I recently saw King Lear, starring Frank Langella, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music after re-reading Shakespeare’s work so I could better follow along.

The play has a few things in it that are relevant to financial planning. The many points of the play include: trust the right person,  don’t put all of your trust in that person,  watch out for conflicts of interest, and wisdom can come from unexpected places.

King Lear turns his kingdom over to daughters Regan and Goneril, who play to his foolish vanity. He disinherits a third daughter, Cordelia, who has his best interest at heart but is not overly adoring and lavish in her praise. He banishes the Earl of Kent for giving him good if unwanted advice.

It’s hard to avoid being manipulated by people whom you love but who want something from you. One has to dispassionately decide whom to trust. Nor is it usually a good idea to give someone complete control and hope for the best.

Lear split his kingdom between two of his daughters and left himself without the economic means to maintain his most valued asset –100 armed men. When the daughters took over, they stripped him of his power and left him mad and destitute.

Rather than letting someone take over your assets without supervision, it would be better at least to monitor what is going on, keep some independent control, and ask a lot of questions.

This dictum could have helped people who invested with Bernie Madoff. They did not even get independent investment statements, just fraudulent documents reflecting bogus trades.

One has to look at hidden motives when weighing advice.

 As the King of France asks the Duke of Burgundy, who is revoking his proposal to Cordelia because Lear has disinherited her:

 “…Love’s not love

When it is mingled with regards that stands

Aloof from th’ entire point. Will you have her? She is herself a dowry.”

One has to keep in mind the vested interests of  commission-charging brokers and advisors. I don’t “love” the investments I recommend, but as a Fee-Only advisor, I don’t get $Y for recommending X investment as opposed to an alternative.

Good help can come from unexpected places. The characters who offer the surest succor and counsel are Lear’s fool; the banished Earl of Kent, who returns disguised as a poor man to aid Lear; and Edgar, who is falsely accused of conspiring against his father, the Earl of Gloucester, and returns in the guise of a mad beggar to help his blinded father. (Ironically, those the most betrayed remain the most true.)

 I work out of my home in Brooklyn. It’s a nice house, but not a luxurious Fifth Avenue office suite.

I have a professionally run operation within my Registered Investment Advisor firm, Garrett Investment Advisors, LLC, but my financial plans are not bound and I don’t host fancy receptions paying clients dividends in shrimp.  I have lovely oil paintings on my walls, but they are not Picassos (better: they are by my mother). My “team” doesn’t wear Italian suits. The 300-odd advisors in the Garrett Planning Network , who give me support and advice, are more likely to be clad in Levis than Armanis.

If you are looking for slick, I am not.

Finally, as the snow piles up in Brooklyn and throughout New York City and much of the country, let’s remember Lear’s regret for only belatedly thinking of the homeless:

“Pray naked wretches, wheresoe’r you are,

That bide the pelting of the pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en

Too little care of this! … “