Guiding you towards retirement without selling you ‘stuff’ you don’t want (or need).
Our Hourly, Fee-Only Financial Planning model addresses your retirement questions without the conflict of commissions or a percentage of assets (AUM).
❖ Remove conflict of ongoing fees
❖ Stay involved and in control
❖ Pay only for the services you need
“How do I enjoy today without sacrificing my retirement future?”
Review where you are today
Consider where you would like to be in the future
Calculate your probability of success
Test alternative scenarios
Make informed adjustments
Revisit and review as life changes
Phases of Your Financial Journey.
Building a Base for Retirement
A solid base provides options as you move towards retirement. We’ll measure how much (and where) you should save/invest to build a solid retirement foundation.
Transitioning into Retirement
This can be a challenging transition both financially and emotionally. We’ll review cash needs, and tax costs/opportunities and consider new retirement goals/expenses.
Getting a Second Opinion
You may simply want a second opinion. You’ve successfully saved and invested on your own. At some point, you might wonder if you should be doing something different.
Packages & Pricing
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Create
We begin with the creation/review of your existing plan.
The initial planning fee is based on the complexity of your situation.
If you are more than 5 years away from retirement, plan creation is usually $1,600 (based on 8 hours).
If you are transitioning into retirement, plan creation is usually $2,000 (based on 10 hours).
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Manage
After a plan is created, you may prefer to have us manage your investments.
We’ll discuss the reasons why you may want to have ongoing investment management.
Fees are based on hours rather than a percentage of assets.
The range is typically between $300 and $800 per quarter ($1,200 and $2,400 annually).
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Update
You enjoy managing your investments or most of your investments are in a 401k (or similar) with limited investment choices.
You’d like to update your plan from time to time. No problem…
We’ll update your plan and address questions/changes based on an hourly rate. Most plan updates range between $400 and $800.
The Initial Planning Process
Meet to discuss the specifics of your specific scenario
During our interview, we’ll discuss what is important to you when building a financial future. We’ll share our model (different from most). If we agree working together makes sense, we’ll move onto the next phase.
Create a plan
Our planning process consists of three meetings.
Intention Meeting. We’ll review your current situation and consider/discuss your desired outcome. We’ll answer the question most want to know…”will you fail retirement?”. After sharing the initial info, we’ll send you home to consider what you might change after seeing the results (spend more/less, travel more/less, retire sooner/later). By the way…there are two ways to fail retirement…having too little or having too much!
Attention Meeting. Typically begins with scenarios you want to 'test’ after seeing the original outcome. We dig into details. We consider what could go wrong and consider opportunities. Tax planning and cash flow planning are frequent discussion points in this meeting. We’ll also discuss investments (down to the fund level).
Guidance/Repetition Meeting. We’ll provide a written draft of your plan for review prior to the meeting. We’ll discuss and adjust the plan as needed. The ultimate goal of this meeting and the process in general is to provide a clear roadmap for how and more importantly why we recommended what we did. In most cases, we can narrow the steps into three to four simple repetitive steps (automated when possible).
Ongoing Management or Hourly Updates?
With a plan in place, you decide if you prefer to continue managing your portfolio or prefer that we do. We’ll discuss how either solution works. You decide what is best for you. Over half the people we write plans for continue to manage their investments (with some new guidance).
Planning your retirement doesn’t need to be stressful.
Building a successful retirement plan is simple and straight forward when you focus on the numbers. Retirement is not simply numbers for you. You have emotions and questions. Our job is to share the numbers. Your job is to balance the numbers with emotions. We’ll find balance along the way.