Our Services
Personal Services ♦ Business Service ♦ Asset Management
Our industry affiliations allow us to offer clients industry-leading products, backed by some of the largest companies in the country. However, the most important thing we bring to our clients is a planning process that allows us to help clients completely understand their financial situation and develop an effective approach to reaching their financial future.
We have helped our clients understand how they can meet and exceed their financial goals. Through education, analysis, and planning, a program is developed. This program leverages all aspects of a client's financial situation and provides an integrated approach.
We are deeply committed to educating people, to removing the mystique surrounding financial decisions and to encouraging our clients to move forward with confidence. People need self-confidence and information to break through the clutter. They need to work with a financial coach who offers knowledge, experience and integrity. And, they need someone who has an in-depth understanding of their financial situation and who cares about whether they attain their personal goals.
For more detail about our processes, click on either Corporate Retirement Plans or Individual Wealth Management.
Estate Planning
We assist you in the design and implementation of programs to ensure that your wealth is passed along to family or others, without being negatively impacted by estate or inheritance taxes. This service enables you to plan your personal estate to help ensure maximum distribution and conservation to future generations.
Retirement Planning
Having the ability to retire comfortably and free from financial pressures remains the main issue for our clients - both business owners and employees. It is critical that the retirement plan be properly designed, implemented, communicated and administered. Retirement plans are dynamic, changing as client's businesses and tax laws change. They demand continued and careful analysis, IRS compliance review and plan administration. The appropriateness of a "qualified" or "non-qualified" plan for any individual is determined based on the individual's existing financial condition, as well as on his or her goals and dreams.
College Funding
We will work with you to tell you if your current savings strategy will cover your child's college expenses. Do you dream of your child or grandchild going to college? Higher education comes with a high price tag, but it's an expense you can meet through proper financial planning. Let us help you calculate college costs, evaluate funding options and create an education strategy tailored to your goals.
Options may include:
- State-sponsored college savings plans (529 Plans)
- Education Savings Accounts
- Traditional and Roth IRAs
- Custodial Accounts (UGMA/UTMA)
- Educational Trusts
Will/Trust Analysis
Wills and Trusts are just tools in the larger process of "estate planning". There is an unfortunate, widespread misconception that this topic is a subject of interest only to the wealthy. In fact, an estate plan provides the legal mechanism for disposing of property upon death in a way that recognizes your wishes and the needs of your survivors, while minimizing taxes. For many it involves, even more importantly, planning for the handling of affairs in case of disability, and the deeply personal medical choices to be made as life nears its end. Estate planning is not just for rich people. Trusts can play an important role in providing order to your financial affairs, assisting with your tax planning, simplifying your estate settlement and providing guidance for your family and other heirs.
Asset Management
Asset management helps our clients enhance their wealth by maximizing after-tax return with a reasonable level of risk. To accomplish this objective, we integrate active portfolio management with a commitment to after-tax strategies across all appropriate asset classes. We work closely with you to design and manage a strategy that complements your specific investment objectives. Your asset allocation can consist of quality money market funds, well-researched equities, and investment quality fixed income obligations.
Life Insurance Ownership Management
Insurance is an important part of a complete financial plan. It protects your heirs in the event of your death, and it can protect you in the event of a disability. We can help you determine what type of coverage is best for you. We can provide access to insurance products, including term life, whole life, universal life, variable life, survivorship, single premium, long-term care and long-term disability insurance. As you build relationships and share financial information with us, we are in a unique position to provide guidance and determine which insurance products are best for you.
Long Term Care
There's a good chance that you may need to pay for nursing home, assisted living or home health care one day. In fact, more than half of the U.S. population will require long-term care at some point in their lives. Long-term care involves helping you with the most intimate aspects of your life, like what and where you'll eat and your personal hygiene. Unfortunately, this kind of care is expensive. You probably shouldn't assume that Uncle Sam will help. Medicare does not cover most long-term care costs. Medicaid benefits are only available to you when you've depleted all of your assets. We will help you protect yourself against long-term care expenses with the appropriate coverage.
Employee Benefits
Providing an employee benefits package that includes quality, affordable health care coverage continues to be one of the greatest challenges for today's employers. We put our considerable experience in this field to work on delivering alternatives to our clients. We evaluate the design of different benefits packages to achieve the best pricing structure and advice on implementing such options as cafeteria plans that allow for employee cost-sharing through tax deductible contributions. As well, we administer the benefits program, assisting employers with the claims filing procedure.
Buy/Sell Strategies
A Buy-Sell Agreement is simply a written agreement made between the partner or shareholders of the business specifying buy out provisions caused by such things as death, disability, divorce, bankruptcy, voluntary termination, company dissolution, etc. The execution of a Buy-Sell Agreement secures a number of very tangible benefits for the shareholders, including:
- Continuity of management and control for the remaining owners
- A ready market for typically non-marketable business interests
- Liquidity to the decedent's estate for estate taxes and administration costs
- A fair valuation of the business interest for federal estate tax purposes
- A fair return to the decedent's estate for his/her business interests
Business Succession Planning
A key goal of many of our business owner clients is to someday transfer their business interest to either family members or key employees. Properly done, this type of planning can offer to both the current and successor owner a worry free, tax efficient method of business succession.
Furthermore, the loss of a business owner through death or disability can catch even the most efficiently managed small companies off guard and, worse, unprepared to deal with the repercussions. Family businesses, in particular, are susceptible to erosion of capital due to estate taxes and legal fees; not to mention the possible hurdles of voting control being scattered among heirs, with conflicting points of view impeding the business' operation and growth.
We can provide a professional evaluation of your current situation that will help avoid future problems involved in business succession planning.
Executive Compensation
Non-qualified deferred compensation programs, typically employed to provide supplemental retirement benefits to senior management, include selective incentive plans, wherein the company makes contributions to fund the plan on behalf of selected employees. Executive Compensation plans are a popular vehicle to attract and retain key individuals of your company.
Risk Management Analysis
Implementing a risk management program is fundamental to a company's ability to protect itself against the loss of key personnel through death or disabling injury or sickness. We offer expertise on selecting life and disability insurance coverage for such a program.
We conduct a financial security analysis to determine the appropriate protection for companies and their key executives, which encompasses evaluating risk management needs and balancing them with living or wealth accumulation objectives. We design risk management programs to be affordable, to fill corporate and individual needs, and to be flexible enough to allow for a change as needs change. Our analysis also involves a review of any existing coverage to ensure it is cost effective and includes up-to-date features.
Through risk management analysis, we can deliver solutions in the form of policies valued and designed according to our clients' needs.
Strategic Risk Management
We assess your investment goals and your risk tolerance. Then, we design a program tailored for you that meets your income and growth requirements. This program will also integrate with your family's tax and financial strategies.
We help you select investment managers with a variety of investment styles. Because every investor is unique, our investment programs are designed to link your specific investment needs to the appropriate method of professional investment management. We are committed to providing personalized investment management services to individuals, families, and fiduciaries. We emphasize that each client has unique needs and goals that deserve to be addressed differently. This approach has benefited clients of our firm for many years, and we believe it will remain a successful approach into future decades.
KNOWLEDGE • EXPERIENCE • INTEGRITY