When we serve as your personal CFO, you delegate the management of your financial affairs (financial planning, portfolio management, delivering income, etc.) to my firm so that you can prioritize other aspects of your life – family, travel, philanthropy, etc. Our goal is to manage your financial affairs with a standard of care and level of expertise that maximizes your peace of mind.
Checks & Balances
As an independent investment advisor, people occasionally express concern about entrusting their life savings to our firm. However, when working with us, your assets are securely custodied at Charles Schwab. In particular, we cannot transfer money out of your accounts without your explicit authorization.
Comprehensive Planning
Our approach to financial planning is comprehensive. We regularly advise clients that if there is a dollar sign (“$”), we should be involved. This includes services that many other investment advisors do not provide. Please click the expandable tabs below to view some of the upfront and ongoing services we provide.
- Assessing income and cash flow needs for anticipated retirement spending and potential expenses
- Determining retirement feasibility and sustainable spending levels (a.k.a., sustainable withdrawal rates)
- Optimizing decisions around income sources (e.g., Social Security and pensions) and commercial longevity products (e.g., annuities and life insurance)
- Exploring sensible portfolio allocations, calibrating risk, and assessing their impact on spending guidelines and legacy goals
- Combining income sources with portfolio withdrawals to develop a tax-efficient retirement income plan
- Evaluating and optimizing tax strategies for asset location, Roth conversions, account-specific withdrawal strategies, and more (see our Tax Strategies page for more information)
- Charitable giving and legacy planning
- Developing a portfolio transition strategy while being mindful of tax friction
- Execute portfolio transition (sometimes phased to mitigate or eliminate taxes)
- Ongoing financial planning (periodic reviews, life-based events, etc.)
- Executing the income plan and delivering regular cash flows (typically on a monthly basis) prescribed by the optimized withdrawal strategy
- Proactive risk management via periodic and threshold-based portfolio rebalancing
- Opportunistic tax gain and loss harvesting
- Calculating and facilitating required minimum distributions (RMDs)
- Execute Roth conversions prescribed by your financial plan
- Optimizing and facilitating qualified charitable distributions (QCDs) or other giving strategies
- and more …
Precise Planning
As highlighted on our Value Proposition page, we have specific expertise around withdrawal rates and strategies. By calibrating withdrawal rates to current market conditions and actuarial tables, our models can more precisely target levels of retirement spending for our clients. We believe this provides our clients with the best opportunity to target and balance goals related to retirement spending, financial security, and legacy.
Personalized Plans and White Glove Service
Without doubt, we leverage our experience and analytical rigor to target opportunities across your planning and portfolio to improve performance and reduce taxes. However, we also focus on non-monetary factors around service and transparency. In particular, we strive to deliver our services in a way that minimizes the burden on you, maximizes transparency, and ultimately promotes the most peace of mind.
Everyone’s finances, background, personality, and broader circumstances are unique. When working with us, you are not buying a financial plan or portfolio; you are buying into our process. In particular, this process was built to leave no stone unturned and optimize relevant variables. While there may be common elements or ingredients, each plan is developed according to your specific needs and preferences.
You will experience this level of service from the outset, during our engagement process, the onboarding phase, and throughout our working relationship. Here are some examples of our white glove service:
- High-level and detailed communications and updates around the onboarding process to facilitate a forest-and-the-trees perspective
- Prepopulating paperwork and digital requests for all account openings, transfers, rollovers, etc.
- Reminders for impending milestones (Social Security, Medicare, etc.)
- Initiating and facilitating required minimum distributions (RMDs), Roth conversions, charitable giving, etc.
- Establishing and executing a tax withholding strategy and reminders for making estimated tax payments (when applicable)
- Gathering relevant tax documents and communicating with your accountant
- Reviewing tax returns to ensure they align with our planning maneuvers
- Reviewing beneficiary designations and trust documents to ensure they align with your intentions around giving and legacy
- Periodic updates regarding your portfolio performance, planning objectives, and progress toward your goals
- and more …
Education – Not Sales
A key element that resonates through our website, our seminars, our conversations, and almost everything we do is EDUCATION. In our experience, helping our clients understand their financial plans and the strategies we execute on their behalves instills the most peace of mind.
Given my background, my natural tendency is (unsurprisingly) to explain everything and get into technical details. There are a rare few who enjoy getting into the weeds with me, and I eagerly indulge them. For most others, my experience indicates that high-level explanations and intuition work the best.
The Bottom Line:
We provide a valuable combination of expertise and devotion. In particular, we believe our approach offers you one of the best opportunities to get the most out of your retirement savings and maximize your peace of mind.