Moneywise24 Personal Finance

For some time now, my interest in finance has steadily increased. I had even thought about a complete change of career, and to become a financial advisor, asset manager, portfolio manager, or similar. However, I recently stumbled over a very short article at Health.com, demonstrating why a career as a financial advisor belongs among the top 10 careers with high rates of depression.

Stress

Financial Advisors have stress, a lot of stress. One part of the stress comes from the quantity of work; imagine all the work involved to get all your own finances on track, and imagine doing this for many customers simultaneously. But perhaps even more stressful is the fact, that financial advisors are literally dealing with hundreds of thousands, even millions or Dollars. This is a great responsibility, which financial advisors have, and knowing that is stressful enough.

Lack of market control

Financial advisors have no control of the market, yet they are expected to make a profit for their customers at all times. Since I am not a financial advisor myself, I cannot elaborate on this too much, but having worked for a call center I can confirm that angry customers can get very ugly, if their own interests are not being met according to their standards. These standards can sometimes be far away from reasonable.

Surely, for a customer it is unpleasant to know that he/she has just lost a few million Dollars due to a financial crisis, but for a financial advisor it can be much more unpleasant actually bringing the bad news. We hear about dubious financial advisors and asset managers, who have gambled away some customers’ small fortunes… but it should not be forgotten that there are so many serious financial advisors, who have still lost their clients’ fortunes due to unforeseen events. Still many of them are being prosecuted. Many experts in the finance and banking industry committed suicide, as they could not live with the consequences.

Management pressure

Isn’t it stressful to know, that sometimes the company you work for does not want you to publish a certain advise, although you know that you are right? The reason behind this is, that companies sometimes have a stake in a particular investment. Any negative advise on that investment could jeopardize their share.

I have heard some anonymous stories from portfolio managers and asset managers, who were fired by their employers because they published the ‘wrong’ advice… and in the end they proved to be right.

A profession as a financial advisor, or a finance specialist surely is exciting and demanding. However, different factors contribute, that this profession is one of the most stressful and demanding professions in the business arena. The suicide rate in bad times is often exploding, and the responsibility can be enormous. Still, career perspectives in this area can be excellent, but it isn’t for the fainthearted.