FAQs

The truth is that the amount needed to retire varies for each client. There are many factors that make up what you will need to retire, and these include your current and future spending habits, sources of income, lifestyle choices, state of residence, healthcare/long-term care costs, cost of living, taxes, supporting parents or adult children and housing costs to name a few. Inflation is silently lurking in the shadows as well, causing prices for goods and services to increase and purchasing power to decrease. Our team will work with you to determine your needs, create a customized financial plan and help you navigate the details.

We offer appointments that will fit into your lifestyle. We offer in-person meetings at our office, during normal business hours and in specific circumstances, we still make house calls! Yes, we will come to your house if necessary. We also offer virtual video conferences during and after normal business hours for those who prefer technology, convenience and want to see our smiling faces but not in person. 

We are always available to answer your questions and we won’t send you an invoice either! Both our wealth management and financial planning engagements include full access to us. We are available to answer your questions by phone, email or virtually and are committed to providing accurate and timely answers to your questions.

We know you didn’t come to a financial planning website because you needed a few laughs. However, now that you’re here, you might have smiled a few times reading our FAQs. Our true difference is our people. We're very serious in our planning, but we are genuine people who like to have fun and laugh with our clients while laughing at ourselves. We truly like our clients and can go from having a serious planning conversation and immediately transition to sharing a beverage and joking with them right afterward. If you’re looking for the stereotypical financial advisors you see on TV Commercials, we’re probably not the best fit for you.

You will have convenient online access found on our website when you click CLIENT LOGIN at the upper right of the home page. In addition, you will have access to LPL Financials' AccountView which has a modern and informative app available for Android, Apple, tablets and desktop computers.

Your financial plan will be unique to your personal financial situation. Our main concern is to listen to what your financial priorities are and to create a plan to hit them. A financial plan may cover these 6 areas:

• Current Financial Position – Reviewing your budget, cash flows, net worth, and emergency reserves
• Protection Planning – Reviewing your insurance policies and other risk management tools
• Investment Planning – Assessing your investment risk tolerance and designing an asset allocation strategy
• Retirement Planning – Estimating retirement income and expenses and benchmarking if you are on pace to hit your goals
• Tax Planning – Projecting taxes into the future and evaluating tax-efficient strategies
• Estate Planning – Transferring your estate according to your wishes while mitigating applicable taxes

Using our financial planning software we can also model out different scenarios that will help you evaluate the financial implications of a decision you are contemplating. While the planning process is quite comprehensive, we do provide ongoing reviews that will allow us to update the plan as your life changes. Your financial plan will evolve with you over time.

While it sounds pretty simple, creating a financial plan can be quite complex. Many people don’t know where to begin and internet-based platforms often don’t give you a customized strategy that’s tailored made for you. Much of what you read on the internet is not personalized to your unique set of circumstances.

My team and I go above and beyond the numbers to learn more about you and your family’s values and goals. We are there, by your side, helping you through life’s financial challenges, while helping to ensure that decisions are made that match with your principles. The process that we take you through is a joint discovery process, where we work as your advocate to give you customized financial advice specific to your financial goals.

Money management can be quite scary! Between the stock market roller coaster, outstanding debt you owe, and even the daunting task of saving for retirement, it can get quite overwhelming! It’s unfortunate that we aren’t taught these concepts in school.

As you create your financial plan with us, we are sensitive to the fact that many times money has some powerful emotions tied with it. We are careful to progress slowly through our process to ensure that we go at a pace that is right for you. We never judge you for your money habits and never want you to feel embarrassed.

By the time your plan has been created, we hope that you feel more confident about your money, and also learn more about your finances too. We engage you throughout the process and teach you money management success tips. Our goal is to be a positive resource for you throughout your life.

If you engage us to create a financial plan with you, we never want you to feel obligated to implement the plan with us. Separate from the financial plan and our role as financial planner, we may recommend the purchase of specific investment or insurance products or accounts. These product recommendations are not part of the financial plan and you are under no obligation to follow them.

At the same time, we hope that you choose to work with us. Since we know that a plan is only as good as that which is executed, we can be by your side helping to select appropriate products or accounts to fulfill your needs.

While there is no obligation to renew your plan after our initial engagement, we do recommend it. Financial planning is not a one-and-done process. It evolves with you. As you experience major life changes, the process evolves and the plan changes. From there, we’ll work together to create an updated action plan.

To get started, we like to setup our first meeting to get to know each other a bit better. At this meeting, we learn more about your financial situation and see how we can help. We encourage you to bring a list of financial questions or concerns that you’d like to review.

Click here to contact us to get started today!

We seek to  help clients protect and grow their assets through long term financial planning and investment management. People who are not a good fit include:

• Those who want to plan and invest themselves
• Those who struggle to share information in a timely manner or follow-up on tasks they agreed to
• Those who don’t value financial planning and instead focus on short-term investment performance
• Those who are just looking for short-term investment ideas or trading strategies

We appreciate your trust in our financial advisory services and value the opportunity to clarify how we are compensated for our expertise and guidance. Transparency is at the core of our client relationships, and we want to ensure you have a clear understanding of our compensation structure.

As your dedicated financial advisor, we operate on a fee-based model. This means that we are compensated based on a predetermined fee arrangement agreed upon between us and yourself that involves a percentage of Assets Under Management (AUM). This fee structure is designed to align our interests with yours and ensure that our recommendations are always in your best interest.

The fees we charge cover a comprehensive range of services we provide, including but not limited to Financial Planning, Investment Management, Ongoing Monitoring, Retirement Planning, Estate Planning, Tax Planning and Financial Education.

It is important to note that our compensation is not based on any commissions or sales incentives from third-party products or services. This ensures that our recommendations are unbiased and solely focused on your best interests.

We believe that this fee-based model promotes a transparent and collaborative relationship, enabling us to provide you with objective advice and support your financial success. Should you have any further questions or require additional information, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. We are here to assist you every step of the way.