Working With an Investment Counselor: What Professional Guidance Actually Looks Like
Frank had met with an Investment Counselor exactly once, seven years earlier, when he opened his first brokerage account. Since then, Frank, a 44-year-old operations supervisor, had assumed the relationship was essentially complete. He checked his account balance occasionally, left his contributions on autopilot, and never scheduled a follow-up conversation, largely because he was not sure what there would be to discuss.
It was not until a friend mentioned reviewing his portfolio after a significant inheritance that Frank realized how much had changed in his own life since that first meeting, and how little of it had ever made its way back into his financial plan.
Frank’s experience points to a common misunderstanding about what working with a financial professional such as an Investment Counselor can actually mean. It is an ongoing relationship built around a simple, recurring question: “has anything in your life changed since we last talked?”
The Retirement Question Worth Asking
The question of what changes have happened lately is worth asking literally, not just conceptually.
Life rarely announces itself in tidy financial terms, but many of the moments that matter most to a financial plan show up first as personal news rather than portfolio news. A health issue, either a new diagnosis or a recovery that changes someone’s outlook on risk. A job loss or a career change that shifts income, timeline, or both. An inheritance that suddenly changes the shape of a household’s assets. The birth of a grandchild raises new questions about gifting or education savings. None of these events are inherently financial on the surface, and that is exactly why they are so easy to overlook as reasons to revisit a plan.
Letting an Investment Counselor know when your goals or risk tolerance have changed since your last conversation can be meaningful for planning, yet it can be easy to forget. Without an update, a plan can quietly drift out of alignment with a person’s current circumstances, not because anyone made a mistake, but simply because life moved on and the plan was never updated.
Building From The First Conversation
Reviewing finances is not a one-time event. Understanding your full financial situation comes from an assessment of habits, needs and goals over time.
An initial conversation with a financial professional can be an important first step, but a lasting relationship allows your plan to grow and adjust as your life does.
In a 2024 survey by YCharts, a financial data and research platform, for clients who were in frequent contact with their financial professionals, 71% would feel very comfortable with their financial plan during potential economic downturns. Among clients in contact less frequently that number dropped to 22%
That’s not a small gap. It can be the difference between trusting your plan when things get bumpy and quietly wondering if it still holds up.
Why This Is a Two-Way Conversation
Investment Counselors are legally obligated to act in their clients’ best interests, including ensuring that portfolios remain suitable to each client’s stated goals and risk tolerance. That obligation depends heavily on accurate, current information. A counselor can only recommend a suitable strategy based on what a client has shared about their situation, which means the relationship works best as an active, two-way conversation rather than a service a client simply receives passively in the background.
This is part of why periodic check-ins matter as much as the initial account setup. Ongoing conversations allow that snapshot to be updated as circumstances evolve, so that the guidance a client receives continues to reflect who they are today, not only who they were when the account was first opened.
What an Ongoing Relationship Actually Involves
In practice, working with an Investment Counselor over time typically involves a mix of scheduled check-ins and conversations prompted by specific life events.
A scheduled annual or semi-annual review offers a natural opportunity to walk through what has changed, confirm that a portfolio’s risk level still matches a client’s comfort level, and revisit goals that may have shifted since the last conversation. Event-driven conversations, prompted by a job change, a health event, a family change, or a significant financial windfall, allow adjustments to happen closer to when they are needed, rather than waiting for the next scheduled meeting.
“If my client’s goals or risk tolerance have changed since we last spoke, it’s important to review those circumstances alongside their portfolio,” says Darren Nomberg, Senior Vice President at David Lerner Associates.
“Life changes do not necessarily mean that a portfolio is currently off-balance but evaluating them together gives us a clearer picture of whether any adjustments make sense.”
What Frank Did Next
Frank scheduled a review with an Investment Counselor and walked through everything that had shifted since his original meeting seven years earlier: a promotion, a change in his family’s college savings timeline, and a modest inheritance from a relative that he had never discussed with anyone in a financial planning context. None of it required starting over. It required an honest conversation about what had changed, which Frank realized he could have had years earlier.
Material contained in this article is provided for information purposes only. It is not intended to be used in connection with the evaluation of any investments offered by David Lerner Associates, Inc. This material does not constitute an offer or recommendation to buy or sell securities and should not be considered in connection with the purchase or sale of securities. These materials are provided for general information and educational purposes, based on publicly available information from sources believed to be reliable. We cannot assure the accuracy or completeness of these materials. The information in these materials may change at any time and without notice. The subject of this article is fictitious and created for illustrative purposes only. It is based on events of a similar nature and should not be interpreted as a direct depiction of any specific individual, organization, or incident. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, or actual events is purely coincidental.