Phase 2: Look under the hood

In Phase 2, we accomplish the following steps:

5. Comprehensive Assessment:

All documents are reviewed and analyzed to form the basis of your master plan.

6. Develop Your Personalized Master Plan:

This plan addresses all aspects of your relevant financial affairs and includes analysis, scenarios, commentary and recommendations relating to everything that affects your family’s wealth, including your net worth, your cash flow, your investment portfolio, to tax savings strategies, education planning and everything in between.

The financial independence roadmap points the direction, the master plan contains the ‘how to’ and fills in the details of the journey.

7. The Tax MiniMiser:

By working closely with your legal and tax advisors we conduct a thorough review of your current tax situation. We identify strategies to minimize the taxes you pay on a household basis legally. By analyzing your situation, we often uncover strategies that can save you and your family thousands of dollars annually.

8. The Investment Policy Statement:

An Investment Policy Statement (IPS) is a business plan covering one’s personal financial affairs. It provides a direction and a framework within which investment decisions can be made rationally.

In the absence of an IPS, investment decisions are often driven by the twin emotions of fear and greed, governed by heavy reliance on the daily market activity as a guide. The results of this approach have been that investors have achieved significantly lower returns than they could have. Integral to the development of your IPS is our Investor Profile. This document identifies your characteristics as an investor in order that the Investment Policy Statement can develop a plan consistent with your situation.

The IPS recommends a specific asset allocation, a range of investments, geographic diversification, and different management styles and projects an expected rate of return.

9. Legacy and Insurance:

In this step we arrange your estate to offset the impact of taxation and protect your families important assets. By doing so, you will be able to endow meaningful legacies to succeeding generations and to your community, should you so choose. If you are already retired our focus is to ensure that, in today’s dollars, you continue to enjoy your retirement in the standard of living to which you have been accustomed.

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Steps 5 through 9 require approximately four to six weeks to complete from the time I receive all the necessary data and may be discussed over a couple meetings.