Day in the life of
Investment Strategist – Maryann Keith, CFP, CIMA
My role as an Investment Strategist at a wealth management and financial planning firm is quite varied and very interesting.
My day starts by checking the calendar for client facing meetings for the next few days and planning my preparation work around the schedule. Each client is truly unique, so getting ready doesn’t fit a predictable formula.
Client meeting
In addition to reviewing how their investment are performing I check on a number of other items. For many clients, I check and see where they are with their realized capital gains budget for the year. For charitably inclined clients I look for highly appreciated securities to gift to charity or their donor advised fund to meet their giving goals for the year. For older clients, I coordinate giving strategies that often involve Qualified Charitable Distributions from their IRAs that allow them to write off income from their RMDs. For clients ages 65 and up I keep an eye on their taxable income and coordinate with their CPAs as needed to keep their Medicare premiums in the lowest range possible based on IRMAA (Medicare Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount). These are just a few examples of topics that need to be addressed prior to meeting with a client.
On any given day, I get requests from clients to add or withdraw money from their investment accounts. I spend a bit of time each day reviewing accounts to advise the most optimal places to withdraw or invest based on a client’s particular circumstances.
Also, I juggle a lot of proposals for individuals interested in retaining our firm’s services. This involves analyzing existing assets and coming up with a tax sensitive transition strategy that will help the individual meet their long term and short term financial goals as well as factoring in their personal convictions surrounding investing, like ESG, dividend focused strategies, and guaranteed income options through annuities just to name a few.
Cons
It’s not champagne and roses all the time! Challenges in this job include troubleshooting with technology to get more flexibility with our trading algorithms and reporting systems and working with our broker dealer’s due diligence and compliance to add new investment products to our offering lineup. Also, wealth management/financial planning firms function as small businesses and if there’s a problem with payroll, the copier, computers, etc we have to roll up our sleeves and fix it.
Pros
The pros greatly outweigh the cons – I have a great deal of autonomy in coming up with the most creative and best ways to solve our clients problems and set them up for success. As a small business, we have a choice in who we work with and hire very selectively so working every day with amazing colleagues (and clients!) has made my role truly enjoyable.
