Most people perceive my job as strictly helping people make money. What I really do is help injured people.
I keep injured people from wasting a settlement. I help them find every government benefit and program that might make their lives better. I find ways for them to minimize taxes and maximize what they keep. I assist in mediations and help them get claims settled.
Many of my clients are in the top one percent of income earners. The bracket that some people are marching against.
Most of my "one-percenters" are in wheelchairs or had their families wiped out in accidents.
I've been doing my work for nearly 30 years and would never trade places with any client who got a large settlement or judgment.
No sane person would give up their health or their family for money.
Thus, going to war against the top one percent is not black and white for me.
I'm for making hedge fund managers pay ordinary income tax like the rest of us do.
I'm for tying Wall Street bonuses to doing something productive for society, instead of taking a bonus but not creating wealth.
I want to see more being done for Main Street and less being done for Wall Street. I want the average American to get a fair shake and not be ignored by Washington.
But what I really want is to keep doing things to help injured people with their money.
A financial guru once called me a "financial evangelist." I think I am more like a financial pastor or minister.
I want to comfort the injured and help them heal. I also want them to hang on to their money.
Thus, when they start going after the top one percent, I want to make sure that my clients are not the one percent of people they are going after.
I want Congress to go after Wall Street but have found that Wall Street have a lot better lobbyists than injured people do.
I've been encouraged that injured people will benefit from health care reform.
I've spent the past few months becoming immersed in the nuances of the new health care reform act. I've read all 1990 pages of the law several times.
After months of study, I understand it. I see how it helps people I want to help.
If you like the law, you call it health care reform, if you don't like it, you call it
Obamacare.
Before I took the time to really study the legislation I called it Obamacare. I encouraged my Democratic Congressman to vote against it, which he did.
Now I am calling it health care reform.
It is going to turn the medical system upside down. I don't know how we will pay for it but I see where it truly helps injured people.
Some of the reforms are coming to place now, before 2014, and I am learning how to use them to help my clients.
When you dig into the details of the law, you see how health care reform empowers people who have been shut out or minimized by the health care system.
It promotes wellness and good health. That's not such a bad thing.
I can also see the new law, along with the bailouts and stimulus packages of recent years, putting a huge strain on the federal budget.
There have been calls of "tax reform" to pay for the looming larger deficits.
I've learned one thing from watching Washington. Whenever there is a "reform" or "call to sacrifice" it is the little people who are supposed to do the sacrificing. Wall Street gets paid back 100 cents on the dollar.
I can see reforms, aimed at the "one percent," actually hitting people like my clients who are using their resources for medical care and a better quality of life.
I don't mind taxing a Wall Street banker's second yacht or third vacation home.
I don't want them taxing a client who wants to buy a lift for his wheelchair.
It's simple to aim focus at the top one percent of income earners and assume they are all doing something wrong.
It's more complicated when you add in people who got to the one percent by having a drunk driver smash into their car and kill their family.
When we start talking about the "one percent," we need to think about the one percent of society who are hurting and need government assistance and help.
And make sure that help is provided.
Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC is the bestselling author of the book, 'Wealth Without Wall Street'; McNay, who lives in Richmond, Ky., is an award-winning financial columnist and Huffington Post contributor. You can learn more about him at www.donmcnay.com.
He is the Chairman of the Board for the McNay Settlement Group (www.mcnay.com) which provides structured settlement consulting for injury victims, lottery winners, and the families of special needs children.
McNay founded Kentucky Guardianship Administrators LLC, which assists attorneys in as conservators and setting up guardianships. It is nationally recognized as an administrator of Qualified Settlement (468b) funds.