Wealth Management

Our comprehensive Wealth Management Process begins with a thorough discussion and understanding of your vision, values, financial goals, and a detailed review of your financial resources. We then design and manage an investment portfolio tailored to your specific financial needs, time horizon, emotional tolerance for risk, financial capacity to endure risk, and tax situation.

Through our deep dive into your personal financial situation and financial history, we identify the areas of financial planning that would benefit you most. You can find out more about the financial planning services we offer as part of our Wealth Management Process below.

Retirement Planning

Everyone wants to retire someday. This is probably one of the greatest concerns most of our clients have. Can I afford to retire? Have I saved enough for retirement? How much longer do I need to work? How much more should I save? We will help you answer these difficult questions and provide you with a detailed retirement projection illustrating year-by-year whether you are on track to meet your goals.

For those transitioning from work to retirement, you are probably wondering how to go about paying your monthly bills as you have been accustomed to being paid every two weeks, twice a month or monthly while working. We will provide you with a strategy to create a “monthly retirement paycheck” through the coordination of your financial resources such as Social Security, taxable investment assets, Trust assets, investment real estate, IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, pensions, deferred compensation, and annuities, etc. This will include a strategy to spend down your portfolio assets in the most tax efficient manner possible enabling you to maintain your lifestyle and providing you with financial peace of mind.

You can read more about our approach to retirement planning in our article “What Is Retirement Planning?”

Financial Planning

The cornerstone of our financial planning process starts with a detailed discussion around your values and your goals. We will help you prioritize your goals around your financial resources.

Estate Planning

It is important that your assets are coordinated with your estate distribution wishes. We can provide a basic estate planning review and if needed, referrals to an estate planning attorney for the creation of estate planning documents or revisions to your existing documents.

Investment Management

We design your investment portfolio tailored to your specific financial needs, time horizon, emotional tolerance for risk, financial capacity to endure risk, and tax situation.

Your portfolio is designed and regularly monitored with the current economic environment in mind. We consider inflation, deflation, market valuations, and investment styles as we construct your portfolio as well as make ongoing rebalancing decisions.

The following tenets are key to our investment approach:

• Methodology – We follow a disciplined investment methodology that is based on decades of academic research. This approach has a proven track record of long-term success.
• Asset Allocation – Asset Allocation is one of the most important investment decisions as it determines most of the risk and return one will experience. Research has shown that over the long run more than 90% of the variation in return is explained by your ratio of stocks to bonds in your portfolio.
• Capital Preservation – You should take on only enough risk to meet your financial goals. Preservation of capital becomes increasingly important as you approach retirement because your time horizon to recoup losses diminishes.
• Costs Matter – We predominantly use low cost index mutual funds and ETFs. Lower costs keep a larger portion of investment returns in your pocket.
• Global Diversification – We are in a global economy and your portfolio should reflect this. You can read more about why we diversify in our article “Two Key Benefits of Portfolio Diversification.”
• Minimize Taxes – We utilize tax advantaged investment vehicles such as index mutual funds and ETFs for the taxable portion of your portfolio. The less return you lose to taxes, the more you will keep to meet your goals. We also seek opportunities to tax loss harvest on an ongoing basis.
• Quarterly Review – We thoroughly review your portfolio each quarter relative to your recommended strategic asset allocation.

Social Security

Through our retirement planning process, we will review your Social Security claiming options and identify and recommend the best course of action for your unique financial situation.

College Planning

If you are interested in funding education for your children or grandchildren, we can recommend a college savings program and provide a strategy relative to your college planning needs.

We believe one of the best savings vehicles for college is the 529 College Savings Plan. To learn more, read our article “529 College Savings Plans.”

Risk Management

Unexpected catastrophic events can impact your financial goals. It is important to plan for your dependents and ensure goals can still be met. Note that as fee-only financial planners, we do not sell insurance products. Instead, we evaluate risks and advise our clients on the risks they should consider covering.

Medicare Planning

Planning for health care coverage in pre-retirement and retirement is absolutely essential today. Through our retirement planning process we can identify and incorporate expected health care costs in pre and post retirement for the remainder of your life. At age 65 you can transition to Medicare health coverage. The premiums for Medicare Part B and D vary depending on your income in retirement. You can read more about these potential costs in our article “How Much Will I Pay For Medicare Premiums.”

Tax Planning

We identify potential areas to minimize taxes, review portfolio cost basis, incorporate tax efficient portfolio spend down strategies, utilize tax efficient investment options and regularly review client portfolios for tax loss harvesting opportunities. We can also work with your CPA or tax professional to make sure they have the necessary investment related tax documents for your annual tax filing.