Comprehensive Approach Still Works Best for Blount

Jim Blount enjoys advising all his clients as to financial management, but perhaps the most fun and rewarding client is a 20- or 30-something who doesn’t have much of anything.

“A young person gets to write his or her own life,” Blount said recently from his Springdale office. “I enjoy working with a young person, because the opportunity to make change is greatest.” 

At age 42, Blount, founder and president of The Point Financial Group Inc., guides a wide array of clients in making the most compelling financial decisions of their lives.

He helps pinpoint long-term goals, strategize about reaching them, and throughout subsequent years helps clients consider ramifications when they are confronted with unexpected choices and opportunities.

Should a person leave a high-stress position sooner or later? Is the time ripe to start that intriguing small business? How should a savings strategy be altered when children are born?

Certainly the goal is to develop wealth, but the broader objective is to build an interactive collaboration, and then maintain it for decades, Blount said.

“Clients have to stay with us for a long time; this works best with a long relationship,” he said.

Blount’s staff has doubled since 2002, the year he was named a member of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class. His firm now offers a dozen advisors, and the emphasis at The Point Financial has taken a definitive turn away from investment advising and toward comprehensive, financial-based planning.

The firm is decidedly independent and fee based, and clients are served by a collaborative team of four certified financial advisors. They pool expertise, so their specialties complement each other’s, Blount said. This approach is unique to The Point Financial, he said.

“We don’t have proprietary interests, or a direct competing agenda or investment advising,” he said. “There are certainly other certified financial planners in Northwest Arkansas, but I don’t believe any have this comprehensive approach, this scope of expertise. The average tenure in the business for the people who work at this firm is 15 years.”

Blount also has seen his customer base widen geographically during the past decade. More than a quarter of his clients are now out of state, and he travels frequently to meet with them.

“I am as likely to get a referral from Dallas or New York City as I am from Fort Smith, because of the transient nature of people living in Northwest Arkansas,” he said. “My clients’ close friends, their circles, might not be in our area.”

Blount’s average client is about age 50, approaching retirement within the next decade, often still involved in raising kids but also now helping his or her parents.

He said a common misconception about financial management is: “I don’t have a lot of money to start focusing on my retirement yet.”

Every time is a good time to walk through the door. “The best time is when a person faces a pivotal life event, or is contemplating a big life event,” he said. “And certainly before the birth of a child; having children changes everything.”

Blount finds that most people don’t seek fabulous wealth, they simply want “enough.”

“People want a consistent standard of living. They want the standard they’ve become accustomed to. Their biggest fear is losing independence,” he said. “We help them develop a vision, then show them how they can arrive with intention at that destination.”

In this post-recession economy, clients’ questions are essentially the same as before, although Blount concedes many factors have changed. He started in the business in the mid-1990s, after graduating from the University of Arkansas with a bachelor’s degree in human resource management. He worked six years for MetLife Financial Services before starting his own firm in 2001. He is now recognized as a top producer by his broker, LPL Financial, based on revenue.

Blount said he enjoys helping his clients so much that he can’t envision his own retirement. His satisfaction is helping others reach a time to explore their passions. And his clients’ retirements are usually as good as expected.

“People typically don’t realize the amount of stress they’ve been under,” he said. “And, if we’ve done our job right, when that first day arrives and you don’t get up for work, there’s no trepidation or anxiety. You think, ‘Now I get to do what I want to do.’”