she can be, obviously she lost a husband, it was 18 years ago, but I like those kinds of stories because people can continue on and, at least on the financial side, be able to reach their goals. And it's almost like, obviously nobody ever thinks they're going to be in that situation where you lose a loved one early, and it drastically changes your life. And on the flip side of that, if you don't reach out and try to get some help, it could go the exact other way. So, there's all kinds of things in all of our lives that happen that we didn't plan for, and better to have a plan and try to work that plan as those things come at you. Walter Storholt: Absolutely true about that, Tony, and I appreciate you sharing that story with us. Sometimes it looks hopeless or you can't see that light through the end of the tunnel, and you guys help people plan for the opportunity to see that hope, to see that potential future in front of them. It's an example of how money matters change over time, but hopefully over the last couple of minutes you've been able to see that the value of a real relationship with an advisor, someone who knows your story, cares about your outcomes, tracks your goals, that never goes away, that never lessens in importance and value. And so if that's the kind of relationship that you're looking for as you plan for your financial future and for retirement, all you have to do to get in touch with Tony, to have a conversation and get a review of your financial status and look at what you need to do to plan for the future, all you have to do is give him a call, at 844-707-7381, or you can go online to yourplanningpros.com. Tony is a CPA and a certified financial planner, and you can again find all of his contact information simply in the description of today's show. We try to make that easy on you there. Tony, thanks for all the help once again on the program today, great catching up with you, and we'll look forward to chatting with you again soon. Tony Mauro: All right, well, thank you, and we'll talk to everybody on the next one. Walter Storholt: See you again on Plan with the Tax Man. Securities offered through Avantax Investment Services SM, member FINRA, SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Avantax Advisory Services. Insurance services offered through an Avantax affiliated insurance agency. Investment strategies discussed in this episode may not be suitable for all investors. Please consult with a financial professional.
