Our investment advising services are designed to deliver a disciplined investment approach that allows you to earn an appropriate rate of return from your portfolio without incurring major volatility and losses. The foundation of our investment advising services is to determine an appropriate target asset allocation for the client based on their specific situation and then implement that allocation by using well-defined criteria for how investment securities will be selected for their portfolio. The methodologies we use allow us to effectively manage our client’s portfolios on a continuous basis based on their specific situation, goals and objectives.
Our investment strategies include the following:
Equity Strategies
§ CAN SLIM™ – to invest in individual, publicly-traded stock securities
§ Covered Call REIT Strategy – to invest in individual, publicly-traded
real estate securities
§ Mutual Fund Selection & Review Methodology – to maintain our
Recommended Mutual Fund List
§ Separate Account Managers Selection & Review Methodology – to
maintain our list of recommend separate account managers
Fixed Income Strategies
§ Preferred Stock Under Par – to invest in relative high-yielding
preferred stocks trading under their par value
§ Other Individual Fixed Income Securities – at times, depending on
the current interest rate environment and the client’s needs and tax
situation, we may utilize criteria to select other individual fixed income
securities such as corporate bonds, municipal bonds, or closed-end
bond funds
§ Mutual Fund Selection & Review Methodology – to maintain our
Recommended Mutual Fund List
§ Separate Account Managers Selection & Review Methodology –
to maintain our list of recommend separate account managers
Specific Issues faced by Retirees
Life and financial goals differ greatly from one Retiree to the next and we appreciate those differences. Most Retirees have a vision of how they want to live during retirement; however, to effectively achieve your retirement goals, you must consider and integrate the various aspects of your personal financial situation. Our Personal Wealthcare Services for Retirees address the following items in a fully coordinated manner:
Investment Planning – Based on the structure of your current investment portfolio and your tolerance (or lack of) for volatility in your investment portfolio, we determine what rate of return should be used within your wealthcare plan. This rate of return must be properly planned for within your investment plan.
Tax Planning – As a Retiree, effective tax planning must occur in an integrated fashion. We always focus on the after-tax value or impact of any planning we do; therefore, some of the tax planning is completed throughout the other facets of completing your financial plan. Additionally, we review all of your individual tax returns filed for the prior two years to search for additional tax planning ideas. We will make recommendations to maximize your tax deductions and minimize your taxes due to the greatest extent allowed by law.
Cash Flow Planning – We review your sources of retirement income and expenses to determine how you should draw on your accumulated wealth to support your living expenses and retirement goals. We review your current debts to ensure they are being managed and utilized in the most effective manner and we evaluate the appropriateness of paying debt off versus saving for certain goals. We also determine an appropriate cash emergency fund and how that amount can be funded if needed.
Insurance/Risk Management Planning – We are not proponents of spending large amounts of money on insurance policies nor are we typically fans of blended insurance policies such as whole life, universal life or annuities; however, each client has an important layer of insurance protection that needs to be in place to protect them from suffering major financial damage. We review all of your insurance policies such as life, disability, long-term care, health, medigap, auto, homeowners and any other policies you may have and make recommendations on changes that should be made from reducing your amount of coverage, to making changes in your current coverage, to evaluating whether any new coverages should be added.
Basic Estate Planning – We review and/or help you develop your estate plan based on minimizing potential estate taxes, ensuring your estate will be distributed to your heirs according to your wishes in an efficient manner, and ensuring that your business interests will be handled and transferred efficiently. Most clients’ estate plans include wills, trusts, powers of attorney, health care proxy and living wills. Trusts may be recommended to minimize estate taxes and/or to make an orderly distribution of your wealth, during your lifetime and upon death, while maintaining control. We will also review your beneficiary designations on your retirement plans and life insurance policies and the titling of your assets to ensure they are fully coordinated with your estate plans. Finally, we can help you develop an intervivos gifting strategy to your heirs to help minimize potential estate taxes.
Advanced Estate Planning – The use of certain specialized trusts such as Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts, Qualified Personal Residence Trust, Charitable Trusts and other advanced financial planning techniques such as Family Limited Partnerships, Limited Liability Companies or Private Annuities will be evaluated and recommended if, based on our analysis and review, your estate warrants the need or use of advanced planning vehicles.
Charitable Planning – We will assist you in identifying and discussing any charitable priorities that require or have need of specialized planning techniques. Different strategies that may be evaluated include different types of Charitable Trusts, Charitable Pooled Funds and Private Foundations.
For clients with over $1,000,000 under our management, we will maintain their Personal Wealthcare Plan through eMoneyAdvisor, which is an on-line platform. By utilizing this platform, we have the capabilities of performing all of the above planning and analyses. This technology enables Retirees to access a comprehensive view of their financial status at all times from a user-friendly, secure web site (service to be rolled out in mid-2005).
In addition, the eMoneyAdvisor platform offers the following benefits:
§ Account aggregation
§ Balance sheet that is updated daily
§ Online storage vault for important legal documents
§ Comprehensive view of all corporate benefits
§ Personalized webpage
§ Broad financial planning capabilities, including estate planning
§ Printed reports
Individual Tax Services
Our individual tax preparation and planning services focus on maximizing deductions and minimizing the amount of tax our clients must pay while maintaining full compliance with the tax laws. For retirees there are several main tax issues that need to be considered on a year-to-year basis. Those issues are:
Taxability of Social Security Benefits – There are certain income thresholds that cause Social Security benefits to be included in your taxable income. Planning should be done to determine if there is anyway a client can avoid exceeding these thresholds and therefore minimize the amount of taxable Social Security benefits.
Wealth Distribution Planning – Withdrawals from tax deferred accounts will create taxable income while withdraws from taxable or tax free (Roth IRAs) accounts do not increase a client’s taxable income. Where a retiree withdraws the funds needed to support their living expenses needs to be carefully planned from a tax perspective.
Estimated Tax Payments or Tax Withholdings – Typically after you retire, you do not have any sources of income that automatically withhold federal and/or state income tax for you. Therefore, you need to consider whether or not you need to make quarterly estimated payments and/or request tax withholdings be made for you to avoid tax underpayment penalties.
Calculation of Investment Gains and Losses – For all of our wealth management and investment advising clients we track and compute their realized gains and losses from their taxable investment transactions.
Deduction of Medical Expenses – Medical expenses are only deductible if they are over 7.5% of your Adjusted Gross Income. Pre-retirement most people fail to meet this threshold due to higher taxable income and relatively low out-of-pocket medical expenses; however, normally in retirement your taxable income decreases and your out-of-pocket medical expenses start to increase so these costs may start becoming deductible.
Required Minimum Distributions – Once a person turns 70 ½, he or she must start calculating and withdrawing required minimum distributions from certain tax deferred retirement accounts. We complete these calculations and withdrawals for our clients.
See the Overview of Our Wealth Management Services for more information regarding our individual tax services.
The Next Step
You have worked hard to get where you are today. It is important that you have an advisor who has the expertise, knowledge and ability to work closely with you to make sure you attain your goals for retirement. We offer a free initial consultation meeting to learn more about your situation and further educate you on the services we provide and the manner in which we work with our clients. This initial meeting is designed to allow both of us to evaluate whether we are a good fit to form a client-advisor relationship. This meeting also gives you an opportunity to better compare our firm to other financial service firms.
See the Contact Us section for information on how to contact our firm and establish a time for your initial consultation meeting.