An Ongoing Financial Life Plan

Retirement Planning

Evaluating your current financial standing and creating an accumulation strategy is where we’ll begin in ensuring you achieve your desired retirement lifestyle. Because your retirement chapter can potentially span decades, this type of planning generally dominates other financial goals. A successful plan put into place during your wealth building stage should address ways to maximize growth and tax-efficient distributions, as well as how to leave retirement assets to the next generation.

There are several ways to save for retirement, including:

• Qualified employer-sponsored plans
• Individual retirement accounts (IRAs)
• Personal savings
• Executive deferral plans

Accumulation

During accumulation planning, we’ll address your specific investment needs, asset allocation and the suitability of different types of securities, in light of your goals and risk tolerance. 

Specific Needs

We know you have unique needs and desires you’d like to accomplish. To protect your ability to earn and accumulate wealth, you may choose to hold insurance, as well as maintain an emergency fund, to guard against depleting savings intended for other goals. 

Asset Allocation

This may be used to distribute your investable assets among a variety of investment categories. Asset allocation ultimately aims to: 

Reduce overall investment risk

Create more reliable investment forecasts

 Improve the risk/return tradeoff of your portfolio

Accumulation planning also involves the choice of securities for your investment portfolio. Basic securities are stocks, bonds and mutual funds. But, separately managed accounts, option strategies, short-term assets and annuities also may be used to optimize your portfolio. 

Tax Planning

In a collaborative fashion, we’ll consider the tax implications of your individual, investment and/or business decisions, often with the goal of minimizing tax liability. Although decisions are rarely made solely on their tax impact, you should have a working knowledge of the income or estate tax issues and costs involved.

A major goal of tax planning is minimizing federal income tax liability. This can be achieved by:

• Reducing taxable income through income deferral or shifting
• Deduction planning
• Investment tax planning
• Year-end planning strategies

Estate Planning

One of the critical components of financial planning is preparing your estate. This creates a master plan for the management of your property during life and the distribution of that property at death. 

For most people, estate planning aims to:

• Gives more control over assets during life
• Provide care when disabled
• Allow for the transfer of wealth to whom and when wanted, at the lowest possible cost

Common estate planning issues addressed in the wealth management process include:

• Transfer of wealth
• Minimization of transfer taxes
• Asset protection
• Charitable giving

Charitable Giving

Whether you’re donating to a favorite charity or helping out a family member, it’s important to choose the right strategy to do so, paying close attention to potential tax and legal implications. Our team will help you determine an option that makes sense for you, your family and your financial situation.

If there’s a charitable organization you’d like to donate to, be sure to take the time to consider the charitable giving vehicle you’ll use to make your gift. A few options include:

• Outright gifts
• Donor advised funds
• Charitable remainder trusts
• Charitable lead trusts
• Private foundations
• Bequests

Alternatively, giving back doesn’t always mean giving to charity. Gifting to family members can be just as rewarding, and it can be an effective way to transfer wealth while reducing or avoiding taxes. Here are a few strategies to consider:

• Making an outright cash gift.
• Paying college tuition or medical bills directly.
• Contributing to a 529 plan.

Risk Management

Risk management is intended to minimize financial and other losses potentially associated with risks to your assets, business or health. Some examples of risk are personal and professional liability, business ownership, property loss and catastrophic illness or disability. Your first line of defense is to identify your sources of risk and then to either avoid or minimize the major exposures. Your last line of defense is insurance.

Asset protection planning manages risks to your wealth. Lawsuits, accidents, property damage and other financial risks are facts of everyday life and asset protection planning looks to transfer the risk of these events through:

• Insurance
• Repositioning asset ownership
• Other protections available under the law

Starting and running a business carries its own set of risk exposures. Certain factors can have a huge impact on how safe your personal and business assets are from risk. These include:

• The type of business entity you choose
• The state you choose to do business in
• How you manage your business
• Your human resources
• Your taxes

Business Planning

Business planning focuses on issues specific to business owners and shareholders. For most business owners, the business is their most significant asset, and the financial success of that business has an immediate impact on the economic security of their families. Without proper planning, you may have difficulty tapping the value of your business to support your retirement, or your family may lose the value of your business at your death.

Business planning coordinates the management of your business throughout its life cycle with:

• Risk management
• Distributions to the owners
• Succession planning

ESG Investing

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing allows you to tailor your investments to issues that matter to you most. Going beyond socially responsible investing (SRI), ESG investing incorporates a set of standards, aligning a company’s operations and strategy with principles related to environmental responsibility, social concerns and corporate governance.

By choosing an ESG/sustainable investment vehicle, you can select companies whose concerns tend to match the issues you care about and avoid companies that operate contrary to your values. For example, you might choose to invest in companies that promote the:

Environment

• Energy efficiency
• Waste management
• Air and water pollution
• Water scarcity

Social

• Human rights
• Labor standards
• Employee engagement
• Community relations
• Customer satisfaction

Governance

• Board composition
• Executive compensation
• Lobbying activities
• Audit committee structure
• Corruption policies