Investment Related Tax Strategies

We believe that asset location is an underused tool for tax planning. When we consider tax planning, we examine both your current tax bracket and your likely tax bracket during the distribution phase of your retirement. We ask where assets could best be placed within three categories: taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-managed. We then create a tax location strategy to guide you through your accumulation, distribution, and legacy phases of life. This allows you to mitigate potential tax increases during each phase by having the appropriate amount of money in all three categories, giving us malleable options for distribution.

We have a network of CPAs and Attorneys available to review and develop this strategy. We can also work directly with your CPA to make sure you have a comprehensive financial plan in place. Through this process, we try to minimize the amount of money that gets taxed out of each of your retirement dollars.

Cash Flow Planning

We will help you plan out, in advance and on paper, where every dollar will go for each month. You’ll be prepared for both regular and easy-to-forget expenses throughout the year. You’ll also feel more confident when making purchase decisions, and you will be able to focus on getting out of debt and saving for retirement.

Retirement Planning

We take a reality-based focus to planning. Think of the difference between a flight plan and an actual flight. Flight plans are the pilot’s best guess about variables like the wind speed and weather. No matter how much time is spent creating the plan, real life never aligns completely with it. While the plan is important, the key to arriving safely is the pilot’s ability to make minor and consistent course corrections. It’s all about the course corrections, not the plan.

The Advisors value can be found in not only the development of the plan but the small consistent adjustments that help you reach your destination. We begin by charting a course that is headed towards wherever you want to go. This requires us to make educated guesses about the future. We use measurable variables like inflation, tax rates, and health to formulate our assumptions. Then we move on to the more productive business of investigating our current motives and circumstances so we can act from a place of clarity and understanding, not hope or fear.

We focus our energy on the entire process instead of obsessing over the starting assumptions. Even the best plan is still only a fictional narrative about the future.

Estate Planning

Estate Planning begins the moment you consider how you would like to leave your legacy to your heirs. A solid Estate Plan can take years to develop and come into its own in your later years of life. We often work with a network of Estate Attorneys to design your plan to not only take care of your family, but to also take care of any charitable relationships that are important to you.

Our goal with your Estate Plan is to give you peace of mind that your wishes for your life’s work will continue long after you are gone.

Education Planning

If saving for college is an important financial goal for your family, you may look into a college savings plan for yourself, your children, your grandchildren, or other children close to you.

As you explore college financing options and determine which program, or combination of programs, will best meet your needs, you may wish to talk to a financial Advisor to guide you through the finer points.

Investment Management

Core/Satellite investing is used as a guide or set of guidelines that builds upon asset allocation to give you greater comfort when it comes to your portfolio management. Through the use of our core/satellite approach, we can help you have better control of your portfolio, including the occasional stock tip you get from a “friend”.