eMoney to RightCapital: "A Night-and-Day Difference"

Nicole Burdick: I had just gone through a lot of transitions last year, or in the last two years, joining a new broker dealer. And initially I was like, no unnecessary changes. If it's working, it's not broken, not going to try to fix it.

And then I was connected with a lot of my peers who had been long-term eMoney users, and they were like, oh my gosh, you have to do RightCapital. It's a night-and-day difference. And I talked to enough people that said that. I was like, you're competent, you know eMoney. So this isn't a case where you misread how the company works. You used eMoney for a long time, and you're saying RightCapital's way more efficient.

I needed RightCapital because I was now on my own, and I needed to have efficiencies. And because my brand was a big part of what I'm doing, I wanted to be able to brand the program, so people think it's my program that I made or something, because it's pink on my client portal. So talking with those people and hearing them say, we were with eMoney, RightCapital's so much better.

I basically set up an appointment with the salesperson and sold myself. I was like, I've heard this is really great, and this is really great, and this is really good. Are these things all really true? And I feel like I took him off guard, because it was like I was just doing his job for him. I'm ready.

You're going to be using a financial planning program for a long time, and if the one you're with is not the right fit, then you're going to have to change eventually. And the sooner you do that, the fewer clients you're changing over. So if you decide that a different program like RightCapital is the right one, then it's kind of like changing jobs. There's not going to be an easy time. It's never going to be ideal, it's never going to be natural. But if you decide that's the right fit for you, then you just need to start making a plan to do that. You need to staff up or carve out some space in your calendar to do the data transfer.

I would recommend talking to peers that have transitioned from the program they're currently using to RightCapital and see how it went for them, because it's a lot more powerful to hear it from your own peers. I was with the program you're with, and then I transitioned, here's how it went, this is why it's worth it. For me, the program I was coming from, going to RightCapital, that was what sold me. So I would recommend doing that, talking to peers.

Nicole Burdick: I have one client in particular who helps me stretch the limits of the software. She's always like, where does this number come from? How did you get this? Why is it doing this? And I'm like, I don't know, I'll go find out. And I brought her into RightCapital and she's like, this is so much better. I'm like, good, because I'm not going back.

I think it's just helping my clients feel more organized, and it's easier for them to know where their money is and what they're supposed to be doing. I think my clients are more organized, they're becoming more aware. Also, the user friendliness of it takes a lot off of my plate, so that's also helpful. It helps me provide better service and focus on what I need to be focusing on.

I have one story of a very close family member that I've worked with. At some point they either read a book or met with an advisor who told them, this is what you need to do starting now in order to retire 30 years from now. And he just looked at it and he was like, there is no way. It was more than he could afford to do. So he basically did the ostrich thing. He was just like, there's no point in trying, because I'm not on track and I can't do what I need to do to get on track, so I'm not going to bother trying.

And I was able to run a financial plan for them and show them, you have no idea how much your living expenses and your ability to live on a small budget — you don't know how big of an impact that's going to have on your plan. For him, I was able to run it and factor in Social Security, their mortgage getting paid off before they retire, a very small pension, all those things. And for the first time, in his late fifties, early sixties, he actually felt like there was hope and it was worth trying, because he was like, there's a chance.

So I feel like if you can get the software to visualize that for someone, for them to feel like, you're actually pretty close to having it work out, or to see in just the little slider, this is a small tweak that you need to make and it'll change your financial situation by so much — it's pretty powerful.

Nicole Burdick: I like that RightCapital had more student loan functionality. I feel like it's been a huge shortcoming in the financial planning industry as a whole, just not focusing on that. It's almost like they think there are good clients that have all this money and no debt, and then there are bad clients that have all this debt and no money. There's a lot of people that have both. There's lawyers and doctors and veterinarians and all sorts of people that earn a lot of money and they're not debilitated by their student loans. Maybe they are, but with their student loans, they also have assets, or at least they have income. Maybe they haven't built up their investments yet.

But if you have a financial planning focused practice where you can charge for financial planning, you can bill hourly to give advice on student loans. And for a lot of those people, if they have more student loans than they have investments, the advice you give related to that student loan debt is going to be significantly more impactful than the advice you give on their investments. RightCapital is able to look at those things because it has a student loan function.

Also, there's people that are older that have student loans, but I feel like my practice is more focused on my generation and the generation one generation older than me. So that's also important — as I'm doing more fee-based financial planning, that I can have the capability to address the number one, number two, number three concern for a lot of them with student loans. Even just being able to call into RightCapital and have a conversation around student loans and have them understand what I'm talking about. There's not a lot of understanding and awareness around student loans in some other companies, because I don't think that they see the profit.

Nicole Burdick: I think the visual aesthetic of it is a lot easier to navigate, for one. I also like all the visualizations. I like the Blueprint function. I love that, because for a lot of people, one of the stressful things about money is they feel like they don't know where their money is. If they have all these statements lined up, or a chart with all these graphs on it, they're like, I don't know what's going on. But the Blueprint, where you have shared assets, and your name, and their name, investments, assets, insurance — you take that page and it's like, this is literally my financial life in one page. And the way the dashboard works, you can basically print that and it's like a one-page financial plan.

I like the ability to customize the dashboard so you can have what you want to show up, show up. I like being able to have the tasks at a glance there, and also having clients get those reminders so I don't have to try to remember to be like, did you upload that thing yet? Did you reach out to the attorney about getting your will done? Did you call your HR about that benefit that we weren't sure about? So that's really great.

There's a lot of features that other programs have, but I feel like the ability to organize the data and see it in a way that makes sense is one of the differentiating factors of RightCapital compared to others. Every advisor is going to have a different thing they want to focus on, like which graphs are plugged in. For a lot of my clients, I don't want to have the likelihood of retirement success on there, because it's so far away and it's not very close to a hundred percent. So I don't have that be a main thing that shows up, and we focus more on the things that we need to do to head in the right direction and get those things going.

Keeping that in mind when I'm doing planning for people, realizing every single additional click reduces the likelihood that they will finish what they were doing — so make it really easy. That's why I love the dashboard. You land on there and you can see everything. You can see your net worth, you can see your retirement Snapshot. It's a small part of the plan if you're only 35 years old, but you can see where that's at, you can see what things you're supposed to be working on, you can see your effective tax rate. It's all right there.