If I had to boil it down to one message that probably isn’t in the book, it would be that advisors really need to be aware that they’re people too and they’re subject to the same flaws in thinking and the same emotional tendencies as their clients. There’s often a big temptation among people who are experts at what they do, as advisors certainly are, to conclude that they’re exempt from the behavior they control in other people.

If you check, you will find that most bookies don’t gamble. That’s not a universal tendency, however. At least until the past 10 or 20 years, it wasn’t that uncommon to come across oncologists who smoked. They spend all day telling people, “If you smoke, you’re going to die of lung cancer,” but to manage the stress, they step outside and have a cigarette.

I don’t want to make a broad sweeping statement that all advisors are reckless, undiversified, return-chasing, risk-seeking crazies who pay no attention to tax consequences – far from it. But there are general tendencies that really kill investors: things like overconfidence, careless or improper diversification, not paying enough attention to expenses, and having unrealistic expectations.  Advisors really need to make sure that, in the process of fixing those problems for clients, they don’t suffer from any of them themselves.