September 5, 2023 Weekly Update

We do love it when someone refers a family member or friend to us.  Sometimes the question is, “How can we introduce them to you?”   Well, there are multiple ways but a very easy way is to simply forward them a link to this webpage.

Here are this week’s items:

Portfolio Update:  Murs and I have recorded our portfolio update for September 5, 2023

This Week’s Podcast – Integrated Wealth Management Experience in Retirement

Learn more about the elements of an integrated wealth management experience: a retirement financial plan, specific-to-the-client investment process, and tax planning. You will also learn how we’re involved in every step of the wealth management process, in-house or with a partner.

 

This Week’s Blog – Integrated Wealth Management

Integrated wealth management experiences are our way to help clients have the type of retirement planning assistance that is provided in a “family office.” If you don’t know what this term means or who it applies to, we’re going to cover that in great detail before explaining the concept of integrated wealth management to you.

Integrated Wealth Management Experience

Integrated wealth management experiences are our way to help clients have the type of retirement planning assistance that is provided in a “family office.” If you don’t know what this term means or who it applies to, we’re going to cover that in great detail before explaining the concept of integrated wealth management to you.

Note: Click here to listen to the podcast that this article was based on using Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music. 

What is a “Family Office?”

A “family office” caters to what can be considered ultra-high net worth. You have enough assets that you require an entire team to help manage your assets. These offices will help you with:

  • Family businesses
  • Taking care of budgets
  • Paying bills
  • Managing cash flow, credit cards, real estate

Individuals in a family office have assets of $50+ million. Anyone who falls into this category can be their “own client,” meaning that the entire team works for you to manage your wealth. Extensive assistance is offered, including tax and estate planning, to the degree that 99% of people will never require. You’ll also work with attorneys and CPAs.

All these employees work for you, they’re registered with the SEC, and they assist with managing your “family.” If a person has this high of a net worth, they may need to have a chief financial officer (CFO) who will handle hiring or working with certain experts to meet their family’s needs.

Often, with a family office, they have a CPA working with them full-time.

The family office works solely for the family and will handle all their financial and wealth management needs. If a lawyer needs to be hired to work on estate plans, that’s all handled for you behind the scenes.

Integrated Wealth Management Experience

In our office, our average client doesn’t have $100 – $200 million or a billion dollars. We can’t create a family office for these individuals, but we wanted to create a system that offered the same experience as a family office for all our clients.

What we devised is known as our integrated wealth management experience.

What Does an Integrated Wealth Management Experience Look Like?

Instead of working with one individual, we work with many and take on the role similar to a “CFO.” We look at the person’s entire financial picture and beyond to help you secure your retirement. We partner with multiple professionals on a range of services, in addition to in-house wealth management.

For simplicity, we’ll break this down into a few of our in-house and partnered services.

In-House Wealth Management

In-house, we specialize in wealth management. We are financial advisors, and fiduciaries- which means we’re required to put your best interests first. The majority of our clients are people close to or retirement, and we’re big on the retirement-focused financial plan.

In a few words, the retirement-focused financial plan:

  • Analyzes where you are today
  • Outlines retirement goals
  • Identifies changes that need to be made to reach your goals

Reaching your financial goals will often mean investing in some sort of return. We may invest in the market, bonds, annuities, or a wide range of other financial vehicles. We invest for a return that is comfortable for the client and is based on individual risk tolerance.

Next, we offer tax planning. Some of the tax planning is in-house and some of it is done by working with outside experts. We have checks and balances in place to understand:

  • What your taxes look like today
  • What strategies we can implement before the end of the year to lower the tax burden
  • What to do to save you money next year

We can also handle the tax return for you, and we have partnered with CPAs to lead this process. CPAs will also provide a stamp of approval for all the tax planning strategies that we prepare to ensure that everything moves along smoothly.

Our team helps clients understand where their income is coming from and ensures that their retirement-focused financial plan is operating to reach their goals.

Estate Planning

Estate planning is a crucial part of retirement planning that folks really struggle to talk and think about. However, we incorporate this planning into the experience because it provides you with peace of mind that your estate matters are all handled in a legal manner.

Without an up-to-date estate plan, it can be difficult for you to leave assets in your desired way for heirs and beneficiaries. If you’ve had a major life change since you’ve created or looked at your estate plan, it is a good idea to have your estate plan professionally reviewed and updated. 

For our clients, we have a system in place for the state they live in to create a:

  1. Trust
  2. Will
  3. Power of Attorney
  4. Healthcare Power of Attorney
  5. HIPAA form

We believe this aspect of your retirement-focused financial plan is urgent, and strongly encourage our clients to review and update these documents on a regular basis.

Social Security

We work with a Social Security consultant, so our clients have an expert look at avoiding mistakes when filing for Social Security. Some clients have an easy process for Social Security, and we can help them apply for their benefits. However, other clients do not have as easy of a time.

Our consultant is on retainer and will help consider:

  • Complex decisions
  • Divorce
  • Optimizing for certain forms of income
  • Survivorship

She assists us when running the numbers for Social Security to help you make the best decision on when to take your benefits and how to reach your financial goals.

Insurances

Insurance includes many different options, but one of the major ones is health insurance. When you retire, you’re responsible for your own health insurance, which will be Medicare.

Medicare can be overwhelming when it comes to options, plans, and thresholds. We work with our clients and partners to help them find the best Medicare options for their health scenario and budget. We may be able to structure things to avoid IRMAA surcharges on Medicare, too.

Additionally, we help clients during open enrollment to find plans that may be more affordable or a better overall option for them. 

Long-term Care Planning

Speaking of healthcare planning, we also dive into long-term care planning. Hopefully, you’ll never need this level of care, but you just never know what the future will hold for you. We recently had a podcast on long-term care planning.

We’ll analyze your long-term care options and even help you secure the insurance you need to pay for a nursing home or assisted living facility.

Life Insurance

We’ll work through the question of life insurance and how to structure it for you and your family. 

These are just some of the insurance options that we can use to help build our clients retirement-focused financial plan. As we’ve outlined, we do our best to mimic the “family office” so that it works in your best interests.

What Getting Started with Our Integrated Wealth Management Experience Looks Like

If you call us to discuss your options, we already have:

  • Ongoing, up-to-date research to aid in building plan for your goals
  • Multiple estate planning methods in place
  • Many in-house Insurance and Wealth Management strategy options

We’re involved the entire time, working to have all your questions answered. We will do the research with the estate planner or Social Security expert to have your questions answered.

Since we work with the outside experts, you bypass the extra step to make sure your financial, tax, and estate planning professionals are all on the same page when it comes to your retirement-focused financial plan. We’re very much involved with every aspect of your plan to help you make sound financial decisions.

Want to learn more about our Integrated Wealth Management Experience? Schedule a free call with us today.

March 27, 2023 Weekly Update

We do love it when someone refers a family member or friend to us.  Sometimes the question is, “How can we introduce them to you?”   Well, there are multiple ways but a very easy way is to simply forward them a link to this webpage.

Here are this week’s items:

Portfolio Update:  Murs and I have recorded our portfolio update for March 27, 2023

This Week’s Podcast – Implementing Your Retirement Plan

In this Episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, Nick and Taylor return to talk about the retirement plan implementation after the initial process. When you decide to be our client, we ask for all the information needed to open your account with our custodian Charles Schwab.

 

This Week’s Blog – Implementing Your Retirement Plan

At this point, a lot of work has been done on both sides of the table: you provide a wealth of information, and we give you a recommendation and insight into your retirement. Now, you have to decide whether or not you want to work with us as a client.

If you love everything and want to work with us to secure your retirement, we will move forward through a new process…

Implementing Your Retirement Plan

Last month, we started a conversation on the retirement planning process, which you can read here or listen to on our podcast. In that episode, we discussed:

  • Preparing for an introduction meeting with our team
  • Obtaining documents for the meeting (financial statements, retirement statements, etc.)
  • What happens on our end before the second meeting
  • Bucket sheet (cash, safety and growth)

At this point, a lot of work has been done on both sides of the table: you provide a wealth of information, and we give you a recommendation and insight into your retirement. Now, you have to decide whether or not you want to work with us as a client.

If you love everything and want to work with us to secure your retirement, we will move forward through a new process.

Meeting and Figuring Out Any Additional Information We Need

We’ve gathered a lot of information from you up until this point, but there are still some documents we’ll need to open up accounts. For example, we’ll need:

  • Beneficiary information
  • Dates of birth
  • Addresses
  • Phone numbers
  • Contact information

We’ll spend time filling in documentation with all of your information to open up a Charles Schwab account in your name. Once all of this paperwork is signed, we’ll submit it to Schwab. In most cases, it will take 1 – 3 business days to open the account, depending on the type of account in question.

This is when:

  • Transfers take place
  • Nick reaches out to you about the account being opened
  • Verify that everyone can access the new account (including you)
  • Etc.

If you’re already a customer of Charles Schwab, we only need to provide a single form to access the account. 

Understanding Our Relationship with Charles Schwab

It’s crucial for you to understand that we don’t work for Charles Schwab. In fact, we’re not connected with the company in any way other than using them as a custodian. Custodians can be:

  • Fidelity
  • TD Ameritrade (not for much longer as Schwab acquired them)
  • Charles Schwab
  • Vanguard
  • Any place where you have your accounts

Charles Schwab doesn’t have a financial relationship with us.

When we transfer your accounts from your existing custodian to Schwab, something called an “in kind” occurs. This is a simple term, meaning that all of your assets are moved from one account to another and remain unchanged.

We don’t have to sell and repurchase anything when transferring your accounts to Schwab.

Until we come up with a strategy around the investments, nothing changes in your accounts during the transfer. The transfer doesn’t cause tax liability or anything like that.

What Happens If I Transfer My Monthly Distribution from One Custodian to Another?

If you have a custodian account with, say, Fidelity and you’re taking a $1,000 monthly distribution, what happens when you transfer to Schwab? We’ll need to fill out one additional form on your behalf and make sure the same exact thing happens at Schwab for you.

In essence, we’re just changing bank accounts when moving to Schwab, and we replicate everything for you effortlessly.

What Happens with a Company Plan, Such as a 401(k), 403(b), 457, etc.?

If you have what is called a “company plan,” the transfer happens a little differently. We require one less form to file and we’ll need to contact the company, such as the 401(k) company.

When we contact the company, we’ll request that the company send a check for the balance of your account. The check will be made out to Charles Schwab for the benefit of you. The check can be sent to you or to Charles Schwab directly.

The process varies and depends on how fast the company cuts the check.

Note: When we work together, we do a trustee-to-trustee turnover so that you don’t trigger a taxable event. 

Tax Planning Over the Next Few Months

During the first few months of working with us, we’ll dive into tax planning. If you want to secure your retirement, you must not pay a dime more in taxes than is necessary. First, we’ll need your most recent tax return.

We’ll analyze these returns to learn where you can save money.

For example, perhaps you can benefit from a Roth conversion, so we’ll have a conversation around this to see if it’s something you’re interested in doing.

Of course, we may be able to leverage:

  • Qualified charitable distributions
  • Donor-advised funds
  • Any opportunity to lower your taxable income

We want to lower your current taxable income and future taxes, too.

Clients Over the Age of 65

If you’re over the age of 65, you may be concerned about selling something with a gain or a Roth conversion. Clients who are paying Medicare premiums, or will be shortly, need to worry about something called IRMAA.

Don’t know what IRMAA is? Read our guide on it here.

Essentially, once your adjusted gross income reaches over a certain level, there’s a possibility that your Medicare premiums may start increasing. The goal is to keep your premiums at a level where whatever we do on our end, such as a Roth conversion, isn’t negated.

Our clients who work with us, we will:

  • Introduce you to a CPA we work with
  • Help you gather all of your tax forms
  • Ensure that your return is filed on time

Taxes have a lot of moving parts, and we do our best to ensure that we take as much of the burden off of you as we can.

Communication With Clients

On our end, there’s so much going on quickly that it can feel overwhelming and confusing. We communicate as much as we can with our clients so that you’re never left wondering: what’s going on with my accounts?

We provide updates, often via email or a phone call, to tell you about accounts opening, ensure that you have access to each account, transfer estimates and then when the transfer is complete.

We also keep in close contact with you during this time to ensure that if you have any questions, they’re all answered in a timely manner.

401(k) Transfers

If we’re transferring a 401(k), we often do not have an estimated date for this completion. However, we do see when the check is sent to Charles Schwab and when it is deposited into the account.

When the check goes to you, we’ll be in frequent contact with you to ensure everything goes smoothly.

At this point, we’ve done a lot of the process needed for our “45-day meeting.”

45-Day Meeting

In most cases, the 45-day mark is when we have everything in-house, and all of your assets have been properly transferred. We’ll be getting together to:

  • Ask you questions about logging into your account, statements and ensuring that you’re comfortable with the setup in place
  • Finalize anything that is left to talk about for the investment strategy
  • Deliver anything left in the investment strategy to you

We provide you with a one-page document on how everything is laid out for your multiple buckets. These buckets include your cash, safety, and growth accounts. During the visit, you’ll have time to ask us any questions about the way we devised these buckets.

Next, we’ll move on to the important part of estate planning, which will include a few things, such as:

We have a relationship with a partner firm, and we take care of this expense for our clients. The estate plan ensures that your retirement planning accounts for those times when you’re incapacitated or no longer living.

Since so much is going on during the first year of working with us, we will plan on meeting with you quite a bit so that we can get everything in place. You’ll also be able to see all of the work that we’ve done up until each meeting so that you can have peace of mind that your retirement is in good hands.

Do you want to learn more about our approach to retirement planning? Contact us today.