Derek Reed has written a book on financial planning in a language Gloucester understands: fishing.
“I may have earned my degrees in classrooms,” he says, “but I learned about financial planning from watching my parents manage the business of raising a family on the vicissitudes of commercial fishing.”
A Gloucester native through and through — he captained both the Gloucester High School football and track teams — Reed at 54, is a “captain,” aka managing partner, of Gloucester-based Beauport Financial Services, a company serving some 500 North Shore clients with accumulated assets of “about $1 billion.”
Reed may manage money at the seven-digit level, but he likes to talk about it in a language he learned from his father, Capt. Charlie Reed, who captained the Andrea Gail in the years leading up to 1991 when the 72-foot sword fishing vessel went down in a cataclysmic weather event which became known around the world as ‘The Perfect Storm.’
Six Gloucester-based crew went down with the Andrea Gail, but Charlie Reed wasn’t one of them. Having navigated the Andrea Gail through an earlier deadly storm, he had just months earlier said adios to sword fishing — or in financial terms, cut his losses — opting for the safer, but less lucrative business of ground fishing.
Charlie Reed is now retired, which may be why Derek Reed’s book, “The Imperfect Storm: Successfully Navigating the Seas of Retirement,” is aimed at those approaching retirement age.
“People used to worry they wouldn’t live long enough to reap the rewards of retirement planning,” Derek Reed said, “but that’s changed. With extended life expectancy, they need to make sure they won’t outlive their retirement nest egg, so planning is more crucial than ever.”
For instance, he says, even clients with seven-digit assets need to know when to tighten the belt, something that’s second nature to fishing families like the Reeds. “When the catch was slim,” he says, “we’d eat peanut butter and pasta and pancakes. When the catch was big, we’d eat in restaurants.”
Although he says he’s not a writer, Derek Reed has nevertheless managed to turn out a page turner by livening up pages of solid financial advice with pages of colorful fish tales that illustrate his points. Most of those tales came directly from his father.
His favorite part of writing the book, he says, was sharing a Destino’s sub with Capt. Charlie while listening to his tales of life on the high seas. “When he’d talk about his old sword fishing days,” Reed says, “he’d light up like a Christmas tree.”
Like sword fishing, financial planning is not a recreational sport, he says. So along with the colorful tales, Capt. Charlie had plenty to say about managing a sword fishing vessel. In terms of investment, it’s high risk. The rewards can be great, but so are the chances of loss. The “Grand Banks” fishing grounds, for instance, once a popular destination for Gloucester fishing vessels, are more than 1,000 miles from port — a long way for a vessel’s crew and catch to be at the whim of the weather, even with 21st century technology.
Whether you have a retirement plan in place, Reed warns that financial seas are bound to get rough, so your financial ship better be prepared to weather the imperfect storms of retirement. “A ship is only as good as its captain,” he says. “Think of the unsinkable Titanic.”
“The Imperfect Storm: Successfully Navigating the Seas of Retirement” is available for $17.99 for a 278-page paperback on Amazon and Barnes and Noble sites. Derek Reed is planning a special Father’s Day reading of his book as a tribute to his father, Capt. Charlie Reed. Keep an eye on the Gloucester Daily Times for confirmation of place and time.
In addition to being a certified financial planner (CFP) and a chartered life underwriter (CLU), Derek Reed has earned the designation of chartered advisor in philanthropy (CAP). He is a member of the Essex County Estate Planning Council, the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors Boston Chapter, and a qualifying member of the MDRT organization as a Top of the Table member.
Joann Mackenzie may be contacted at 978-675-2707 or jmackenzie@northofboston.com.