CLIENT EXPERIENCE
Effective financial planning requires a significant amount of time. Therefore, we limit our services to families whose needs we believe are best met by our specialized financial planning and investment disciplines. A casual 30 minute meeting is generally a good starting point for you to learn about our approach and fees, as well as for us to determine if our services can meet your needs.

When a decision is made to move forward, we will schedule a meeting with you to begin our formal financial planning process—ENGAGE. A prospective client usually makes the decision to hire us as their financial advisor after steps one, two and three have been completed.

ENGAGE Financial Planning Process
Our ENGAGE process ensures that both client and advisor are fully involved in the planning process, which enables us to learn about your family's needs, goals and dreams, as well as identify risks and address concerns you have. The result is an ongoing, comprehensive plan that helps you visualize and fund your future with realistic expectations. There are 4 phases in our ENGAGE Process:

Step 1: Discover. This phase is comprised of an initial meeting during which we develop a deep understanding of your family's personal and financial characteristics. We first address immediate needs or concerns you may have, and then move forward to your family's goals and dreams. Our experience with similar affluent clientele provides us with a proven framework to cover all the bases. Topics discussed in depth include:

During this meeting, which typically lasts 1-2 hours, we will ask you a lot of questions, take a lot of notes, and review existing plans, tax returns and other critical documents. Our role is to cover all the bases, so we work to understand your desired lifestyle—today and in retirement—and help you understand the true costs of achieving and protecting it.

Step 2: Advise. The follow-up meeting to the initial Discover phase, we will present to you a financial plan with several reasoned recommendations. Our objective in this step is to provide you with a detailed and realistic estimate of the amount of savings and income you will need to achieve your desired retirement lifestyle and why. In addition, we review the risks that we perceive could prevent you from reaching your retirement goals, such as inadequate insurance, underfunded college savings, underfunded retirement savings, inadequate estate planning etc. Expect to have some homework after this meeting!

Step 3: Protect. Once we feel that we have identified your family's needs and goals, and that we have thoroughly addressed your concerns and all risks to achieving these goals, we turn our attention to protecting your financial resources. We believe that even the most thorough financial plan can fail if investment risk is not managed properly. Before accepting the responsibility of managing a client's financial assets, we explain our investment philosophy and process in detail. Importantly, we determine and explain your tolerance for risk in simple terms.

Step 4: Serve. Completing the ENGAGE process is our commitment to ongoing service. We know that our clients are busy with family and professional obligations, therefore we will remain available to provide consultation and advice as your needs arise. Whether you are making a deferred compensation decision, private investment, buying a vacation home, or choosing an accountant or attorney, we are able to give you an experienced second set of financial eyes for just about any situation. We will proactively communicate with you regularly to ensure that you are comfortable with the way your assets are being managed, and that you understand each investment decision if so desired. And since in life change is the rule, not the exception, we meet with clients formally at least annually to review your family's unique needs, concerns, goals and dreams.