November 25, 2014Recently, I overheard a friend of mine having a phone conversation. He said, “I heard Schwab is rolling out their version of a Robo-Advisor….yeah and it’s gonna be free if you have $50 thousand with them.”Once I got over my feelings about the prospect that my career was going to be taken over by robots, I got to thinking. “How will advisors like myself compete with the proliferation of online robo advisors? How can I add enough value for my clients over online services to justify them keeping me around?” Thankfully, noted financial planning author/speaker Michael Kitces has already written a thorough explanation of how financial advisors must change to coexist with “robo advisors." Kitces notes that robo-advisors like Wealthfront, Betterment and FutureAdvisor can effectively replace “commoditized” functions of investment management such as: utilizing low-cost, tax efficient investment vehicles, setting up an “optimal” asset allocation, auto-rebalancing and t...