Hello World!
This is the first blog post from Emancipare, and I hope to use it to explain the concepts and philosophy behind the business – in other words, my “why” for doing this. The concept is very unique, and I haven’t found anything like it. It’s tough to find affordable, honest, understandable investing help for working people!
I also run a financial counseling company called Money Coach Group, Inc, helping set people free from debt and financial stress. The key concept there is to keep your financial life simple, manageable, and understandable. To fulfill a dream of helping people get rid of financial stress and achieve dreams like being debt-free, buying their first home, sending their kids to college, and maybe even retiring early.
My advice to those folks, after getting their debt load erased, was to take the extra money they had now every month and invest heavily for their life goals (retirement, college, beach house, etc).
As our clients became debt free, and then started investing to get caught up on those long-term goals, we noticed a problem. Many of them were turning to financial advisors, and coming back to us saying “You told us to keep things simple, but now we have these long statements with all these funds. We don’t know what they’re for, we don’t understand them, and we think the fees we’re paying are hurting our progress.” Or, worse “They wouldn’t touch us because we don’t have enough money to invest.” How sad.
This isn’t a dig at financial advisors. Most are ethical, and it’s a profession not unlike doctors and lawyers. Many enjoy big cars and homes, and have families to feed. They have brick and mortar offices to pay for, and sometimes business loans to pay off. At Emancipare, we practice what we preach. We have no debt, keep our overhead extremely low, and that allows us to be affordable.
But, there’s a difference between a financial coach/counselor and a financial advisor. Financial coaches and counselors cannot legally give investing advice. To do that, you must pass difficult exams and become registered and licensed by your state, or the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. The compliance requirements and oversight are rigorous, as they should be.
So, we decided to start our own advisory business to solve that problem for our clients. We decided the business model would be ultra-low fees and a model that includes simplicity and teaching our investing clients what they needed to know, so that they could take the wheel if they feel comfortable over time.
The first challenge was giving it a good name. We wanted something that brought altruism, honesty, and most importantly financial freedom to mind. We finally settled on Emancipare (Ee-mon-chip-ar-ee), which is Latin/Spanish/Italian for emancipate, or to free from bonds. Actually, it’s also an incantation to do that in Harry Potter. Exactly what we want to do for people!
Folks like our Money Coach Group clients can’t afford high fees. They’re making up for lost time, and every dollar counts. Not only did we make our own fees ultra-low, we recommend and manage portfolios for our clients that are ultra-low fee. The difference is much faster growth, more money in their pockets rather than going to fees. We set them up in just a couple of funds and make sure they understand each one, and its place and purpose in their portfolio. We work with them to gauge their risk tolerance and make sure their investments are a match with that, so they can sleep well at night even in the rockiest of times. Because that’s how it should be.
With this new company, we’re finally able to do in-depth investing, college-savings, and retirement planning for our clients that wasn’t legally possible on the coaching side. We can analyze 401k, 403B, 457, Roths, pensions, annuities, Social Security, life insurance policies and make recommendations. We can take folks from the full spectrum of crushing debt to financial independence!
If you’d like to explore our services, have a look around this site, and fill out our contact form. We’re excited and happy about being able to serve anyone that needs our help. Let’s make every day a day off!
Bill Hines, President and Investment Advisor Representative
Emancipare Investment Advisors LLC
September 20, 2021