Next Generation Planner: January 2023
WHO: Anora Gaudiano, CFP®
WHAT: Assistant Vice President, Wealthspire Advisors
WHAT'S ON HER MIND: “If you’re coming from a place where you think you know
everything, change your attitude.”
Before she became a financial planner, recently recognized by Financial Planning magazine as a 2022 Rising Star, Anora Gaudiano was a financial journalist.
“Most of my previous adult life was spent as a journalist because that’s what I was trained to do. My first foray into financial journalism was joining the Financial Times. When I got my job there, it felt like something out of this world because I dreamed [of it]. It was the top paper for me, and they hired me. I landed at the markets desk, so I had to edit a lot of stories about markets and investing. That opened my eyes on all the things that I had no idea about. I felt very fortunate and privileged to be in that space.”
As a journalist, she had a front-row view of the finance industry, but after a few years with Financial Times and later MarketWatch, she started to want a closer connection with the people impacted by financial services.
“What drew me to financial planning is that the more I talked to people who were my sources and advisers themselves, it was very heartening to hear them always connect money to the actual people. As a journalist, when you write about markets, we try to personalize it; to anthropomorphize it so it looks like a living, breathing thing because behind every market move, there’s an actual person buying and selling something. I wanted to be in that space. I wanted to advise people, I wanted to tell them what’s the best decision for them going forward and what kind of mistakes not to make. When you write about markets, it’s very day-to-day. Now at my job I tell people ‘Don’t look at [the markets]. Look at your accounts maybe once a quarter if you really want to be on top of things, but twice a year probably will be fine.’
“There was another aspect of whenever I told people I’m a journalist that writes about markets, people would just always ask me, ‘What should I invest in?’ as if I was this expert and would give them a stock tip. I can’t give you a stock tip because I don’t sit and analyze 5,000 stocks, but I would end up giving advice unofficially to people about saving, being disciplined and all that, and I liked that aspect.”
Although Anora had experience covering financial markets and was eager to begin working with people, making the transition from financial journalist to financial planner wasn’t necessarily easy.
“Even though I had a master’s degree and I considered myself pretty knowledgeable in this area, it still wasn’t enough. There’s the designation, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, and it became pretty clear early on that if you want to be taken seriously in this business, you have to have that designation. To get that designation, you have to do more studying, so I went back to school.”
For career changers who are coming to financial planning while balancing full-time jobs, family responsibilities, and personal lives, that can be a significant investment. Applying for jobs can be a frustrating process for anyone, but it might be especially fraught for someone leaving an established career.
“All of a sudden, you’re vulnerable. You’re trying to leave a career where you’re considered an expert in certain things, and then you’re trying to get into a place where people will look at you as a newbie, somebody who’s not experienced. You have to swallow that pride a little bit and say, ‘Yes, I’m ready to do that. If it means a pay cut, I’m ready for a pay cut. If it means that I have to work with and learn from people who are younger than me, so be it.’ There was a learning curve when I first joined my current job and started out as an associate adviser, supporting a lot of other advisers. I was learning from my other colleagues who are also associate advisers, and that was a very different pace. You make mistakes, and when you make mistakes, it’s very personal because you’re working with clients and the mistakes that you make impact the client. . . . Everybody makes mistakes, and especially when you’re starting out, you do something thinking that’s the right thing to do, but apparently it wasn’t. I’ve been doing this for more than four years. I work with clients—I am now in an advisory role. I have other younger associates who I’m training and showing them the ropes and teaching them how to do this right and how to become advisers. So it’s very rewarding.”
Personal accountability to clients added a kind of pressure that wasn’t present as a journalist, but there were lessons from Anora’s previous career that help in her new role. Being immersed in the financial world made learning the investing side much easier.
“Being able to work on a deadline was very helpful. In my current job, I have deadlines, but they’re slightly longer term. You can plan for things. You have meetings where nothing happens abruptly, there’s no breaking news. If you have a meeting with a client, it’s happening at least a week from now, so you have time to prepare for it and you better be prepared for it. The whole point is that clients expect us to know everything, to be on top of things. They have a question, and they expect us to know the answer. Being able to work under pressure is extremely helpful.”
Anora pointed out that financial services is a service industry. Planners have an obligation to clients and have to do right by them.
“If you love working with people, if you love helping people, this is a very rewarding career. . . . It’s a service industry, so you have to be somewhat on call all the time. It’s not that you can’t take vacations . . . but you better make sure that you know how to work in teams. Make sure that you have your team and have that very good working relationship with your team members. . . . If you’re coming from a place where you think you know everything, change your attitude.
“Every life decision is a market decision. It’s great that you’re getting married or you’re having a baby, but there’s some sort of planning to do. Once you get the baby, what does it cost you? People think that [financial planning is] all about your return rate, and that’s not what this is about. Yes, we build portfolios and make sure that the portfolios have appropriate risk allocation, all of that, but it’s more about planning. It’s more about whether they can afford something, whether they should be saving more. Money doesn’t just grow; somebody has to save it.”