Local financial advisor suggests alternative investment options

THE WOODLANDS, Texas -- With the economy’s tentative ascension from the pitfall that was the Great Recession, many people are looking for alternative ways to better invest their money in order to avoid devastating losses. Dean Harman, of Harman Wealth Management, has an upcoming book titled “Win By Not Losing”, relaying the strategy he deems to be the smartest way to invest without taking too many risks that could potentially wipe out someone’s life savings.

Not many people can say they have stuck to the profession they wanted to pursue as children. In a time when most kids were still grasping at their dreams of becoming a movie star or a rock star, Harman wanted to be a financial advisor.

“One big aspect [that drew me toward financial advising] is being able to help people and make an impact with your job,” Harman said. “There’s a lot of immediate gratification from helping people in my field.”

In the financial advising business since 1994 – the year his company was founded – and as a board member of the Financial Services Institute, Harman has had a lot of experience dealing with the inconsistencies of the market. In fact, he has noticed many investors fall prey to those inconsistencies, losing massive amounts of money in the blink of an eye. Harman cited the market conditions of 2001-2002 and 2007-2008 as the catalyst for writing his book.

“You saw the defamation that occurred on people’s portfolios and the psyche of people who had done a pretty good job of saving for retirement and were probably on the borderline of having enough money saved,” Harman said. “And then to see in the general public people just losing huge amounts of money to the market in that time period, some of that was avoidable.”

Harman’s book widely criticizes the conventional “buy-and-hold” investment strategy where an investor will ride the market’s rollercoaster until it’s time to retire and hope for the best.

“The industry and the product providers have such a vested interest in getting the end user to invest money in their product and then just leave it sitting there whether it’s good for the client or not,” Harman said. “I think a good analogy is if you’ve got bad weather you should probably take an umbrella with you and there are times you don’t even want to go outside, there’s other days when it is completely sunny and you don’t need an umbrella at all and the industry would say, ‘Well, we just want to sell you an umbrella. You should always have an umbrella.’”

Although Harman is not the sole proponent of the method he describes in his book, it is not widely popular among financial advisors because it deviates too far from the status quo. His clients, however, seem to be pleased with the benefits the method can reap.

“Sometimes it’s exactly what people are looking for, even if they don’t know what to call it or how to identify it,” Harman said.

Harman’s book , which outlines his preferred investment strategy, will be available in September and can be purchased on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or on the Harman Wealth Management website.