Former Professional Chef And Restaurateur Helps Manage $700 Million For California Clients

Title: Andrea Schaffer

Agency: Pacific Advisors

Location: Claremont, CA

AUM: $687 million

Forbes Rankings: America’s Prime Monetary Safety Professionals, Prime Monetary Safety Professionals Greatest-In-State

Background: Andrea Schaffer began as an expert chef and restaurateur in her twenties, working round southern California. By the early Nineteen Nineties, she went again to highschool to get her bachelor’s and grasp’s levels in English Literature at UCLA and Claremont Graduate College, respectively. Though she initially thought of turning into a professor, at age 32, Schaffer pivoted exhausting to monetary recommendation, present process coaching and dealing her method up at Northwestern
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Mutual. She stayed there for greater than ten years earlier than becoming a member of her present agency, Pacific Advisors, in 2006. “It wasn’t totally totally different from orchestrating a really complicated occasion—stuff occurs and you’ve got to have the ability to reply on the fly,” she recollects of the change, including, “the identical issues occur in a consumer’s monetary life.”

Aggressive Edge: Schaffer likes to be a sounding board for her shoppers: Earlier than any main resolution, they name her and she or he offers the entire instruments and knowledge wanted. When making ideas, she all the time tries to make use of actual life tales and examples as an academic instrument. “We have to be beneficial to shoppers in any other case we’re not doing our job,” says Schaffer, who could be very acutely aware of charges in terms of her shoppers’ portfolios. She additionally focuses on tax mitigation methods and all the time making certain that cash is safely put apart as a buffer.

Classes Realized: “The very best factor I’ve realized is to belief my very own judgment—if one thing sounds too good to be true it in all probability is,” says Schaffer. The primary time she realized that robust lesson was within the collateralized debt obligation world, through the interval main as much as the monetary disaster. “Belief your instincts, don’t be intimidated and ask questions,” she provides.

Largest Problem: “The largest concern I ever bumped into was understanding that I needed to proceed to commit as a lot time engaged on my enterprise as once I first began,” says Schaffer. With 5 different full time workers on her workforce, she says with the ability to delegate and having good colleagues can be important.

Funding Outlook: Schaffer predicts the market will decelerate—with doubtlessly a small correction—within the subsequent 18 months. She advises being cautious within the final quarter of this 12 months, which can show to be an opportunistic interval to purchase shares which have gone on sale. “The one motive markets are forward now’s as a result of the positive factors have been concentrated in sure shares, whereas everybody else is treading water or dropping floor,” says Schaffer.

What Retains You Up At Night time: What retains her up at night time is the state of succession planning within the wealth administration enterprise. “The business is just a little white and previous—we actually do have to scour for extra younger individuals of various backgrounds to enter the enterprise, in any other case nothing will ever change,” she says. “The information switch that might be misplaced if we don’t have extra younger professionals is big.”

Favourite Film/Pastime: Schaffer cites Oliver!, primarily based on the Charles Dickens novel, as her favourite film. Actually, a number of of her canine are named after characters or actors within the film: One is named Dodger, one is known as London and one other, now handed, was named Oliver. Past her lifelong ardour for cooking, Schaffer can be an avid indoor skydiving fanatic in her free time.