Financial Life Planning

We help the affluent make smart decisions with their money so they can enjoy their life

We use a comprehensive process to help our clients address each of their five key concerns: making smart decisions about their money, mitigating their taxes, taking care of their heirs, making sure their assets are not unjustly taken and magnifying their charitable gifts. We work with a network of professional advisors to help our clients maximize the probability of achieving everything that is most important to them.

5 key concerns of the affluent:

1. Wealth Preservation

Wealth preservation is not only about not losing money—it’s about having enough money to fund your lifestyle, whether simple or extravagant.

The goal of wealth preservation is to produce the best possible investment returns consistent with your time frame and tolerance for risk. This is the primary area of focus for most financial advisors. As your wealth manager, investment management will be only the foundation of the value we provide to our affluent clients. We’ll also help you address the other four key financial concerns, in what we call ADVANCED FINANCIAL PLANNING.

2. Wealth Enhancement

Wealth enhancement is about tax mitigation: minimizing the impact of taxes on your investment returns while ensuring the cash flow you need.

We have seen that mitigating incomes taxes is one of the major financial concerns of the great majority of affluent individuals and families that we serve. Mitigating estate taxes and capital gains taxes is also an area of focus.

Taxes can—and do—eat up a great deal of wealth. As your wealth manager, we will help enhance your wealth by minimizing this impact.

3. Wealth Transfer

Effective wealth transfer is all about taking care of your heirs: finding and facilitating the most tax-efficient way to pass assets to loved ones in ways that meet your wishes with minimal difficulty and cost.

Given the fluid nature of today’s tax environment, affluent families need to be proactive in their wealth transfer planning efforts if they truly want their wealth to benefit their heirs to the fullest extent possible. As your wealth manager, we will help you do so.

4. Wealth Protection

This includes all concerns about protecting your wealth against catastrophic loss, potential creditors, litigants, children’s spouses and potential ex-spouses and identity thieves—in short, ensuring that your hard earned assets are not unjustly taken.

Many affluent individuals are worried about being sued—not surprising, given how litigious our culture has become. As your wealth manager, we may need to address controlling risks through business processes, employment agreements and buy-sell agreements, as well as restructuring various assets and considering legal forms of ownership—such as trusts and limited liability entities—that will help put your wealth beyond the reach of creditors and other parties who may seek to take it.

5. Charitable Giving

Many affluent individuals are looking outward beyond their own families to the world at large. For these people, making meaningful gifts to charity in the most impactful way possible is a key issue.

Charitable giving comes with its own unique set of challenges—from selecting the appropriate means of giving (such as direct gifts, donor-advised funds or private family foundations) to selecting causes and specific organizations that will have the biggest impact. As your wealth manager, we will help you navigate the charitable planning process.

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How we do it:

5 STEPS TO SMARTER DECISIONS WITH YOUR MONEY

STEP 1

DISCOVERY MEETING

WE LEARN YOUR VALUES, INTERESTS, GOALS, AND RELATIONSHIPS TO MAP OUT WHERE YOU WANT TO GO

STEP 2

INVESTMENT PLAN MEETING

PRESENTATION OF OUR INVESTMENT PLAN

STEP 3

MUTUAL COMMITMENT

CONFIRMATION OF COMMITMENT

STEP 4

FOLLOW
UP

45 AND 90 DAY FOLLOW UP TO EVALUATE PROGRESS AND ADVANCED PLANNING

STEP 5

ADVANCED PLANNING / VIRTUAL FAMILY OFFICE

INTRODUCTION TO OUR VFO — A TEAM OF CAREFULLY SELECTED PROFESSIONALS, EACH WITH A HIGH LEVEL OF KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL IN KEY FINANCIAL AREAS.

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