Who We Help

Suddenly Single

Sometimes one can be many years into adulthood before they are required to truly take ownership of managing their own finances. Perhaps a spouse took the lead for most financial-related matters in the past. Now, due a divorce or the unfortunate death of a spouse, the responsibility for all financial decisions has fallen solely and often suddenly on you.

Maybe you're apprehensive about making the right decisions. It's important you're not taken advantage of in an often commission-based, sales-oriented financial services market and, most critical, your financial needs are being met while maximizing the potential of your financial resources and keeping your risk level appropriate. We understand how difficult and scary this can be.

Our objective as a fiduciary is to put your interests first so that anything we recommend would be precisely what we would recommend for ourselves if we were to find ourselves in the identical situation. Our goal is to make sure you don’t simply turn over your finances to a third-party but rather you learn more about your own finances, fully understand anything that we might recommend to you and obtain an answer you understand to any and all questions you may have before you make the final decision regarding how to proceed. We can help you to:

• Improve your knowledge of personal finances in general and your own personal finances in particular
• Clarify and set financial and life goals
• Determine resources required to achieve those goals
• Provide support and accountability needed for you to reach your goals
• Develop a cash flow plan – how much should you spend and how much should you save?
• Determine how best to pay bills and manage day-to-day banking needs
• Establish an emergency savings account
• Assess insurance currently in place relative to your risk management needs
• Formulate an investment plan with follow-up implementation, monitoring and fine-tuning
• Take maximum advantage of tax deductions and tax-advantaged investment opportunities
• Create a new or refine an existing estate plan
• Achieve financial peace of mind

Professionals

Early to mid-career professionals typically live very busy lives as they focus on careers and frequently a growing family life at the same time. Unfortunately, often there’s just little or no time to focus on personal financial matters. Yet, the years when paying college tuition bills or expenses retirement may be far off is precisely the time to make key decisions to align one’s goals and one’s finances so that you have the financial resources to achieve whatever is truly important to you. We can help you to:

• Identify important financial goals
• Determine resources required to achieve those goals
• Provide support and accountability needed for you to reach your goals
• Develop a cash flow plan
• Make the most appropriate employee benefit decisions
• Assess insurance needs for protecting new and growing families
• Devise a student loan repayment strategy for existing debt and evaluate options for any new debt required to fund advanced degrees
• Prioritize savings plans among several competing goals (e.g., emergency savings, home purchase, children's college funding, retirement funding)
• Formulate an investment plan with follow-up implementation, monitoring and fine-tuning
• Navigate financial decisions around career and family life changes
• Take maximum advantage of tax deductions and tax-advantaged investment opportunities
• Create a new or refine an existing estate plan
• Make sure that important financial decisions aren’t put off for tomorrow but rather are made effectively on a timely basis

If your life is just too busy to get to all these matters, you have a choice: ignore them or find someone you can trust to work with you to help you get on the right path and to stay with you to make sure it gets done.

Retirement In Mind

What “retirement” means has undergone a metamorphosis in recent years. Increased longevity has created more opportunities for people in both the career and personal realms. Many people have chosen to retire later but some have chosen to change markedly how they define their career by reformulating their definition of what they do. Others have discovered they have many years to enjoy passions that got placed on the back-burner during a long, busy career or they developed later in life. These changes add complexity whether in the pre-retirement accumulation period or the post-retirement income-management period. We can help you to:

• Clarify and set financial and life goals
• Determine resources required to achieve those goals
• Provide support and accountability needed for you to reach your goals
• Assess degree to which you are “on track” for a future or current retirement
• Simplify financial account complexity accumulated over a lifetime
• Develop a retirement cash flow plan including the creation of an ongoing “Retirement Paycheck” from existing portfolio
• Maximize Social Security and Medicare benefits and make other health-related insurance decisions
• Structure my 401(k), 403(b) and IRA distributions to minimize taxes
• Construct an investment portfolio that gives you confidence in meeting your retirement goals
• Plan and implement charitable and family gifting strategies
• Create a new or refine an existing estate plan that allows you to minimize taxes and ensure a smooth process for your heirs
• Achieve financial peace of mind