5 Things to Ask Yourself Before Picking Up the Tab for Your Child’s College Education

Trilogy Financial, with over $2 billion in client assets one of the largest financial planning firms affiliated with National Planning Corp., said on Thursday afternoon it was joining LPL Financial.

LPL in mid-August said it acquired the assets of National Planning Holdings Inc., an independent broker-dealer network with 3,200 advisers and $120 billion of client assets. The firms in the NPH network are: National Planning, Invest Financial Corp., Investment Centers of America Inc. and SII Investments Inc. Combined in 2016, they generated $909 million in revenues, according to InvestmentNews data.

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Written by: Matthew Phillips | The last words of the email stood out the most. “… the thing is … we are deaf.” This is how the prospective client closed her message to me in 2017.

When I agreed to meet with the woman and her husband, I was feeling uncertain about how to best communicate with them. To prepare, I added captions to my usual video presentation. But halfway through, I realized the couple was completely overwhelmed with the financial vocabulary I was using, which was entirely new to them. Improvising, I pulled up a blank Word document and started typing which allowed us to converse back and forth. I felt completely inadequate and regretted not preparing more, but did my best to connect with the couple.

To my surprise, the meeting concluded with the wife rejecting my handshake and instead grabbing onto me tightly as she began to cry. “Matthew, thank you for what you have done,” she said. “We have sat with five advisors, and none have come close to helping us like you have. I know we have missed out on financial opportunities because we are deaf.”

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