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Financial Planning

Where your goals and our guidance meet.

Reactive Proactive Planning

Our financial planning process is designed to provide you with a clear path to achieve your lifetime goals. Working together, we’ll help you to develop specific, quantifiable objectives and we’ll show you what it will take to achieve success.

The financial planning process will also facilitate your understanding of how each goal fits within the overall picture and how best to prioritize your actions.

 

Our process can be thought of as developing answers to four simple questions:

01.

Where are you now?

02.

Where are you going?

03.

How are you going to get there?

04.

What will you do when you encounter the unexpected?

Although the questions themselves are rather straightforward, it is rare for the answers to be quite so easy. That’s why we’ll develop a custom-tailored financial plan that fits your specific needs and objectives.

Once we’ve analyzed several options for achieving your goals, we’ll develop a plan that represents the “base case,” or most likely potential outcome. However, because we live in an uncertain world, the planning process doesn’t stop with a simple straight line calculation that assumes everything remains constant over time.

Instead, through the use of advanced Monte Carlo simulation, we’ll stress test your plan by running it through hundreds of different scenarios in order to obtain an understanding of how likely the plan is to succeed.

As your situation changes over time, this analysis is updated and reviewed when the probability of your plan’s success moves outside a pre-defined range.

This allows us to recommend the implementation of alternative plans to ensure that you are able to weather the storm of possible declines in the market, a loss or reduction of income, or other negative outcomes.

Greater Confidence Through Objective Advice

We’re often asked which areas of a client’s financial life we can help them with. Although the answers depend on each client’s unique situation, there are many common questions that arise in the planning process that often frame the advice we provide. Accordingly, we thought it would be helpful to share some of the aspects of a client’s financial life that we can advise them on.

The following is not intended to be comprehensive, however, this list should provide a good sense of the types of questions we can help you answer and the areas we can provide analysis and advice.

Investing

- My 401k plan has over 20 different investment options. How do I know which funds to choose?
- Am I getting the full match from my employer on my 401k contributions?
- Should I invest in a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA?
- My husband and I each have several retirement and investment accounts. How should they be invested?
- It seems like I am paying a lot of taxes on my investments. Is there a way to lower this expense?

Retirement

- When can I retire?
- How much do I need to save in order to live the life that I want?
- When should I take Social Security?
- Should I choose the annuity option or take a lump-sum payout for my pension?
- How can I ensure that I won’t run out of money?

Saving for College

- How much do I need to save for my child(ren) to go to college?
- Should I save for college using a 529 plan or a Coverdell Education Savings Account?
- Which 529 Plan offers the best combination of investment options?
- Should I invest in my state’s 529 plan or should I open an account under another state’s plan?
- What is the best way for my parents to help their grandchildren pay for college?

Insurance & Risk Management

- Do I have the right types of insurance to protect my family?
- Am I paying for insurance that I don’t need?
- How much life insurance do I need ensure my family is taken care of if I pass away? Should I get a whole life or a term policy?
- Are my insurance premiums competitive?
- Should I consider a high-deductible medial insurance plan and a health savings account (HSA)?

Taxes

- How can I withdraw money from my retirement accounts and pay the least amount of taxes possible?
- I would like to reduce my taxes by saving for retirement through my small business. What are the best options?
- I have stock in a company that I used to work for that I would like to sell. How can I do so while incurring the least amount of taxes?
- I purchased a variable annuity that I would like to get out of because of the high fees. What are the tax implications?
- I have employee stock options from my current employer. Should I exercise them and sell the stock to diversify?

Estate & Gifting

- What would happen to my money if I passed away unexpectedly?
- Who will watch over my children if my wife and I are gone?
- I would like to support my grandchildren with their college tuition. What is the best way for me to do that?
- Since I have my financial needs taken care of, should I start giving now or should I let my estate grow?
- How much can I afford to comfortably give away without risking my own retirement?

Financial Planning Projects

For clients with less complex situations or who do not meet the minimums for our wealth management service, Wealth Engineers occasionally provides project-based financial planning services.  A project is best for clients who are seeking advice on only one or two specific areas of their lives, like a full retirement plan.  The cost for financial planning services is $350 to $500 per hour.

The cost of a financial planning project is billed based upon the number of hours incurred; however, an estimate will be provided based upon the scope agreed to by the client.  Wealth Engineers typically only takes on financial planning projects that have a minimum project size of 12 hours.