The best financial advisor not only has great knowledge and great tools but, most importantly, has your best interest at heart. A great financial advisor is humble and will acknowledge his/her limitations and direct you to someone who will take care of a need he/she can’t service effectively. 

To be financially successful, clients must first spend less than they make. 

Market timing is dubious but that doesn’t mean you can’t lean towards opportunities.

• “Let me be clear on one point; I can’t predict the short-term movements of the market.  I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month--or a year--from now.  What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher . . . well before either sentiment or the economy turn up.  So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.”  - Warren Buffet, October 2008
• “It’s impossible to produce a superior return unless you do something different from the majority.” - Sir John Templeton

Active & Passive (indexing) management have benefits.

• Markets are not so efficient that a good investment manager cannot take advantages of inefficiencies while overcoming the cost for his or her expertise. 
• Good managers can help reduce correlation to markets.
• Index funds have their place due to low cost and tax efficiency. 

Diversification is important.

• The only investors who shouldn’t diversify are those who are right 100% of the time.”  - Sir John Templeton
• “You can get rich by under diversifying, but you cannot stay rich by under diversifying.”  - Nick Murray

Equities should be a primary part of everyone’s portfolio because they have proven to be the safest way to outpace inflation over the long-run.

Market volatility can be good.

• Volatility is good, not bad, because it provides an opportunity to buy quality investments at a discount.
• “If you keep your head when all about you are losing theirs . . . Yours is the world and everything in it.”  - Rudyard Kipling
• I believe dollar cost averaging is one of the most important tools to financial success, therefore, everyone should do it.  It provides discipline (which most of us lack enough of) and takes advantage of volatility.

Wisdom is more important than information.

• We don’t have access to much more information than any of our client’s but--due to the complexity of our society which necessitates the need for us all to be specialists—our clients lack the time, knowledge, or wisdom to transform that information into a productive plan for their future.  
• “Where is the wisdom we lost in knowledge?  Where is the knowledge we lost in information?” - T.S. Eliot
• “What you don’t know keeps you poor.”  - Robert Kiyosaki’s father

We’re generalists.

• Investing money is only a part of a Financial Advisor’s job.  The overarching job is to help clients accomplish what is important to them.
• “Jack of all trades, master of none, though ofttimes better than master of one.”  Saying

Focusing on the controllable and knowable will make us more successful.

• “The more concerned we become over the things we can’t control, the less we will do with the things we can control.”  - Coach John Wooden
• “Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.”  Ecclesiastes 11:4

Understanding risk is more important than understanding returns.

The longest distance between two points is a “shortcut”

Not knowing or forgetting the past is a sure-fire way of stumbling in the future.

Time in the market, not timing the market, matters most.

• “Though the stock market functions as a voting machine in the short term, it acts as a weighing machine in the long run.”  - Benjamin Graham

Investor Behavior is far more important than market performance

• Investment success usually requires not doing what comes naturally.
• The most successful investors are the most patient and disciplined ones.
• When the time comes to sell, you won’t want to.
• “History teaches that both investment managers and clients need help if they are to hold successfully to the discipline of long-term commitments. This means restraining themselves from reacting inappropriately to disconcerting short-term data and keeping themselves from taking those unwise actions that seem so ‘obvious’ and urgent to optimists at market highs and to pessimists at market lows.”  -  Charles Ellis author of Winning the Loser’s Game

Technology is a tool to help us accomplish our goals more efficiently when in the hands of a great craftsman.

• "Remember, technology is a great servant, but a terrible master."  – Stephen Covey
• “One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.  No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” - Elbert Hubbard (Author)
• “If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.” - Omar Bradley (General, US Army)