New Client Experience
Our New Client Experience is part education, part exploration, and part action. We share recommendations across a range of topics which impact your finances, identify opportunities to support your goals, and look for any risks that could impact your success.
We spend a lot of time together early on – usually three or four meetings over as many months to make sure you have a strong foundation of information and resources at your disposal. We want to get to know you so we can help craft a customized financial plan that works for your specific goals, values, and circumstances. Our initial work together will cover a range of topics. Your experience with us will be unique to your needs and priorities.
Estate Planning
From a financial planning standpoint, estate planning includes deciding how your assets are distributed upon your death and identifying who we would work with in your absence. While no one wants to think about incapacity or death, having plans in place is important to reduce risk and protect your legacy. Our team will provide a general overview of the different elements of an estate plan. We guide you through decisions that drive the documents your estate planning attorney will create. If you have existing documents such as a will or Power of Attorney, we review them from a financial standpoint to see if they meet your current needs. Once you’re ready to meet with an estate attorney, we can coordinate the scheduling and attend the meeting to support you through the process. We will then review your documents with you every 3-5 years to ensure everything meets your current needs and desires.
Record Keeping & Cash Flow
While much of financial planning is future oriented, we want to support your current financial health so you can live well now and in the future. To support cash flow and saving, our team describes a system for helping to accumulate funds for upcoming activities, experiences, and expenses. Funding for your dreams, wants, and needs in a way that aligns with your values is the goal. For record keeping, we provide an overview of what documents to retain and for how long. We also provide clients with a system for important documents with helpful lists and descriptions as a reference tool.
Insurance Review
Mitigating risk is an important element of a sound financial plan yet insurance coverage can be complex and, therefore, challenging to evaluate on your own. In addition, insurance can impact other parts of your financial puzzle like estate planning and cash flow. We look at your existing coverage from an unbiased perspective because we don’t sell insurance or take any form of referral fees. We will discuss various aspects of risk and policies such as auto, home, life, disability, long-term care, umbrella, etc.
Goals & Values
Your money is a tool, a very powerful tool, which can provide a number of possibilities for you now and in the future. Knowing what matters to you is critical to develop a financial plan that reflects who you are and what you want for your life. Our process to discover your goals and values helps reduce tension between competing financial priorities to identify what matters most. Your goals and values are a driving force in the planning we will do with you and we will revisit them throughout our work together.
Investment Strategy
We work to understand how to best invest for you given your goals and tolerance for risk. A sound investment strategy requires expertise as well as a detailed understanding of what you, the client, want and need. Our recommendations are based on your best interest because we earn no commission or other financial incentives from any brokerage or fund. For those still working, we discuss retirement projections to see how much we can and need to save to work toward the financial freedom that you desire. If you are retired, we help you evaluate how much you can and want to spend.
Other Topics
Our team will also address financial planning for additional topics as appropriate, such as:
- Benefits from your employer
- Business
- Career change
- Charitable giving
- College
- Kids’ meeting
- Long term care
- Real estate
Ongoing Reviews
Once our initial meeting series is complete, you will typically meet with your financial planning team three times each year. Financial planning is an on-going process that must be adjusted to accommodate life changes as they arise. Outside of our regular meeting schedule, we are available for any questions, decisions, or opportunities that arise.
Tax Review (generally Feb – April)
We will go over your tax return before filing and discuss any tax planning opportunities discovered.
Mid-Year Progress Review (generally May – June)
Mid-year is a good time to review your investment portfolio and rebalance as necessary. We will also review your tax plan for the current year.
Financial Freedom Review (generally Sept – Nov)
Our focus will be on planning for retirement or whatever financial freedom means to you. At this meeting we will also discuss any year-end income tax decisions.
Scheduling Meetings
- We will reach out via email when it is time to schedule these meetings with your financial planning team.
- You can request a call or meeting with us between these planned meetings as things come up. Just email our Client Services Manager, Sonya, and let her know what you need.
- Meeting times are available between 9 am and 4 pm.