What We Do

Whether you are shopping for groceries or trying to buy a car, there is a cost to doing business, and investing is no different. As your Financial Advisor, my staff and I are here striving to act in your best interest by providing investment advice and recommendations that are suited to your specific overall investment objectives, needs and circumstances. This fiduciary level advice to our advisory client is tailored to your specific situation. We want to take this opportunity to explain to you what we do behind the scenes for our various fees.

The fees apply to either developing and implementing an analysis of your situation such as the Comprehensive Financial Plan or the Lifetime Income Modeling Analysis (LIM) OR for managing your investments known as our Annual Advisory fee.  But first, we would like to give you an idea of just the general things we do that may not be specific to an analysis or advisory fee.

• We return phone calls and e-mails, when possible within 48 hours. Our policy is, if you have not heard from us within 48 hours, we most likely did not get the message. We ask that you kindly try again or try another way to reach us.
• We prefer that you meet with us twice a year to review your goals, discuss the market, and determine what assets to buy, sell and hold based on any new recommendations or information we have discussed.
• We keep you up to date on timely issues not only within our meetings, but by also sending e-mails and newsletters from our office.
• You will receive a follow up letter, from our meetings, that describes our discussions and lists the steps we are taking to rectify any situation or advice on how to move forward.
• We act as your coordinator between your tax advisor, attorney, and our office when needed.
• We seek to provide you names and resources to help with your estate, banking, mortgage, or accounting needs.
• We offer you a sounding board and personalized advice to help you make decisions based on the information provided. Examples: What mortgage is best, should I finance this, what do I pay off first, is this a good job offer, etc.
• We aspire to provide financial confidence that you have an experienced professional in the field that you, and your family, can go to help manage all the moving parts.
• All our computer systems are encrypted, and most passwords are changed every 90 days. We send personal information via secure channels and update our security protocols regularly.  Because we have sensitive information on site, we lock our file rooms and doors as well as shred all sensitive documents.
• We keep some client information on site as a hard copy. Because we do this, we have on numerous occasions been able to assist clients who need information from something that occurred in years past.

These are several services we provide on a constant basis to all of our clients.  Below, is a more detailed explanation as to the three areas in which we perform.  These include, delivering a Comprehensive Financial Plan or delivering a less comprehensive plan known as the Lifetime Income Model (LIM), or for delivering investment advice when charging an Annual Advisory fee.

So, let’s look at these three areas below:

1) Comprehensive Planning Fee:

For this fee you receive a detailed comprehensive plan that outlines where you are financially, and based on certain assumptions and goals, where you are heading.  We use the Comprehensive Analysis as a guide to help direct you to the appropriate products and services that aim to help you fill any voids or address any gaps that may be discovered. Entering and reviewing this information is a very time-consuming process and thus why our comprehensive plans usually take up to two ½ months to deliver to you.

Below is a list of some of the areas we cover from the Comprehensive Plan and a more detailed look into what to expect from the analysis itself.  Please understand the Comprehensive Plan is written, all the recommendations are written, and all of this is delivered to you.

Net Worth:  We help you build a Net Worth statement.  We analyze the Net Worth statement for areas where we can ssek to make improvements.  This helps us determine what liabilities should be paid off first.  It helps us identify other cost saving measures.

Cash Flow:  Knowing where you spend your money is the first step to creating a comprehensive financial plan.  If you do not know where or how you spend your money it will be almost impossible to predict any future outcomes. After we have reviewed and examined your expenses with you, we may be able to tell you which ones seem high and/or low (at least in comparisons to the thousands of analysis we have run in the past). We are not here to enforce a budget, but we are here to help make sure you know how much you are normally spending over the course of a year.

College: We first help to identify the amount of need or investment it takes to pursue your goals.  We then help identify which education investment vehicle(s) may best fit your needs.

Tax:  Although we do not offer specific tax advice, we do run mock tax returns to help determine what vehicles and what approach is most beneficial for you today, tomorrow and in the future.  Too many accountants are only worried about the tax you pay today.  Our concern as advisors is the amount of taxes you pay over your lifetime.

Investments: Not only can we assist you with consolidating your accounts, account transfers, etc. but we also can assist in the management of your investments (See Annual Advisory Fee).  We strive to help you prioritize your goals. Sometimes it maybe a matter of which ones are more important or which ones are more likely to be managed.

Disability Insurance: We model your financial scenario if a disability were to occur. Based on this analysis we aim to provide you the appropriate amount of disability insurance that you need. We can then help find providers to get that coverage. We will review multiple proposals on your behalf.

Life Insurance: We can help determine how much life insurance you need, as well as help identify what type of insurance to buy; whole life, variable universal life, universal life, or term life.  We can also help you obtain this life insurance coverage through various carriers.

Property and Casualty Concerns: We can review your Property and Casualty Insurance. This includes your homeowners and auto insurance declarations. Although we do not offer this insurance, If needed, I can help guide you to a professional in the field and assist you with obtaining a properly allocated policy, you are under no obligation to use any referrals.

Retirement: We help you answer, will I have enough? and strive for what it takes to get you to your retirement goal.  If your retirement goal is not feasible, we look at alternative plans, including increasing your savings, reducing your expenses, increasing the potential rate of return on your investments, and or adjusting the timing of your retirement. We also assist in identifying and helping you with your current retirement structure.  Which retirement vehicle may be most suitable and for what reason.

Estate:  Although we are not attorneys, we review your estate planning documents and if needed, direct you to the appropriate party, with no obligation to use any referral. We answer or determine if you have deficiencies in your estate plan.

We can and do offer additional services for Ultra-High Net Worth Clients as well as Small Business Owners.  Many of these offerings are not necessarily in house but are a part of the Phronesis Wealth Management team.  You are under no obligation to use any outside third party provider and may choose any qualified professional.  If you have additional questions concerning the offerings below, please ask.

For Ultra-High Net Worth Clients: We offer family offices. This means we offer a total strategies for managing financial and investment side of an affluent individual or family. For example, many family offices offer budgeting, insurance, charitable giving, family- owned businesses, wealth transfer and tax services. If you would like more detailed information concerning our family offices, we can provide it.

For Business Owners: We can assist with exit strategies as well as seek to help identify and introduce you to a buyer ($20,000,000 minimum valuation). If you are a business owner and looking to setup a retirement account, we will look at which retirement plan may be best for your situation. Some examples include: 401(k), SIMPLE IRA, SEP, Cash Balance Pension Plan, 403(b), Deferred Compensation, etc. We also offer changes to these retirement accounts when your conditions change. We strive to help you establish and maintain any of these retirement plans. And again, assist you with exiting your business. If you want more detailed information, we can provide it.

2) Lifetime Income Model (LIM):

This fee covers an analysis that specifically address retirement only. Do you have enough? This analysis looks at 3 key components: income in retirement, expenses in retirement and assets in retirement. It models these 3 factors throughout your retirement. We strive to not only answer if you will have enough, but it seeks to also address another important planning issue. It will help address how much of your assets you need and when. This in turn helps us build an investment strategy based on time and risk tolerance for you. This analysis is less comprehensive, as such our turnaround time is normally a little quicker than the comprehensive plan.

This analysis covers several sections found within the Comprehensive Analysis but less broad. Like all of our advice, the analysis and recommendations are written.

3) Annual Advisory Fee:

The last service we provide is probably the most important to many.  It is what do we do for the Annual Advisory Fee we charge.

The following is a list of items and services that this annual fee covers.  It is not all inclusive, yet it is detailed enough so that you know what you are getting when you hire us to manage your assets on your behalf when we manage your investment accounts.

• To advise you in the selection of investment managers (Mutual Fund Managers) and introduce you to various types of strategies (buy and hold, trend following, etc.). This is maintained with ongoing monitoring of investment managers and by helping facilitate changes when necessary or preferred.  This takes ongoing research and examination.
• We work with you to help you understand your investment statements properly. Believe it or not, it is not as simple as you might think. As an example: Initial investment and cost basis are two different things. We help you understand the difference.
• The execution of all trades and transactions with your approval (we offer discretionary trading as well). If my office makes a trading error and we do not catch it right away, we are responsible for any damage that has affected your portfolio. LPL charges my office the delta / cost to correct the trade.
• In many cases, our staff will pre-fill your applications when we have the appropriate information. We then follow up and track those applications throughout the approval process.
• We provide notary services and bank signature guarantees free of charge.
• You receive our help with distribution strategies for when you need to take dollars out of your investment account. We help you decide from where you should take these distributions to maximize tax advantages for today and/or tomorrow.
• We provide guidance for any “what if” situations that occur. In other words, if either of you were to die, we offer our services to your beneficiaries to help settle the accounts correctly and for no charge.
• We have and aim to assist you and your family with directions on financially what to do after a death occurs.
• The ongoing advice of individual securities (within an investment advisory account) and our “opinions” on such investments and how they relate to your account.
• The fee covers the cost of providing you a platform where all transaction costs are waived on NTF (non-transaction fee funds), mutual funds and certain exchange traded funds (ETFs). Currently, only a $9.00 trade execution cost exists on individual securities.
• Not only do we aim to provide recommendations, but we also document the recommendations for you.
• Costs for custody of said securities and account reporting services. This includes 1099(s) and all other mandatory annual reporting (LPL may charge retirements accounts a small annual custodial fee currently $40 per year).
• Our staff assists in determining or helping you, and your accountant, with your tax forms and cost basis information. Whether that is just providing it or helping to ascertain certain facts to calculate it.
• We act as advocates for your accounts to help you settle any errors within them. We help determine when errors have occurred and help correct them so that you do not have to take time away from your schedule.
• We do our best to explain our fees, how they are calculated, and when needed, explain how the fees you see on your statements match up to what has occurred.
• The fee we charge helps pay for our ongoing education, seeking to make sure we are providing you with the most up to date facts and services. It allows us to stay informed on tax laws, and financial changes that occur each year.
• We assist in providing you online access and linking all your investment accounts into one log-in.

Hopefully, the information provided above helps you understand what we do and more importantly why you are asked to pay a fee.  We believe we offer our services at a very fair price.  We routinely compare our fees to our peers and try to maintain a competitive advantage.

This information is not intended to be a substitute for specific individualized tax or legal advice. We suggest that you discuss your specific situation with a qualified tax or legal advisor.