Financial Planning as a Hipster
Indie investors look beyond the mainstream
I may lose a few of you with this one, for reasons that will soon become clear.
This is about my love of an unpopular band. It was the year 2000. I’m in high school and I’m becoming interested in the world outside my Oak Park / River Forest bubble on the outskirts of Chicago. This was before social media and the Internet really became pervasive, so you had to do your research manually, usually in person. In this instance the venue was the CD section at my local Borders Books and Music. In those days, you could sample the merchandise at a listening station by donning a set of chunky, plug-in headphones and selecting one of the albums on display.
One album cover depicting two mysterious looking girls holding books immediately caught my eye and I knew I had to hear it. The band was called Belle & Sebastian. Intriguing. The title was Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant. Unbelievable. I let the headphones envelope my ears, and inhale the Pavlovian aromas of coffee, scones and mass printed pulp. I push play and my conscience explodes.
Maybe that’s putting too fine a point on it, but suffice it to say I instantly fell for these gentle Glaswegian indie rockers. Their juxtaposition of French horns, harpsichords and string arrangements with electric guitar and bass was like a modern incarnation of the melodic chamber pop pioneered in the 1960’s. Think of The Beatles, Burt Bacharach, Brian Wilson and Lieber & Stoller, but post-grunge 90’s alternative. This rich orchestration served as backdrop for narrative lyrics that that read like the cringe-adjacent rough draft of a BFA workshop assignment. They were hipsters before being a hipster went mainstream. (Which is by definition the most hipster sentence in the English language.)
And yet despite 30 years of fairly consistent critical appreciation, B&S have always been commercially mid. Almost no one at school knew they existed, and if they did, were not out and proud about it. While they’re probably not struggling financially, they’re also not selling out stadiums or going viral in cultural awareness. Their biggest general audience exposure was probably getting skewered by Jack Black’s music snob character in the 2000 classic High Fidelity (another movie about a music store for those keeping track) or a cameo appearance on The Simpsons when the family visits Scotland. Taylor Swift, they are not.
While I continue to enjoy Belle & Sebastian all these years later, I recognize their orchestral modern rock songs not suitable for everyone. That’s OK. I know they’re a musically sophisticated, lyrically evocative band that bring joy to music critics and dedicated fans alike. I’m always happy to share a mutual appreciation, but I’m not typically filling party playlists with toneful songs about riot grrrls reading Marx and Engels in the laundromat.
Record scratch: and that’s how I approach financial planning.
There are a lot of big financial firms and product manufacturers out there. No shade on them at all. You don’t get big without doing a lot of things right. However, the mere fact of being big is not enough to tell you if the firm or product is right for you. Sometimes a lesser known, niche option is the right one. Or a smaller, independent firm that is built to spend more time with individual clients who look like you, as opposed to some other target demographic.
One especially large life insurance firm comes to mind. I won’t say which one. Let’s just call it Southeastern Mutual. Southeastern has a huge presence in the market, between its Super Bowl ads and an army of agents prowling the halls of every major hospital, law firm and corporate park, looking for clients and asking to be introduced to their third cousins and friends of a friend of a friend. A lot of people buy their policies. Like, a lot a lot. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with their products, they’re just not always the best available option for every person. And worse, they’re sometimes sold the wrong way to the wrong people. But the company has strong name recognition and they objectively do a ton of business.
A lot of clients are perfectly suited for Southeastern Mutual. A lot of people feel a kindred connection with Taylor Swift. I will openly confess that more than once a Taylor Swift song has burrowed its way into my head and played there on a loop for over a week straight. She’s undeniably talented. But Belle & Sebastian is tailored to my sensibilities, so they click for me more than TSwift. For those with unique financial needs, it’s probably worth “discovering” unique financial advisors and products. What they lack in economies of scale may be more than outweighed by economies of suitability.
And if that makes me a financial hipster, then hand me a fedora and let me drink my IPA in peace.
Hartz does it again
The fact that you reference a fedora as being hipster has your older millennial showing. It’s all about showing off that mullet now, my bud.