Let’s be honest–there’s a lot of snobbery in finance, and a lot of camps look down on other camps. Hierarchy is built into the structure of the industry, from CEO to junior analyst, and everyone knows their place in a caste system as rigid as any medieval European fiefdom. And that is part of the game; finance is an industry where you start at the bottom, work hard (in some cases, inhumanely hard), and progress to the next level. The purpose of the hierarchy, in many ways, is to progress up it.
But that doesn’t mean the hierarchy is correct, or that one should aspire to get to the top rung. In fact, there are many niches in finance where the hierarchical view does not work, and a more independent and entrepreneurial spirit matters more.
Financial advisory is perhaps the archetype of this kind of niche. Simply put, an advisor provides advice and guidance to individual clients, creating financial plans, providing suggestions on future investments or portfolio allocations, and (perhaps most importantly) helping the client survive complicated tax issues, major market downturns, and the psychological stress both provide.
This is not the sort of masters-of-the-universe territory that many fantasize about when imagining a career in high finance–and we haven’t even talked about the sales side, which is both grueling and often demoralizing! But a successful financial advisor can not only build up a stable of loyal clients, but also a level of independence and financial rewards that are hard to come by in other corners of the financial world.
The median compensation for a financial advisor in the U.S. was $87,850 in 2019, but there are many who earn several millions annually thanks to a group of followers who closely follow and admire their advisor’s insights and wisdom. At this level being an advisor becomes very fun; you have a cadre of friends who pay you to hang out with them, you have a captive audience of wealthy and influential people who respect your ideas, and you have the opportunity to write your ideas and theories to a captive audience with as much or little external oversight as you want. Many financial advisors, when they have a large enough clientele, can go independent from their employer, receiving higher income and less management, while also suddenly being freed from an office and able to travel the world on a whim (at least, when world travel is possible).
The money, freedom, and satisfaction such a job can provide are hard to replicate in investment banking or even in the world of hedge funds/private equity. Yet the job is not seriously talked about (and rarely talked about in the covetous terms reserved for hedge fund portfolio managers, for instance). It should not be ignored as an option for a particular personality type that enjoys working with people, enjoys mixing work and personal life, and enjoys being at the center of a debate between people of different walks of life about the future of markets and the economy.