My approach in helping you to
Build Wealth, Manage Risk, and Reach Goals
There are several things that differentiate me from other financial professionals or doing it yourself: a logical, step-wise, and ongoing process to plan out your financial approach; a comprehensive six-part financial plan; and an entire universe of conventional and alternative investments and third-party asset management platforms.
This means that you can expect a process-driven approach across all areas of your financial life that considers all the options. Let’s take a look at each of these.
The Financial Planning Process
Having a standard process for developing and maintaining your financial plan means consistency and leads to higher quality results. It means that I spend the most time on the important details that make your situation as unique as you are and less time on items that easy to address.
Please remember that your financial plan will always be a work in progress. Life is full of surprises – good and bad – that will affect your financial situation. This process helps ensure we stay aligned on the plan.
Step 1: We’ll set goals and objectives in our first meeting together. Congratulations, your journey is underway!
Step 2: I’ll gather info from you on your financial situation. These will be the facts we start with. Then we’ll discuss your feelings on things like money and risk, so I can start trying to think like you.
Step 3: You’ll get an actual document that shows how well you’re doing in reaching your goals right now as well as a plan to increase your likelihood of reaching your goals and better protect what you can’t afford to lose. With this plan, I’ll provide recommendations that make sense to you; are affordable; and are appropriate for you, your goals, and your situation.
Step 4: Implementation is the most important step!
If we don’t put the plan into action, we won’t make progress.
Step 5: Continuing to monitor and discuss your situation regularly is the glue that holds everything together. Together, we will agree on a regular discussion schedule to incorporate any changes to goals, facts, or feelings into the plan to make sure we stay on track.
The Six-Part
Comprehensive Financial Plan
At various times in your life, you’ll likely deal with bankers, insurance agents, investment specialists, accounts, and attorneys, but each of them really sees only one or two areas of your life.
My job as a Financial Planner and Advisor is to understand your life in SIX areas and help everything fit together in a way that’s right for your life’s unique journey. It is a role unlike any other professional involved in your finances.
To this end, I can also assist your specialists, like your accountant and attorney, to ensure they have important information from the other areas they might not know to ask about.
Financial Position
This is the foundation of everything. We’ll look at income, expenses, assets, liabilities, emergency cash reserve, and net worth.
Risk Management
We need to protect what you can’t afford to lose. We will look in areas that have gaps as well as where you might be paying twice for the same or a very similar thing.
Wealth Accumulation
Building wealth over time is about smart saving and investing, whether it’s for college, future car or home purchases, or upcoming travel.
Retirement Planning
Let’s plan for the first day of your being financially independent. We’ll look at how much you need to save to meet your target date, what you can do to get there sooner, and how you will handle your money when you retire.
Tax
Planning
It’s not necessarily about how much you have, it’s about how much you keep. Early planning around the tax treatment of your investments is key. Your CPA is the authority, but we’ll include this in our planning.
Estate
Planning
It starts with ensuring you have documents: will, power of attorney, medical directive, etc. Your attorney is the authority, but I can assist them as you need. We’ll then implement a beneficiary plan aligned with those documents for all of your investments.
Investing Isn’t Just Stocks, Bonds, and Mutual Funds!
There’s an entire universe of financial instruments and risk management options available.
Since I’m a professional, I have access to investments that you wouldn’t have by yourself. Most of these aren’t necessarily going to be suitable or advisable for your situation, but just know that I can provide a comprehensive set of investments for tailoring to your unique needs.
I also have access to third-party investment management specialists who offer separately managed accounts, a way of owning a basket of stocks instead of having to use a mutual fund or an ETF. This option also allows for a combination of different investment approaches (strategic, tactical, actively managed, and passively managed) as well as potential tax reduction options.
Conventional Investments
Bonds
Certificates of Deposit (CDs)
Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs)
Fixed, Indexed, and Variable Annuities
Mutual Funds
Stocks, Common and Preferred
Alternative Investments
Buffered and Leveraged ETFs
Equipment Leasing Programs
Hedge Funds
Infrastructure
Interval Funds
Managed Futures
Oil and Gas Direct Participation Programs
Private and Public Debt
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
Risk Management
Life Insurance
Long-Term Care Insurance