The 2020 IA25: Christine Benz
Morningstar’s director of personal finance says advisors should serve as sifters of news and information during the pandemic.
Christine Benz is Morningstar’s director of personal finance and the author of “30-Minute Money Solutions: A Step-by-Step Guide to Managing Your Finances.” The prolific writer has been with Morningstar for over 14 years and has almost 12,000 Twitter followers.
Top Advice
Events are unfolding so quickly and so are policies designed to assist people who are facing economic hardship as the result of COVID-19 — policies related to small businesses, unemployment, taxes and retirement planning.
These are all complicated issues, so one of the greatest services that advisors can provide at this time is to sift through newly available information and help their clients determine what, if any, implications there are for them.
Biggest Challenge
One of my biggest challenges right now is striking the right balance in my work.
On the one hand, I recognize the importance of keeping people informed; they’re quite reasonably concerned about their health, their jobs and their portfolios.
But success in investing means playing the long game; it rarely involves reacting to the short-term news flow. So I’m trying to strike the right balance in my work and trying to help investors do so, as well.