Investment Management
Our investment portfolios are carefully designed to help retirement investors reduce risk, improve returns, and create a reliable income stream.
There are three key principles we follow to help protect your nest egg:
1) Keep Investment Costs Low
According to Morningstar, the cost of your underlying investments is one of the best predictors of future returns.
In other words, low-cost investments, historically, have outperformed high-cost investments.
For that reason, we build our retirement portfolios using low-cost index funds. This helps to improve the success rate of our client’s retirement plans and reduce unnecessary risk.
2) Own Tax-Efficient Investments
Warren Buffet says his favorite holding period is forever.
We agree.
While buying and holding forever isn’t practical for most retirement investors, we create portfolios with “low turnover.”
Every time an investment is bought or sold (i.e., “turned over”), costs are incurred. Not just obvious costs like transaction fees and taxes, but hidden costs like bid-ask spreads.
These costs eat away at your investment returns. So, to optimize investment returns and mitigate taxes, we intentionally own investments with low turnover.
3) Own the Right Asset Classes
Not all investments are created equal.
Just because you can invest your money into something (e.g., gold), does not mean you should!
We only invest in asset classes that:
- Are positively supported by peer-reviewed, academic research
- Work well when invested together in a diversified portfolio (e.g., low and/or negative correlation to each other)
For example, corporate bonds can behave like stocks during catastrophic events. That does not provide proper diversification for an investor who is in retirement.
4) Rebalance
Rebalancing is a systematic way of buying low and selling high. Research shows it enhances returns and well as controls risk.
As a fiduciary, our job is to make investment decisions that are in your best interest. This means ignoring the daily headlines and sticking with evidence-based solutions.
Social Security Timing
As retirement planning specialists, we help you determine the best time to collect Social Security.
To do that, we take into consideration how your Social Security benefits will interact with other income sources such as:
- Rental income
- Pensions
- Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)
- Dividends and interest
- Capital gains
We also factor in family health conditions, spousal benefits, personal preferences, and more.
By analyzing your entire financial picture, we are able to choose a Social Security timing strategy that reduces your tax bill in retirement and optimizes your income stream.
Retirement Income
Turn your nest egg into a reliable income stream.
Our approach is backed by decades of academic research and helps:
- Keep your taxes low
- Reduce costs
- Maximize your investment return
- Lower portfolio risk
- Preserve your savings
Our approach also takes into consideration your other income sources. Things like Social Security, Pensions, Rental Income, Required Minimum Distributions, and more.
We carefully coordinate all of your income streams to help make sure you don’t pay more than your fair share of taxes.
Why?
Because it’s very possible to be in a higher tax bracket in retirement than as a working professional. Keeping taxes low throughout retirement is one of the key ingredients to a successful plan.
Tax Preparation
That’s right, we even do your taxes!
Enjoy the added benefit of having your taxes done under the same roof. Clients recieve an annual credit covering the reasonable cost of tax preparation by our sister company, Encore Tax Service each year.
Tax Planning
Without careful planning, it’s very possible to have a higher tax bill in retirement than as a working professional.
Our tax planning services aim to help keep taxes low today and in retirement. Here’s what you can expect:
- Taxes done for you through Encore Tax Services
- An set of actionable reccomendations tailored specifically to you!
- Reccomendations may include:
- Roth Conversion Strategies
- Coordination & Timing of Income Streams (e.g. Pension, Social Security, Required Minimum Distributions, etc.)
- Asset Location Reccomendations
- Charitable Giving Strategies
- And many, many more…
We stay up-to-date with the ever-changing tax laws to ensure you are taking advantage of every opportunity.
Retirement Planning
Retirement planning services help you reach your goals without the risk of running out of money.
You will gain confidence and clarity about your retirement plan so you can spend time doing the things that are most important to you.
The retirement planning process includes:
- Improving and tracking the success rate of your plan
- Turning your retirement savings into a reliable paycheck
- Developing a cohesive investment strategy to reduce risk and improve returns
- Ongoing tax planning to reduce your tax bill
- Aligning all the moving parts of your financial life to create a successful retirement
A retirement plan is a living and breathing document. Advanced financial planning processes are used to build your plan, adjust for life’s unknowns, and communicate the results with you in plain English.
Insurance Optimization
Our insurance planning helps you maximize your protection and lower your annual costs.
And, as a fiduciary, I can help shop insurance policies with your best interest at heart.
After performing a comprehensive insurance analysis, I help you shop the entire market to find the best policy at the best price. I also help you safely unwind insurance policies that may not align with your goals anymore.
Regular in-depth reviews occur on the following types of insurance products:
- Annuities
- Life Insurance
- Long Term Care Insurance
- Auto & Home Insurance
- Disability Insurance
- Umbrella Insurance
- Health Insurance