Financial Planning
OUR APPROACH TO FINANCIAL PLANNING
An integrated financial plan acts as a road map for achieving your most valued and important financial goals.
Many of our clients are busy working professionals handling competing demands: saving and planning for their own retirement; helping children with college expenses; caring for aging family members. We personally understand these challenges and realize what a heavy burden they can be. We are passionate about learning what's most important to you and helping you put a plan in motion that reduces or alleviates your burdens and leaves you feeling optimistic about your future.
Our financial planning service includes advice in the following areas (click on the links below to learn more):
INVESTING
Your investment strategy is integrated with your financial plan. Visit our Investment Management page to learn more about our investment philosophy.
RETIREMENT SAVINGS & INCOME PLANNING
Planning for retirement can feel like a daunting task. How much do I need to save? When can I retire? What will my expenses be? Where will I live? What will I do with my time?
Our goal when developing your retirement plan is to start by having you think about your "ideal" retirement. Once a clearer picture emerges of what that might look like, we collaborate with you to develop possible scenarios and analyze potential outcomes. Your retirement plan is not static; we work with you to update it at least annually and as your situation changes. Frequent monitoring of your plan allows us to identify and take advantage of new opportunities as they arise or "course-correct" if you're faced with a new challenge or thinking about going in a different direction.
For our retired clients, the focus is no longer on developing a plan to get you to retirement, but rather, helping you enjoy the retirement you've worked so hard for! We provide guidance on how much you can safely spend and put together a plan for generating income once those paychecks stop.
You can expect to receive advice and guidance on the following topics: retirement timing/early retirement, aspirational goals such as travel or buying a vacation home, second career planning, relocating, pension analysis, Social Security options, retirement income planning, Medicare/early retiree health care cost estimation, required minimum distributions (RMDs), and retirement savings plan options and selection (IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401ks, etc.).
COLLEGE PLANNING
Putting children through college is no small financial feat, especially when you're simultaneously trying to save for retirement. Whether your goal is to pay for your child's college expenses or take on a portion of the financial obligation, we'll help you put a savings plan in place. We can also help you invest in a 529 college savings plan.
Cash Flow & Debt Management
Knowing your cash flow and developing a plan to pay off debt is an important part of your financial plan. We help our clients estimate their current spending, set savings goals, and put together debt pay-down plans.
Insurance & Risk Management
Essential to consider when creating a financial plan is how to mitigate risk. It's understandable that the death or disability of a family member could have a significant emotional impact, but it's also important to consider the financial impact. How would your day-to-day life and future goals be impacted? Would you need to find ways to replace lost income? How would you juggle it all? Securing proper life insurance and long-term disability insurance can protect you and your loved ones and ease the financial burden of unforeseen tragic events.
With retiree health care costs skyrocketing, many people wonder how they will afford their future care. If assisted living or skilled nursing care is needed later in life, how will you pay for it? We help our clients estimate costs and weigh the pros and cons of self-insuring (paying out-of-pocket) or purchasing a long-term care insurance policy. We don't sell any types of insurance but can refer you to insurance agents we know.
Estate Planning
There are many aspects to estate planning, but some of the most common planning involves deciding who will receive your assets and other personal belongings upon your death (and in a tax-advantageous way), who will make decisions for you if you become incapacitated, and who will become the guardian of any minor children. As part of our financial planning process, we review any existing estate planning documents you have, discuss potential shortfalls, and refer you to an estate planning attorney (if you don't currently have one) to make sure your plan is complete and up-to-date. We also work with your estate planning attorney to make sure investment accounts are titled and beneficiaries are named in accordance with your estate plan.
Tax Planning
When we make investment decisions or complete financial planning for our clients, we are assessing the tax-efficiency of different strategies. Tax-loss harvesting, tax bracket optimization, and Roth conversions are a few examples of ways we help our clients lower their tax liability.
Family Giving
If making financial gifts to children or other family members is important to you, we'll help construct tax-efficient gifting plans that include maximizing annual gift exclusions, gifting highly appreciated stock, and contributing to 529 college savings plans.
Charitable Giving
For our clients who value charitable giving, we incorporate tax-efficient gifting strategies in their financial planning. We also help clients set up and manage Donor Advised Funds and use their IRA Required Minimum Distributions for Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs).