In detail
What this actually covers.
The work behind each line on the services page. We do not have proprietary products, so what follows is the whole of what we do rather than the parts that suit something we are selling.
The work
Discovery
- Understanding goals
- Identifying your short-term and long-term financial objectives — retirement, education funding, buying a home.
- Assessing the financial situation
- Collecting detailed information about income, expenses, assets, liabilities and investments.
- Identifying risk tolerance
- Determining your comfort level with various types of financial risk.
- Exploring values and priorities
- Understanding what matters most to you, including family, lifestyle and philanthropic interests.
- Gathering personal information
- Family structure, health status, and any other personal factors that bear on the plan.
Roadmap
- Defining goals
- Clearly identifying your short-term and long-term objectives — retirement, buying a home, paying off debt.
- Assessing the current situation
- Evaluating your financial status today, including income, expenses, assets and liabilities.
- Setting milestones
- Breaking goals into smaller, achievable steps, with a timeline for each.
- Implementing strategies
- Choosing and applying the strategies that reach them — saving, investing, debt repayment.
- Adjusting as needed
- Updating the roadmap to reflect changes in your life or your finances.
Cash flow management
- Monitoring income and expenses
- A detailed record of what comes in and what goes out, so the position is known rather than assumed.
- Budgeting
- A budget that plans and controls spending, so expenses do not outrun income.
- Managing debt
- Paying down debt strategically to reduce interest costs and free up cash flow.
- Building an emergency fund
- Money set aside for the unexpected, which is what makes the rest of the plan hold.
- Investing surplus
- Allocating cash beyond the reserve into investments that earn a return.
- Debt reduction
- Clearing high-interest debt, which raises net worth faster than most alternatives.
Tax optimization
- Maximizing deductions and credits
- Taking the deductions and credits you are entitled to, lowering taxable income and the bill itself.
- Income deferral
- Postponing income into a period where you may sit in a lower bracket.
- Income splitting
- Distributing income among family members to use lower brackets.
- Capital gains management
- Timing the sale of assets to keep capital gains tax down.
- Charitable giving
- Donating to qualified organizations, for the deduction and for the cause.
- Retirement contributions
- Using tax-advantaged accounts — 401(k)s, IRAs — to their full extent.
- Business tax planning
- Structuring operations to take the benefits available and reduce the overall burden.
Retirement planning
- Asset allocation
- Adjusting the investment mix over time to balance growth against risk as the date approaches.
- Guaranteed income
- Where appropriate, strategies such as annuities that provide a steady stream.
- Social Security timing
- Analyzing your benefits to optimize the monthly payment.
- Systematic withdrawals
- Customized methods for drawing funds down sustainably.
Business analysis/planning
- Capital structure
- The right mix of debt and equity to fund operations and growth.
- Forecasting
- Predicting future performance from historical data and market conditions.
- Budgeting
- Detailed budgets that plan and control income and expenses.
- Cash flow management
- Enough liquidity to meet obligations and to invest when the opportunity appears.
- Financial analysis
- Reading the statements to assess performance and inform the decision in front of you.
- Business succession planning
- Who runs it and who owns it after you.
Protection planning
- Risk identification
- Recognizing what could affect your goals or operations — financial, operational, strategic, and external risks such as disasters or regulatory change.
- Risk assessment
- Evaluating how likely each is and how much it would cost, qualitatively and quantitatively.
- Risk prioritization
- Ranking them, so attention and money go where they matter.
- Risk mitigation
- Reducing or removing the impact — controls, diversification, insurance, contingency plans.
- Monitoring and review
- Tracking known risks and testing whether the strategies still work, so new ones surface early.
- Business risk management
- Identifying and mitigating the financial risks to a company's assets and earnings.
Investment insights
- Portfolio creation
- A diversified portfolio built to your objectives — the right mix for your risk tolerance, time horizon and goals.
- Asset allocation
- The distribution across asset classes — equities, fixed income, real estate — that balances risk and return.
- Security selection
- Choosing the specific holdings within each class.
- Performance monitoring
- Reviewing how the portfolio is doing against your goals, and adjusting where it is not.
- Business investment planning
- Directing company resources to the projects that match its strategy.
Legacy planning
- Wills
- The legal document specifying how assets are distributed and who is guardian to minor children.
- Trusts
- Arrangements transferring assets to a trustee for beneficiaries, avoiding probate.
- Power of attorney
- Authority for someone to make decisions if you are incapacitated.
- Healthcare directives
- Your wishes for medical care, written down while you can still state them.
- Beneficiary designations
- Making sure accounts actually go where you intend — the detail that quietly undoes the rest.
- Estate taxes
- Strategies to reduce what your heirs pay.
- Charitable giving
- Building donations into the plan, for the tax treatment and for the causes.
Monitor, review and update
Keeping a plan on track, and keeping it honest about a life that has moved.
- Monitoring
- Tracking performance against the plan — income, expenses, investments — so you know whether it is working.
- Reviewing
- Assessing the plan itself: actual against projected, and where the two have parted company.
- Updating
- Acting on that review — revising goals, reallocating, adjusting budgets, adding what the situation now needs.
- Business performance monitoring
- The same discipline applied to a company's numbers.
Educational/impromptu
- Whenever the question comes up
- Informal sessions to talk through a financial topic, deal with something immediate, or explain how a thing actually works. Not everything needs an appointment.
Enquiries
Start here.
Twenty minutes, at no cost. We work out whether we are the right people for what you are trying to do, and tell you plainly if we are not.
Schedule an introduction