Tacky pickup lines of planners
Walt Disney once said, “Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.” So, it is in this spirit that I share some tacky pickup lines of financial planners but with a twist.
1. “Are you a diversified portfolio? Because you have got everything I’m looking for.” Harry Markowitz, the father of Modern Portfolio Theory or MPT said that people do not necessarily hold on to just one stock. He said that diversification is the only free lunch in finance. He meant that by allocating an investment portfolio across different assets that do not move in perfect sync, an investor can afford lower risk without sacrificing expected returns.
2. “You must be compound interest—because my feelings for you keep growing exponentially.” Compounding means that the interest or realized capital appreciation earned in one period is combined with the principal invested for that period and then positioned to earn potentially higher interest or capital appreciation in the following period. The end result is an exponential growth in income or capital appreciation on the principal.
3. “Are you a blue-chip stock? Because you are reliable, stable and always in demand.” In poker, blue-colored chips had the highest value compared to white or red chips. By the 1920s, US stock traders began using “blue chip” as slang for financially stable and reliable companies otherwise known as the “safe bets.” The slang stuck. Today, blue-chip refers to large, well-established and financially sound companies with a track record of stable earnings and paying cash dividends.
4. “I would never put you in a high-risk investment … but I would invest all my time in you.” High-risk investments are the opposite of the chips. While offering potentially higher returns, high-risk investing requires strong risk tolerance, thorough research and due diligence, a diversification strategy, clear investment goals and exit strategy, only capital that the risk taker can afford to lose, emotional discipline and knowledge of risk management tools. Most of all, high-risk investing requires continuous monitoring.
5. “Are you my retirement plan? Because I can’t stop picturing a future with you.” In a previous article, I wrote that retirement planning is not dead in the Philippines because it was never alive to begin with. Very few people prepare for retirement. But if they did, they will almost always picture a long and healthy life after years of grinding away at work and wasting away in the to and from commute.
6. “You must be tax-advantaged, because being with you feels like a huge deduction.” In his 1789 letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Earlier, however, in The Political History of the Devil (1726), Daniel Defoe wrote about “things as certain as death and taxes.” At least on planet earth, life is also certain. It is just that man’s loss aversion makes him focus on the negative, death and taxes. That is why, at least for taxes, he finds ways and means to legally avoid and not to evade them.
7. “Are you liquidity? Because you make everything flow so smoothly.” In finance, liquidity refers to how quick and easy an asset can be sold for cash within one year without any significant negative impact on its value. Liquidity is also a characteristic of short-term assets. Liquidity takes on a slightly different meaning in personal finance. A person is said to be liquid if, even if he is not earning anymore, he has more than enough short-term assets (that is, assets that can be sold for cash without negatively impacting their value significantly) to pay off his short-term debt (that is, the amount of cash needed to zero out debt immediately).
How about you? Do you have your own financial planner pickup line?
