Money Management and Insurance
Managing Your Money
Money management incorporates an understanding of all aspects of your financial assets. This includes, but is not limited to:
Income and expenses
Maximizing your employer-provided benefits
Savings
Education planning
Retirement planning
Understanding and planning for effective tax management
Investment design/risk management design
Legacy design
We use cutting-edge electronic tools to fully understand your cash flow and investments. Investments are analyzed for their efficiency (costs and fees) and effectiveness (are you being rewarded for the associated risk incurred?). Any recommended changes are statistically tested for effect using Monte Carlo analysis.
One of the products of your financial plan is the identification of the rate of return required to achieve your objectives. Harry Markowitz won a Nobel Prize in Economics for demonstrating the principle of the risk/reward, also known as the Efficient Frontier. According to the Efficient Frontier, your plan should show that you require a certain rate of return, meaning you accept a certain level of risk in order to obtain that rate of return. Our analysis of your existing portfolio identifies how effectively risk/return tradeoff is being done. For those clients that have engaged us to manage their investments, this is the cornerstone of our approach: to manage risk for desired long-term results.
Another important aspect of managing your money is asset placement, or to what tax exposure/treatment is your money exposed. Various “wrappers” provide different outcomes based on how the tax code treats the money as it goes in, while it is inside the “wrapper,” and how it is taxed as it is withdrawn or passed on. An important consideration is not only how much money your investments “earn,” but how much of that you or your heirs get to keep. See the Tax Control Triangle for more information.
Protecting What You Have
“Protecting what you have” is another way of saying insurance. We can help you understand limits of property and casualty (home, auto, and liability coverage) insurance, and answer your important questions:
Is your income properly protected (for many, your future stream of income is your largest asset)?
Is your life properly protected, and are those policies the correct form (Term, Universal, Variable Universal, Whole)?
Are future medical cost exposures properly addressed?
Do you have potential responsibilities other than immediate family member support?
Various forms of life insurance or tools created by insurance companies can be used to achieve many objectives. We have access to more than 20 financially secure insurance companies. Various insurance companies underwrite products and groups of people differently. When an insurance product is the correct answer to address a need, our recommendations are always going to be with a financially sound company that will provide the best option we can find in the marketplace.