Bank Investment Consultant
While most advisers are trying their hardest to attract high-net-worth clients, Harry Truman (no relationship to the former U.S. president), a financial adviser who works out of Broadway National Bank in San Antonio, is recruiting new clients who he knows cannot afford his services.
Advisers often do local charity work as a way of getting known and meeting wealthy prospects. But Mr. Truman’s beneficiaries probably will never have enough assets to justify his time.
A retired U.S. Army officer, he donates his services to help soldiers wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan budget for themselves and their families when their injuries are severe enough to force them out of the military. (The military calls this being “separated.”)
“In my opinion, the military does a good job keeping soldiers on active duty [i.e., full pay] while they’re in rehab before it decides to separate them,” Mr. Truman said. “And it keeps soldiers in counseling long after that through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.”
Nonetheless, some soldiers are so severely injured that they can no longer serve in the military. Depending on their injuries, soldiers may receive up to $100,000 of insurance payouts plus ongoing VA benefits and, in extreme cases, Social Security payments.
“The rules are always changing, but I’ll see what they’re entitled to from the VA and the military, and I’ll make sure they get the higher of the two,” Mr. Truman said.
Injured soldiers often can get insurance for their families through Tricare Prime, a military health maintenance organization, and they are entitled to personal medical care through the VA.
Though they rarely have enough money to start even a section 529 plan, Social Security will provide some money toward a child’s education up to the age of 22 if the parent is severely disabled.
Mr. Truman can afford this pro bono work because of the 265 healthy military clients he serves, officers and civilian contractors to the military for whom he manages $25 million, most of it for retirees and rollovers for people switching jobs within the military.
He said he had no interest in prolonging his Army career after 24 years. In 1968, as a recent college graduate, he enlisted in the Army to avoid being drafted. As a college graduate, he was sent to officer candidate school before taking a post in the Artillery Division.
He completed one combat tour in Vietnam and was reassigned to a post in the United States, where he later oversaw marketing and sales to allies during Operation Desert Storm. He retired from the Army in 1992, but hated his subsequent job, as a contractor to the government in Washington.
When a friend suggested he try financial services, Truman found a passion for personal finance. He took a job at a credit union, working with Pentagon staff members, but was reassigned to San Antonio to work with military clients.
After a stint with “a major brokerage firm,” he signed on with the third-party marketer Investment Professionals about a year and a half ago. As their representative, he works out of Broadway National Bank, a community bank whose primary base is San Antonio and Austin. Its Eisenhower Bank has branches at major military installations in the area.
Many of the clients he signs up on military bases move away, but since he is licensed in a lot of states, he can keep in touch through e-mail, phone, and mail.
In an industry driven by a constant stream of revenue, though, Mr. Truman has his work cut out for him if he is to continue to take on about 20% of his clients for free. He concedes that it takes a great deal of juggling to balance the paying and nonpaying advice, but to him, the effort is worth it.
“I spend a lot of my time working for free,” he said. “The service aspect motivates me more than the money. I get in at 6:30 a.m. and start working on my nonprofits. I try real hard to schedule working for free around my paying business.”
However, Mr. Truman says he will sometimes adjust his schedule in favor of wounded soldiers over paying clients, and he does what he can to keep them from feeling like second-class citizens.
“I don’t want them to be thought of the way we were thought of after Vietnam,” he said. “You find ways to arrange your schedule to accommodate them.”
Interestingly, Mr. Truman had a struggle just to gain access to the wounded soldiers he felt compelled to help. He spent a long time trying through the Financial Planning Association to get involved with the Fisher House Foundation, which runs a series of nonprofit recovery facilities that house injured soldiers and their families through the rehabilitation process, but he was not having any luck. Mr. Truman’s eventual break came through his bank.
He kept talking with the branch staff about wanting to help wounded soldiers, and it just so happened that the head teller at his home branch knew the manager at Fisher House in Fort Sam Houston. The manager was able to get him an appointment with the organization’s administrators, who allowed him in to talk to soldiers about their finances.
Mr. Truman was able to approach Army brass about working with soldiers in the base’s Brooke Army Medical Center. He explained that he wanted to provide wounded soldiers with financial planning services at no cost — conversations that typically cover debt, investing, long-term planning, insurance, and financing. He was granted access to the hospital, which specializes in treating burns and rehabilitating soldiers who have lost either their limbs or the use of their limbs while on active duty.
Since Mr. Truman has worked actively with these soldiers only for about a year, his completed cases are few, though he is looking forward to some interesting projects.
Mr. Truman said he does his best to create a budget a family can stick with, augmented with money from local charities.
“In many instances, the best I can do is to stop them from getting more heavily into debt by finding them financial relief,” he says.
He hopes planners will join him, and he is working on an educational series for his pro bono clients.
