Financial Planning is about you. It’s about your financial goals, your financial dreams, and your financial desires.
Financial Planning is the process of identifying strategies that work together. Helping you reach your dreams, goals, and desires.
Financial Planning is not the act of selling financial products such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETF’s, insurance, etc. Those are tools used inside a well built financial plan.
We pull all these areas together and get them working for you, not against you.
Fundamentals
The foundation of any good financial plan begins with personal financial statements. Think of it as your personal accounting.
What’s your current net worth? How about your cash flow? Tell us about your income and expenses.
Doing a bit of personal accounting lets you know where things are today. It’s a starting point, and without it, it’s difficult to move ahead. Once you know where you are you can choose a direction.
Think of it this way, when driving to New York from Atlanta is it better to have a map or should you just drive north and hope for the best?
We build and help monitor personal financial statements. It records where you are today and let’s you know how you’re doing along the way to achieving your financial goals.
You maybe surprised to know that many people find having their personal financial statements completed relieves financial stress caused by the unknown.
Risk Management
Risk Management is about identifying and evaluating loss exposures. It’s typically associated with the word Insurance, but Risk Management is more than buying insurance.
Risk is part of life. Catastrophic events to simple aggravations… not taking care of these risks can impact multiple generations and deprive you and your family of potential wealth.
What risks are you exposed to? What are your options? Knowing answers to these questions can reduce terrible losses associated with life’s risks.
We analyze your current risk exposures and explore alternatives.
We do not sell insurance products. We do work with your insurance provider to discuss our findings and coordinate our recommendations on how to manage your personal risks.
Investment Management
Investment Management is about building a portfolio of investments in-line with your personal financial goals, your current and future objectives, your risk tolerances, and investment time horizons. It’s not about chasing returns or betting on the next hot stock tip.
Getting caught up in the latest market trends, fund rating services, or financial pundits’ guessing games can lead to losses in a portfolio and expose you to unknown risks.
Don’t get blindsided by market movements. Don’t use emotion as an investment tool. Markets move up and down. We’ll keep you informed of the risks and if any changes are needed we’ll review your options.
We value understanding your goals, your dreams, your fears when it comes to investing. What keeps you up at night? What are your past experiences… your successes and failures?
By listening to you first, we can develop a sound investment strategy to bring those goals and dreams closer to reality.
Retirement Planning
Retirement Planning in today’s world is a necessity.
Making guesswork out of your pension options, or what kind of investments to have in your 401k, or when to take Social Security retirement benefits can lead you down the wrong path.
Will you outlive your money?
Retirement Planning is more than investing. You need to determine if your current income and investments create a sustainable income throughout retirement.
We work through these details with you and provide a retirement plan. We let you know what adjustments are needed today as well as any adjustments in the future.
Tax Planning
Taxes affect nearly every part of your personal and business life.
Making tax planning decisions in one area while ignoring other areas of your finances can be a terrible move.
Before making a decision about taxes you need to recognize how it influences your total financial world.
What seems to be a good decision today can become a costly result tomorrow, and can leave lasting effects for your family.
We work to create tax efficient strategies.
We’ll discuss our findings with your tax professional and coordinate how our strategies can be utilized in your personal financial plan.
Estate Planning
Estate Planning is for everyone.
It’s not only about avoiding Estate Taxes. It’s also about developing strategies to protect family interests and transfer wealth.
- Do you have a simple Will?
- What about an Advance Directive (living Will)?
- Do you have Power of Attorney in place?
- Do you know if a Trust will help you?
When tragedy strikes, a family grieves. If you do not have the correct documents in place, it can derail your wishes and add a burden to your grieving family.
We collaborate with your estate planning attorney making sure to coordinate your requests with the appropriate legal documents. If you do not have an attorney we can make recommendations.
A plan we design for you will determine strategies for protecting your wishes and interests for the family. Our plan will help in smoothing the transfer of wealth to your beneficiaries.