Our Services

Our goal as a company is to provide our customer with the knowledge and services they need to reach their goals and hopefully exceed expectations" 

Wealth Management:  
Our approach starts with an in-depth Discovery Process that allows us to develop a thorough understanding of your needs, goals, and expectations. Our strategies emphasize ongoing, diligent analysis to pursue success in a complex, ever-changing world. We also collaborate with independent professionals, such as accountants and attorneys, to give you professional advice when necessary. Above all, we aim to take care of your entire financial life, ensuring that the advice you receive is completely integrated.

Risk Management:
We believe that risk management is integral to every financial strategy, whether for individuals or businesses. We strive to protect what matters most to our clients through the appropriate use of risk management. As insurance provides certainty in uncertain times an objective third party evaluation of risk-based needs is critical in today's economic environment. Our experience, knowledge, independence, and independent advisor base provides us the capability to provide customized options using a variety of products, concepts, and carriers.

Corporate Benefits:
We offer a rich suite of services designed to help businesses attract and retain talent, create financial security, and help business owners ensure their own long-term financial health. We partner with a wide network of independent legal, accounting, and insurance professionals to offer your firm the professional advice it needs.

What exactly do we do?

• Fee-based Financial Planning
• Cash Flow/Tax Strategies
• Money Under Management
• Foundation & Portfolio Design
• Retirement Planning
• Estate Planning
• Tax Credit Programs
• Real Estate Investment Trusts
• Variable Annuities
• Fixed Annuities
• Mutual Funds
• Life Insurance
• Disability Income Insurance
• Long Term Care
• Critical Illness Benefit
• Alternative Investments

Due to our accumulated knowledge in business continuance and tax strategies, we can help provide a personal, family or business protection truly suited to your needs and your budget.

Investment Management
We follow a well-defined process to structure your portfolio for the maximum potential return and a given amount of risk, thereby, giving you the greatest probability of achieving your financial goals.

Your portfolio strategy begins with a personalized investment analysis, and graduates through the portfolio construction process in which multiple asset classes, investment styles and specialist money managers are combined to help meet your investment objectives.

Our asset management process is modeled after the disciplined approach used by institutional money managers. We designed our five-step process to respond to your individual needs and the dynamics of the capital markets.

Step 1: Determine your risk profile and objective

Step 2: Set your asset allocation policy

Step 3: Diversify across asset classes and investment styles

Step 4: Rebalance your portfolio

Step 5: Report the results

Our mission is to help people master their money in all five areas of personal financial mastery (Income Optimization, Investment Optimization, Tax Planning Optimization, Estate Planning Optimization and Retirement Optimization). So you can spend your time on more fulfilling, creative and productive activities, our professional planners spend their time educating themselves, researching and anticipating potential barriers you might face and opportunities you might benefit from.

LIFE PLANNING: A FOCUS ON THE CONTINUUM OF LIFE        

by Syble Solomon, Lifewise

Remember this scene?  A financial planner comes to Mr. and Mrs. Hi Income's house, sits in their kitchen and asks them, out of the blue, how much money they will need when they retire.  Encouraged by their blank stares, the great and powerful financial planner throws their salaries into a hat, mixes in some numbers for their children's college education, intones some magic words that sounded like "inflation, inflation, inflation, inflation" and then, with great flair, pulls out a number that is completely meaningless to them.

Today's financial planners are trying to adapt to a new world.  They have lost their edge as the financial wizards with proprietary access to sophisticated calculations.  Anyone can get that information online now and financial calculators do a great job of crunching numbers.  And we are also losing our major milestone goal-retirement.  No one knows exactly what that means anymore or when it will happen.

Today's planners have discovered that they can engage today's clients by focusing on the continuum of life and not just on accumulating asset for retirement.  They are beginning to offer more personalized and effective service by identifying the client's values, lifestyle and dreams.  This requires real conversation, not just lip service given to the concept.  Mitch Anthony, author of Your Clients for Life: The Definitive Guide to Becoming a Successful Financial Life Planner, said, "Intuitively, your clients will see the wisdom in developing a plan to use their money to make a life rather than using their lives to make money."

Easier said than done?  Not anymore.  Today there are life planning tools and activities available which help financial planners take a holistic and realistic approach rather than focusing on money first.  Here are a few ideas:

Remember: Predictability is out-flexibility and resilience are in.  Throw out the old notion that life is linear and predictable life events happen on a predictable schedule.  Really, how many people do you know that will be retiring at 65 with a pension, grandchildren down the street and the same spouse they started with?

We are living longer, there is little or no job security, serial monogamy is becoming more common than long-term marriages, children enter, exit and re-enter our lives in new and unanticipated patterns and family has been redefined in many different ways.  In addition, education, re-education and retraining at all ages is more commonplace.  Ken Dychwald, Ph.D., futurist and author of Age Wave and Age Power, refers to this unpredictability of ages and stages of life as a "cyclical lifestyle".  He warns that unless we pay attention to this trend, we will be preparing people for a life that no longer exists.

Here are today's typical clients:

• A 40-year-old woman who has remarried, has a salary of $100,000, is about to become a mother for the first time and plans to start a new business from home which could be a financial  boom or bust.
• A 55-year-old man who has lost his job and no longer has the same earning capacity as he had anticipated.
• A twenty-something who will have multiple jobs and potentially two or three different careers.  Their lives will routinely include salary fluctuations and periods of unemployment (job loss, travel, return to school, new career or choosing to care for family members).

Embrace the notion of a cyclical life style and become comfortable talking about it.  A financial planner who focuses on potential positive life changes and transitions, as well as challenges, will help create freedom and options for their clients.  Clients want to approach life with an attitude of being proactive, flexible and resilient.  They want to make life happen, not just react to it.

Ask thoughtful questions and listen, listen, listen.  Previously, financial planners primarily asked very straightforward questions like: Do you own your own home?  What is your company's pension plan?  Life was simpler then and the answers easily fit into a small box.  Now just asking "How many children do you have?" frequently requires reminding the person to include his, hers and ours for biological, legally adopted and step children from multiple relationships.  Now financial planners need to ask more thoughtful and comprehensive life questions and really listen to the answers in order to address the individual's financial plans in a relevant way.

Here's an example of a life focused question that addresses the reality of today's job market: What three things could you do to meet your expenses if you experience a period of unemployment?  And here are some of the answers:

Live off credit cards.  Take any job or even two jobs if necessary.  Sell stock.  Tap into retirement funds and savings.  Borrow on our home equity.  Consider moving in with my parents or asking them for gift or a loan.  Have faith that God will provide.  Expect my wife to support us while I go back to school to get retrained.  Cut back on expenses.  Take it day-by-day and do the best we can.  Have my elderly parents move in with us and share the expenses.