Business is his Pleasure

For Richard Garrido, helping people accumulate money through wise investments isn’t work. It’s his passion.

Richard M. Garrido strides confidently to his executive office which has been moved recently to the end of hall.

“They know I’m a coffee-drinker, so they moved me here,” he says unassumingly.

His private room on the ninth floor is simply furnished, with his hard-earned license prominently displayed on the wall to his left. A framed poster emblazoned with the word “Priorities” hangs on the wall behind his desk, while photographs of his family nestle on a side table. Wall-to-wall windows overlook a huge vacant lot, allowing a hefty amount of sunlight to brighten up his busy, busy days.

His job: to “help people achieve their financial goals, whatever those may be, to help them invest, take money out and pass it on to their beneficiaries in the most tax-efficient way possible.”

Garrido is a senior financial representative of the Principal Financial Group in Irvine, California. With over 300 clients and some $35 million in his portfolio, one might be tempted to call him a “millionaire maker,” but Garrido dismisses the notion with a shy smile, allowing himself instead, the pleasure of telling rags-to-riches stories of clients who were wise enough to invest whatever little money they had at the right time.

Privately, he admits to being nervous about the interview, afraid that his efforts to reach out to the Filipino-American community might be misconstrued as “self-glorification.”

But Garrido is bent on trying to convince fellow Filipinos to invest for their future now, and he is determined to use his 10-year experience in providing “proper advice” so that his kababayans can avoid getting burned by unscrupulous people in the same business.

His first advice? “Always look ahead, 20 years from now. People are living longer and it’s important to make your money last as long as you, or even beyond you. People today are more aware of the fact that they must have a long-term perspective and long-term objectives.”

But it’s equally important, he says, to diversify one’s investments, and to have emergency money without pulling from one’s own investments. “It doesn’t matter how big or how small the investment is, as long as you start investing now,” he adds.

Most people he encounters are hesitant to pull out their money from savings accounts, and Garrido says he understands that. “We’ve always been taught to put our money away in a bank because the rate of interest is guaranteed. The money is secure. The money is safe, but in time, inflation eats up the value of that money. It’s true there is no risk in principal, but the purchasing power of your money decreases significantly over time,” he explains.

Garrido uses the Rule of 72 to illustrate his point. The Rule of 72 is a method used by finance professionals to calculate the length of time it takes for money to double at a specified interest rate. If the interest rate on your savings was pegged at five percent, he says, divide five by 72 and you get 14.4 years. If you had saved $1,000 in the bank at age 30, it will only be worth $2,000 by the time you hit the age of 44. And if you factor in inflation at three percent, he adds, the actual interest rate would have been at only two percent. Meaning, your money would be worth even less.

Equity (securities) investing is therefore what he advises, but only after sitting down lengthily with clients “to find out what their goals and objectives are, what they want to achieve and what their assets are.”

“I always tell my clients, there may be times when I have to tell you what you may not want to hear, but I also remind them not to succumb to the “herd” mentality, which makes people tend to follow everyone else without regard for long-term strategies and goals,” he adds.

People are particularly vulnerable to “herd” mentality when the market is either down or up.

“When the market crashed in 1929, some people even committed suicide because they lost money. People started getting out, pulling out their investments. But if you had a $100 investment and you left it there, it would be worth $600,000 by now.

“Always look at the time frame. Always see a long-term horizon,” he repeats, as if he could not stress the importance of long-term goals enough.

An eternal optimist, Garrido is hardly rattled by fluctuations in the market even when most people shake and quiver at the slightest movement of the Dow. Neither is he overly concerned about predictions or speculations, instead relying more on his own proven experience, knowledge and continuous research. Typically, he advises his clients to buy when the market is down, because it’s the “biggest sale,” and to sell high.

“I don’t get stressed out. I don’t overreact.There is such as thing as financial pornography. Magazines want to make money so that for them, bad news is always good news. They play with people’s emotions and fear is always exploited,” he says.

But, Garrido says, “Numbers don’t lie. Statistics don’t lie. And money begets money.”

In the same breath however, he also cautions against “foolhardy” investments. “Always make sure you get advice from professional people,” he cautions further.

Garrido knows whereof he speaks. As a senior financial representative, he has undergone extensive training and schooling, which he says are not quite enough. He attends seminars 10 to 12 times in a year to keep abreast of trends in the market and in the business, and he has to abide by strict compliance rules all the time.

“I read a lot,” he says matter -of- factly.

His typical day, in fact, starts at 8:30 in the morning, and he spends the next four or so hours reading newspapers, magazines, or whatever materials he can get his hands on, as well as going online to research. After a quick lunch, he goes out on client calls, or talks to clients by phone, or holes up in his office designing strategy proposals for potential investors. By 5:30 p.m., he calls it a day and goes home to his wife Pia, a business analyst for a company called Quicksilver, and their twin sons, age six.

The son of Joaquin Garrido and former actress Lisa Moreno , Garrido who received his degree in Economics and Management from De La Salle College in Manila, initially primed himself for the time when he would manage Virgo Productions, a company put up by his mother and movie icon Eddie Rodriguez.The company was heavily into entertainment, producing movies based on scripts written by his mother who used the pen name Louise de Mesa. Garrido says he liked the business side more than the creative aspect, and envisioned himself running the entire company one day. When this mom and Rodriguez broke up, Garrido relates, the company was the first casualty, but the company’s demise ironically provided him the impetus to put his career on the right track.

Garrido’s father, a former insurance man and president of Capital Assurance Corporation in Manila, was perhaps a defining influence. The elder Garrido graduated summa cum laude from De La Salle University in Manila with a degree in Engineering and Higher Mathematics. During the 1980s, Joaquin Garrido made it to the “Who’s Who in the World” list for being a leader in property insurance and casualty insurance in the Philippines.

“I was interested in insurance too, and although I liked the job, I liked the social aspect of the job even better,” the son admits.

When he migrated to the U.S. with his wife, Garrido says he took on odd jobs, “just like most immigrants” in order to get by. Both of them took computer programming courses. “She liked it, I didn’t. But Principal Financial actually called me one day and asked me if I was interested in joining them,” he reveals.

His decision to join the company is something he has never regretted. “ This is in my blood. I love what I do. I love helping people accumulate money. I love the experience of seeing people retire comfortably because they invested their hard-earned money wisely. I like the creativity and the strategizing. For me, this isn’t work. It’s a passion,” he declares.

To those who might wish to join his league, Garrido says that attaining success in this field, based on his personal experience, “boils down to patience and discipline. Obviously you must like numbers, you must have the inclination and you must be willing to do it full-time. And you must have a keen analytical sense.”

It also helps that Garrido has the skill to simplify much of the technical jargon for his clients, most of whom have been with him since he started out 10 years ago.

He tells the story of one client, a Dutch who migrated to the U.S. with his sons after World War II and whose job only enabled him to save 25 cents every payday. “He saved this small amount continuously in a jar, and when he had filled the jar, he invested the money. Today, his net worth is $1.3 million, and he enjoys taking his entire family, in-laws and grandchildren included, on trips around the world,” Garrido relates.

Like his other clients, the Dutchman constantly tells Garrido to “take care of himself” because they say they’d be at a loss if anything, God forbid, should ever happen to him.

If he can help his clients attain their financial goals, one wonders if Garrido himself has reached his own. At 45, Garrido says technically, he has. But with his two six-year-old sons now in the picture, he has felt the need to re-adjust those goals. “I just learned recently that it costs $105,000 to send a kid through four years of college at USC. Can you imagine what college would cost 12 years from now? And I have two boys!” he exclaims.

Even his wife, he says, had wanted to retire early, having been career-oriented like himself since they got married 20 years ago, but she is likely to put off retirement plans for just a little while longer.

Garrido says he sees himself doing the same work for the next 25 years or so. Most people would see something like that as a burden.

For Garrido, it’s his pleasure. -- M.G. Abelgas