What to know about the people who can help manage and grow your money — including how they get paid.
My relationship with money has been one of intimacy. From the moment I began earning it, I preferred to keep my precious dollars where I could see them: easily accessible in my wallet or a bank, no cent left unaccounted. I probably would’ve stored all of my money in a sock under my mattress if such a practice wasn’t frowned upon. It should come as no surprise that I did not have a retirement account nor a credit card until well into my 20s.
Recognizing my relatively unsophisticated attitude toward saving, my tax preparer suggested I work with a financial planner in 2020. I wasn’t the stereotypical high-earning professional who I suspected frequented these financial experts; I was a full-time freelancer, one who did not make a ton of money, at that. But I wasn’t saving for retirement. Whatever cash I did have in savings wasn’t earning any interest.
Three years later, I have a SEP IRA, a brokerage account — both set up and managed by my financial planner — and a home, whose down payment came from the funds (and accrued interest) from the brokerage account. While I am still far from the savviest with money, working with a financial adviser helped bolster my confidence. If you’re considering the assistance of an expert when it comes to your cash, here’s what I wished I knew before sitting down with a financial planner myself.
What do financial planners do?
There are two commonly used terms for financial professionals: financial advisers and financial planners. Financial adviser is a generic term for anyone who gives financial advice, says wealth adviser and certified financial planner Leo Chubinishvili. Financial advisers could be insurance brokers, stock or bond brokers, or a financial coach.
Financial planners look at a client’s finances more holistically and help them manage their money and set financial goals for the future through detailed plans. They can assist with investing, retirement planning, life insurance, and budgeting. They are often certified by the CFP Board and will have passed an exam. “Some people may not know what to do with their money,” says Elizabeth Ayoola, a personal finance expert at NerdWallet. “That’s where a financial planner can come in and guide you along that process and give you advice about how to invest, advice on how to protect your money.” Ayoola recommends working with a financial planner over an adviser.
The financial planners will look at their client’s cash, assets, debt, and budget, ask them what their goals and values are, evaluate their financial well-being, and develop a plan, which may include investment, retirement savings, or life insurance planning. They’ll provide specific recommendations like “your investment portfolio should be invested this way because your time horizon is this long and your risk tolerance at this level,” Chubinishvili says. Financial planners will then monitor the plan and suggest adjustments based on changing goals and life circumstances, like buying a house, having children, or even, in my case, a pandemic. You’ll give them access to bank accounts to make trades or move money into different accounts.
Do I need a financial planner?
Perhaps you aren’t sure what your financial goals are or, like me, feel you don’t make enough money to warrant paying a pro for assistance. If you’re young and have fairly straightforward financial goals, like saving for retirement and have a retirement plan through your employer, you might not need to work with a financial planner, Ayoola says. Maybe you don’t want to actively invest and are looking for a lower-cost option. Robo-advisers — an automated digital investment platform, like Betterment and Wealthfront — can also be a good option, according to Ayoola. “You can put in what your goals are, what you want to achieve, and it automates everything for you and does all the work for you,” she says. “For people who don’t want to stress, don’t want to think about or keep checking their portfolio, robo-advisers can be a great alternative.”
But for people who are closer to retirement, have more complex finances (maybe you’re a freelancer or are combining finances with your spouse), or need a little assistance investing, a financial planner can help. “It’s not always just about having money,” says certified financial planner Stacy Miller of Bright Investments and a member of the National Association of Professional Finance Advisors Advisor Bureau. “It’s about a prospect not having the knowledge that they need. They need the advice. They need the expertise and the experience, and the planner is going to show them how to get that future financial security.”
Age and income shouldn’t deter anyone from working with a financial planner. While most of his clients are older, Chubinishvili recently began working with a woman in her early 20s, developing a plan to allocate money to retirement savings, another savings account, and a brokerage account.
How do I find a financial planner?
Experts agree the best way to find a financial planner is through a referral. Ask your family and friends if they work with a pro they’d recommend. My accountant referred me to my financial planner.
You can also search for a certified financial planner via online directories of CFPs or other financial advisers to find one near you, though some may work with clients remotely, too.
To help narrow down a search, decide if you want to work with a planner of a specific race, ethnicity, or gender. Always read reviews and check their qualifications as well: that they’re, ideally, a CFP, that they don’t have any disciplinary actions against them, and their investing strategy. You can find this info online by searching the individual and the firm on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s BrokerCheck program and the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website.
Chubinishvili suggests working with a financial planner who is a fiduciary, meaning they have a legal responsibility to act in your best interest, not their own. If you can’t determine if they’re a fiduciary from their website, just ask them. Chubinishvili also recommends independent advisers who don’t work with bigger companies who may have products or services they’re trying to sell.
Before entering into an agreement with a financial planner, schedule an introductory call to determine their style and whether it aligns with your goals — and your gut feeling. Ask them about their investing philosophy and how they’ve worked with other clients. After your first meeting, evaluate how well they were able to answer your questions or break concepts down into digestible terms. Did their investment strategy align with your financial goals? Do they have a process for ending relationships with clients? Can you trust and connect with them? Because they have access to your money, this should be a person you can have faith in.
How do financial planners get paid?
Financial planners get paid in one of two pay structures: fee-only and commission-based. Fee-only planners charge a flat fee for an hourly rate or a consistent percentage of the assets they manage for you, Ayoola says. Commission-based planners earn money when they sell a product, like insurance packages and mutual funds. “That can add up over time,” Ayoola says, “and the ideal thing is to keep costs low, because that money that you are paying extra on commissions could go towards investing or saving.”
Some financial planners may say they are “fee-based,” which Miller says is not the same as fee-only. Fee-based advisers may charge a flat fee but they can also receive commissions. “which means that the likelihood that they are also a fiduciary is very unlikely,” she says. “It’s hard to do what’s in the best interest of your client if you’re getting commission for making that choice.”
How involved should I be with my financial planner?
Your financial needs will dictate how often you’ll want to meet with your planner. If you’re nearing retirement or you came into an inheritance, you might want to meet with your financial planner more than someone who is at the beginning of their career and wants to start investing, Ayoola says. At the minimum, you should check in with your financial planner once a year to review your investments, budget, and how close you are to meeting your goals.
If you’re a more hands-off client, you can choose a financial planner solely for their advice, not the implementation of it, Miller says. “They say, here’s your advice, here’s what you need to do for investments, for retirement, or tax planning, estate planning.” You take that advice and run with it.
Should you want to end the relationship, check your contractual agreement with your planner to ensure you’re following proper protocol, Ayoola says. If there’s no set process, Chubinishvili says you can simply find another adviser and let your new one handle the transfer of information and accounts. You can also call your adviser and ask them to remove themselves as users authorized to move money from your accounts. “Now you just have a brokerage or retirement account,” Chubinishvili says. “And it’s self-managed.”
Just make sure you have a plan and advice for separating from your financial adviser, Miller says; you don’t want to face any taxes or penalties because you weren’t aware. For example, if you’re under 59-and-a-half years old and you pull all of your money out of a retirement account managed by an adviser you no longer want to work with, you will be taxed on that money and receive a penalty from the IRS.
Ultimately, these financial pros take a big-picture look at your financial life and goals and make suggestions based on where you are and where you want to be. Whether you’re a fledgling freelancer like I was, or an established professional with multiple investments, there’s utility in having a money person in your corner to answer all your calls and emails about interest and down payments.
What “Eris” tells us about the future of the pandemic
In the latest data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Covid-19 hospitalizations rose 12.5 percent between July 23 and July 29. Overall, they have been increasing since July 1.
And in the last week, there was a 10 percent increase in locations reporting their highest levels of SARS-CoV-2 ever in sewage wastewater (and that’s despite a decrease in the number of cities reporting the virus in their wastewater).
This is all to say: Covid-19 appears to be making a comeback. And what’s more, this summer uptick coincides with (but may not be caused by) a new dominant strain of the virus taking hold in the US. It’s called EG.5, unofficially nicknamed Eris, and the CDC estimates it’s causing 17.3 percent of current Covid-19 cases in the country. And it’s on the rise: Since the beginning of July, EG.5’s prevalence has increased 9.8 percent.
The EG.5 variant descended from the omicron variant, which caused an explosive outbreak in late 2021 and early 2022. Still, the World Health Organization (WHO) cites EG.5 as a variant “under monitoring” and not one of “interest” or “concern.”
Infectious disease experts tell Vox the new strain is worth paying attention to, but are cautious in saying how concerned we should be.
“Although the EG.5 variant apparently has a slight competitive advantage [over other strains] — and we’ve seen the number of cases go up slightly and the number of hospitalizations go up slightly — I don’t think there’s any reason to expect a massive wave like we saw with omicron,” said Rebecca Wurtz, an infectious disease physician and a professor of health policy and management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.
A new Covid-19 variant understandably puts a country ravaged by the virus on edge, but compared to the last three summers, Covid-19’s impact on the health care system in the US remains low.
As of now, if people keep up with prevention efforts, they should be able to stay safe, Ruth McDermott-Levy, a professor at the Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing at Villanova University, told Vox.
“I think we should be a little more alert,” McDermott-Levy said of the new variant. There are several reasons it’s unlikely to cause as bad of an outbreak as past variants. “But I think continue to be vigilant and pay attention.”
How severe and contagious is EG.5?
The symptoms of EG.5 don’t appear to differ much from other omicron subvariants. Infected individuals report cough, fever, chills, shortness of breath, fatigue, body aches, loss of taste or smell, and headaches, among other symptoms.
The WHO reports that EG.5 is not resulting in more cases or deaths than its predecessor, the XBB strain of omicron.
But it’s possibly more contagious than other strains.
“The fact that [EG.5] is emerging quickly suggests that it does have some slight competitive advantage,” said Wurtz. This advantage is likely that it’s slightly more contagious or more capable of evading existing immunity, but, she added, more data is needed to confirm.
The good news is that this strain likely won’t cause as big of a wave as past variants, said Maureen Miller, an epidemiologist with the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. That’s because there’s more widespread immunity to SARS-CoV-2 either from vaccines or natural infection. But still, not everyone is equally protected, depending on when they were last vaccinated or exposed. “The bad news is that these protections wane,” she added. Given winter waves of Covid-19 have historically been the largest, it’s vital that people check to see if they are up-to-date with their boosters.
The hurdles to understanding EG.5
While EG.5 does not appear to make people more ill, the reason for its prominence remains a mystery. Scientists do have genetic sequence data on EG.5 and have zeroed in on some of the mutations that set it apart from past variants, but they don’t know “exactly why this mutation confers an advantage,” Wurtz said.
One hurdle to understanding EG.5’s reach is the fact that there’s less outbreak data than earlier in the pandemic. As of August 8, the CDC only published NowCast estimates of the proportion of Covid-19 variants in areas in New York and the western and southeastern US. In the past (even as recently as early July), data was available for much of the US.
“As of May 11, the emergency response to Covid was lifted and that reduces funding” for the pandemic response, said McDermott-Levy. She noted that an increase in at-home testing could be contributing to the under-reporting. Also, she says, people might just be “tired” of Covid and therefore aren’t reporting cases. “But we’re reminded it’s not going to go away just because we’re tired of it.”
Thankfully, we’re not totally in the dark. The US has adopted some new approaches to understanding emerging strains, and “we have wastewater monitoring, which is a fantastic way to get a nonvoluntary, at-home sample of the entire population,” said Wurtz.
Wastewater surveillance involves states, cities, and tribal health departments testing wastewater for the presence and prevalence of the Covid-19 virus and reporting this data to the CDC. Despite some variance, overall there has been a rise in the areas reporting increasing rates of Covid-19 in their wastewater since early June.
How to protect yourself
Across the country, people have started returning to pre-pandemic ways, but McDermott-Levy, who is currently recovering from a Covid-19 infection she got from a family gathering, says the current upswing in cases is a reminder that we need to remain cautious.
“In retrospect, for my own case, I would have asked family members to test before they came. I used to do that,” she said. She also recommends practicing health habits, such as giving up smoking, to ensure your immune system is as strong as possible in case of infection.
All of the same Covid-19 prevention methods still apply. And the same groups are at highest risk for severe infection; the elderly, those with compromised immune systems, and those with chronic diseases, said Miller.
People should wear an N-95 mask, social distance when possible in public spaces, and keep up-to-date on vaccines and boosters. Soon, a new Covid-19 vaccine formula will be available. It’s specifically designed to protect against the XBB subvariants (EG.5 descends from XBB) and will hopefully work to reduce the severity of EG.5 infections, said McDermott-Levy.
These shots are especially important given the upcoming back-to-school and winter seasons. There is an under-discussed seasonality to Covid-19 infections that lines up with weather patterns, said Miller. “When it’s too cold outside, people are inside. When it’s too hot outside, people are inside,” she said. Because the virus thrives in spaces where people are in close proximity, this is a problem.
Unfortunately, EG.5 and other future variants are merely a piece of the post-Covid world, but we do have the technology needed to track the virus’s rapid evolution. And that’s helpful, despite there being less data on Covid-19 cases overall.
“It’s important to pay attention, but also not to get extremely worried about each new variant,” said Wurtz. “This is the way it’s going to be and always has been with viruses, but we just didn’t have the ability to track [the genetics] the way we do now.”
Scientists will learn more about this variant. In the meantime, being a little more Covid-vigilant can help.
Zoom returns to the office — and to its problematic privacy ways.
The week isn’t even half over and it’s already been a bad one for Zoom, the videoconferencing service that boomed during the pandemic. It’s facing yet another privacy scandal, this time over its use of customer data to train artificial intelligence models. And its recent demand that its employees return to the office is a bad sign for the completely remote work life that Zoom’s eponymous product tried to help make possible.
Yes, the company that became synonymous with videoconferencing at a time when seemingly everyone was remote is now saying that maybe not everything can be done apart. It’s not just Zoom that’s doing this — there is a larger trend of companies calling their employees back to the office after months or years of working from home — but it seems particularly ironic in this case.
Now, Zoom’s not making everyone come back all the time. Its recent memo to employees says that everyone who lives within 50 miles of a Zoom office will have to work out of it at least twice a week. This “structured hybrid approach,” the company said in a statement to Vox, “is most effective for Zoom.”
“We’ll continue to leverage the entire Zoom platform to keep our employees and dispersed teams connected and working efficiently,” the company added.
It’s not the best look when a company that relies on people doing as many things remotely as possible wants its employees to do some things together. If even Zoom, the company that helped Make Remote Work Possible, doesn’t want its employees to work remotely all the time, it might be time to Zoom wave away your dreams of working from home every day.
Lots of people are still using Zoom, of course. But the company has fallen back down to Earth as more people went outside and needed Zoom less. Its stock price is back to roughly where it was before the pandemic; it expressed concern in its most recent annual report that it will not be able to convert enough of its large free user base to paid subscribers to remain profitable. Like many tech companies, Zoom had a round of layoffs, cutting 1,300 jobs — 15 percent of its workforce — in February. It has more competition from Google Meet and Microsoft Teams and even Slack, which would all surely love to lure Zoom’s considerable user base away from it for good. But it remains profitable. Just not as profitable as it was, and for understandable and predictable reasons.
Even so, you’d think it wouldn’t want to risk upsetting a user base that now has plenty of other options by sneaking a line into its terms of service that taps into a widespread fear: that generative AI will replace us, very much helped along by the data we’ve unknowingly provided. And yet, that’s exactly what Zoom did.
The company released an updated and greatly expanded TOS at the end of March. Companies do this all the time and almost no one takes the time to read them. But Alex Ivanovs, of Stack Diary, did take the time to read it. On Sunday, he wrote about how Zoom had used the TOS update to give itself what appeared to be some pretty far-reaching rights over customers’ data, and to train its machine learning and artificial intelligence services on that data. That, Ivanovs believed, could include training AI off of Zoom meetings — and there was no way to opt out of it.
Here’s what the TOS says, emphasis ours:
You agree that Zoom compiles and may compile Service Generated Data based on Customer Content and use of the Services and Software. You consent to Zoom’s access, use, collection, creation, modification, distribution, processing, sharing, maintenance, and storage of Service Generated Data for any purpose, to the extent and in the manner permitted under applicable Law, including for the purpose of product and service development, marketing, analytics, quality assurance, machine learning or artificial intelligence (including for the purposes of training and tuning of algorithms and models), training, testing, improvement of the Services, Software, or Zoom’s other products, services, and software, or any combination thereof, and as otherwise provided in this Agreement.
You can see why Ivanovs thought that Zoom wanted to use customer data and content to train its AI models, as that’s exactly what it seems to be telling us. His article was picked up and tweeted out, which caused an understandable panic and backlash from people who feared that Zoom would be training its generative AI offerings on private company meetings, telehealth visits, classes, and voice-over or podcast recordings. The idea of Zoom watching and ingesting therapy sessions to create AI-generated images is a privacy violation in more ways than one.
That’s probably, however, not what Zoom is actually doing. The company responded with a small update to its TOS, adding: “Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.” It also put up a blog post that said it was just trying to be more transparent with its users that it collects “service generated data,” which it uses to improve its products. It gave a few examples of this that seem both innocuous and standard. It also promoted its new generative AI features, which it does use customer content to train on only after obtaining consent from the meeting’s administrator.
But the fact remains that Zoom’s initial TOS wording left it open to be interpreted in the creepiest way possible, and, after a series of privacy and security missteps over the years, there’s little reason to give Zoom the benefit of the doubt.
Quick summary: Zoom was dinged by the FTC in 2020 for claiming that it offered end-to-end encryption, which it didn’t, and for secretly installing software that bypassed Safari’s security measures and made it hard for users to delete Zoom from their computers. It’s under a consent order for the next 20 years for that. Zoom also paid out $85 million to settle a class action lawsuit over Zoombombing, where trolls join unsecured meetings and usually show sexually explicit, racist, or even illegal imagery to an unsuspecting audience. It was caught sending user data to Meta and LinkedIn. Oh, and it played fast and loose with its user numbers, too.
There’s also still a question, even after Zoom tried to clear things up, of what counts as Customer Content and what counts as service generated data, which it’s given itself permission to use.
“By its terms, it’s not immediately clear to me what is included or excluded,” Chris Hart, co-chair of the privacy and data security practice at law firm Foley Hoag, said. “For example, if a video call is not included in Customer Content that will be used for AI training, is the derivative transcript still fair game? The whiteboard used during the meeting? The polls? Documents uploaded and shared with a team?” (Zoom did not respond to a request for comment on those questions.)
Ivanovs, the author of the blog post that brought all of this to light, wasn’t satisfied with Zoom’s explanation either, noting in an update to his post that “those adjustments … [don’t] do much in terms of privacy.”
So, yeah, not a great few days for Zoom, although it remains to be seen just how damaging this is to the company in the long run. The fact is, Zoom isn’t the only company that people have real fears about when it comes to its use of AI and how it trains its models. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is trying to insert itself into as many business offerings as possible, was trained off of customer data obtained through its API until, OpenAI said, it realized that customers really don’t like that. There are still concerns over what it does with what people put directly into ChatGPT, and many companies have warned employees not to share sensitive data with the service because of this. And Google recently had its own brush with social media backlash over how it collects training data; you might have read about that in this very newsletter just a few weeks ago.
“I do think the reaction to Zoom’s terms changes reflects the concerns that people are generally having over the potential dangers to individual privacy given the increasing ubiquity of AI,” Hart said. “But the changes to the terms themselves signal the increasing and likely universal business need to organically grow AI technologies.”
He added: “To do that, though, you need a lot of data.”
A version of this story was also published in the Vox technology newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!