Life of A Financial Planner

Entrepreneurial leaders do not have a mindset that adapts to failure. Things go wrong, of course, but entrepreneurs don´t call them "failures" they call them "glitches, mistakes, bungles, setbacks" – but not failing.

When one such entrepreneur was asked about the hardest decision he ever had to make, he answered that he didn´t know what a hard decision was. An entrepreneur will approach decision-making with the idea that there´s a strong likelihood that he/she will be wrong. This doesn´t dissuade them – to the contrary they just do the best they can and worry about handling obstacles as they arise.

Here's a few entrepreneurs:

The Dollar Stretcher.com is a site designed to help people take control of their money! We've been helping people achieve their financial goals since 1996. Each week over 200,000 readers get our enewsletters and another 250,000 visit the website.

How do we help readers with their finances? By providing lots of practical information. We add new ideas on our website every day and a whole new front page each week. Our library contains thousands of articles on specific money-saving concepts and we have site search from any page on the site. Readers can can sign up for one of our enewsletters and have great ideas delivered regularly. We also have an active Community where people share their money-saving ideas.

Gary Foreman www.TheDollarStretcher.com

I am a professional money manager who employs a defensive approach to investing. I recognize that no one can consistently predict the future, but everyone can control their risk. To that end I use stop losses on every position we invest in and have used stops for almost two decades. We use technical and fundamental analysis on our security selection which helps us determine what and when to buy, but also helps set risk / reward parameters. We look for a 3 : 1 reward to risk ratio which helps us predetermine where we will place our "stop loss" before entering a position. This helps us avoid taking big losses, which is why we have done so well over the last couple years of this bear market. We were 100% in cash going into Labor Day 2008. That is documented and has helped me grow my business through this tough environment. Only now are investors waking up to the benefits of using stop losses to protect their portfolios. Many times in client contact I use sports metaphors. The best one in today's environment is that defense wins championships! That is also true when it comes to investing - because in the end it is not what you make, but rather what you keep.

I also use "position sizing" as an absolute requirement for risk management. We place no more than 10% of our portfolio's value on any one position as a maximum investment. A position can organically grow to more than 10% of the portfolio, but not more than 10% can be invested. We usually pyramid (the correct use of dollar cost averaging) into winning positions, starting with 3-5% investment of the portfolio value and only adding to positions going up until we get to a 10% full position. We have three portfolios that we manage; Growth, Balanced, and Income and employ our defensive style to all three. We mostly use ETF's, having caught onto the ETF growth scene much earlier than most professional advisors, but do still use individual stocks and some Closed End Funds on occasion. I hosted a call in radio program for six years here in Southern California and currently host my own program - Money Talks streaming on internet radio. I have been quoted in many National media publications and currently write for Greenfaucet.com and IndexUniverse.com.

Jerry Slusiewicz www.pfpinvest.com

The Provision Group is the only Pittsburgh-area company that specializes in two of the most important aspects that make up your life: Your Career and Your Money. We work with individuals as Financial Coaches to help them incorporate financial principles into their life. This includes, how to save for an emergency fund, get out of debt, save for retirement or college funding, and how to invest and build wealth.

As part of our Career Coaching, The Provision Group helps people craft a resume that reflects who they are, what they've accomplished, and where they want to go - not just what they did in previous jobs. Once that resume sets the individual apart from the other candidates, we coach them on how to have a flawless interivew. Owner, Ed Burns is also the author of Why Won't They Hire Me?(The Blue-Collar Guide to Resume Writing and Interviewing.)

Megan Burns www.theprovisiongroup.webs.com