Gary Duell, ChFC, MBA • Portland, OR
Duell Wealth Preservation
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Proactive Advisor Magazine: Gary, how do you define your role in guiding clients?

Each client or family has unique circumstances, attitudes, and priorities, and that is what informs our efforts. I tell clients that our motivation is to help them work toward long-term prosperity and peace of mind in their retirement—effectively using all the resources they have available. I also tell clients that they can expect highly personalized and responsive service and professional support. It is important that they know I am committed as a fiduciary to the highest ethical standards and will always place their interests first.

What do you think your strengths are as a financial advisor?

My approach with clients is very analytical, both in a qualitative and quantitative sense. As a financial advisor, I think it is important to understand your strongest skillsets and areas where other professionals may be able to provide specific expertise that will benefit your clients. I have three key skills that I think are important in serving clients well.

The first is the ability to “hear” what is truly behind what a client is saying. I have a background in psychology and understand that communication is not always about literal language, but also about various cues. What can you learn from the questions someone asks—or does not ask? Where do you sense confusion or uncertainty? Can you understand what someone is really thinking, even subconsciously? How does their background, upbringing, career, family, or other factors shape their attitudes around money?

The second skill is taking that understanding and finding the best way to communicate with clients in a way that fits with how they receive and process information. Speak at a pace that they are comfortable with, matching their thought process. Try to demystify jargon and industry buzzwords. Many clients have told me that I deliver financial information in a manner that is clear and easy to understand.

The third skill is being able to effectively curate the products and services that are appropriate for the client’s aspirations and goals, which we identify with the client in the discovery and planning process. I explain to clients that over the years we’ve built a “virtual office high-rise.” What I mean by that is our ability to partner with many other high-quality companies and industry professionals. Most notable here is our use of third-party asset managers. They bring research, staffing, strategy development, and overall investment sophistication that I could not replicate on my own.

Describe your client base and your financial-planning process.

We work primarily with couples that are nearing or in retirement, but also see a good number of individuals. I enjoy meeting with families and addressing financial- and legacy-planning needs across different generations. We do not greatly emphasize asset levels, and our account minimum is relatively low by industry standards. That said, many of the employers in our area are involved in the technology industry, and Nike is also a major employer. We are increasingly serving more highly compensated clients with significant assets.

I teach a Social Security optimization class sponsored by Portland Community College. About two-thirds of our prospects are introduced to our firm through this class, and the other third comes from referrals. Teaching is one of the most satisfying things that I do as a financial advisor. I have refined and mastered the material over the years—updating portions as regulations change. I think the class is a point of differentiation for our firm, highlighting our deep knowledge of Social Security and how people can maximize their benefits over their lifetime. We also provide some of our insights on the markets, investments, and risk management—which I think is a different perspective from what most people are used to hearing.

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Our firm was founded to help average Americans in every aspect of financial planning, from income strategies to estate optimization. I work closely with each client to help them achieve their personal goals. Our process has structure but is flexible enough to accommodate the unique circumstances of any of our clients.

I mentioned that the process starts with truly listening to a new client and understanding their underlying concerns, aspirations, and current and future resources. We fully analyze their financial situation and work collaboratively to establish realistic objectives that will help them achieve lifetime financial security.

Our comprehensive financial-planning process emphasizes five main areas: (1) Income planning for life. We strive to build a plan that can help future or current retirees identify and develop streams of dependable income with a low risk of running out of money over their lifetime. It’s all about cash flow. Studies have shown that the people who are happiest in retirement are not necessarily those with lots of assets. It is those who know their income will meet or exceed their budget—even in the face of inflation. (2) Risk management across all areas of the financial plan, whether through insurance strategies or as it pertains to the risk-managed growth of investment assets. (3) Minimization of fees across a variety of financial products, which can make a huge impact on a compounded basis over many years. (4) Retirement tax-planning strategies that help our clients use their assets in a tax-efficient manner. (5) Legacy planning for estate maximization and helping clients fulfill their unique legacy objectives.

“Risk management is at the forefront of everything we do.”

Talk about your broad investment philosophy for clients.

As with our overall planning philosophy, we think that not losing money is one of the most important strategies in addressing a client’s investment planning. Risk management is at the forefront of everything we do. We examine the full universe of investment and income products in generating suitable options for our clients’ investment plans. For longer-term growth assets, we focus on active money management with downside protection.

Part of the financial education we provide clients addresses what we call “financial myths.” Specific to investments, one myth that people hear is, “Just ride out the market and you’ll be OK.” And, “If you stick with it for 10 years or more, you will see a rate of return in the area of 8% to 12%.” There simply isn’t any evidence for that. If we look at the tech bubble of 2000 and the financial bubble of 2008–2009, the market took many years just to get back to even. If you had retired in 2000 or 2008, and are withdrawing 4% from a portfolio and getting no real rate of return for years from your starting point, you are most likely going to run out of funds in retirement. This is just another way to explain the inconvenient reality of sequence-of-returns risk to clients—and how being on the wrong side of steep market declines can be destructive to their retirement planning.

Another investment myth is that to achieve strong returns, you need to incur high risk—that they are directly correlated. Again, in my experience, that is not true. The third-party money manager we primarily use has an overall philosophy of active money management with an emphasis on risk management and multiple layers of strategy and asset-class diversification. My analysis of their robust comparative reporting across many periods and full market cycles demonstrates that competitive returns can be achieved with less volatility and the mitigation of maximum drawdown risk. I believe that is a suitable style of money management for most of my clients, particularly those who are close to or already in retirement.

To summarize, we emphasize two important principles of retirement income and investment planning for our clients: (1) Meeting basic budgetary needs with guaranteed income sources. (2) Using rules-based and risk-managed investment strategies for longer-term growth. If we can help clients reduce fees, reduce their lifetime tax exposure, and increase their guaranteed income, that gives them a huge cash-flow advantage over the average retiree. Then, for the portfolio side, algorithm-based strategies that fit a client’s customized investment plan and risk profile should provide enhanced probabilities for overall portfolio growth. Our clients have come to highly value this blended approach and think it is very appropriate for their retirement planning.

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Gary Duell, founder, Duell Wealth Preservation, and Amanda Ferrier, paraplanner.