Our Promises To You

 

Fees Matter

We believe very strongly that fees matter and investors should know exactly what they are paying in real dollars. High cost advisors and expensive investment products create a significant drag on investor returns. In today's low interest rate, low expected return environment, controlling costs becomes even more important.

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.    - Benjamin Franklin

Taxes Matter

Nothing is certain except death and taxes.

We believe in minimizing the impact of taxes. Most investors, and a surprising number of financial professionals, focus on the pre-tax return a portfolio generates while ignoring the real drag taxes can place on net portfolio performance. Some of the most common investment mistakes include overlooking asset location, generating too much trading activity, and disregarding tax efficiency while selecting the investments within a portfolio.

Video: The Pros and Cons of a Big Tax Refund

Discipline Matters

Financial discipline is the act of setting specific monetary (spending and saving) goals and measuring oneself against how well they are achieved. Once that financial discipline is established, a person can take further steps to becoming financially independent.

Transparency/ Removing conflicts of interest matters

Transparency is a two-way street. Clients need ways to be transparent with advisors so they can deliver the best service possible. Advisors that provide transparency in return can start to build trust, which is a powerful way to forge productive relationships. Advisors with the right financial planning software will have a number of tools at their fingertips to start increasing the transparency of their interactions for greater engagement with clients.

Diversification/Risk Matters

We believe broad diversification is a prerequisite for any portfolio's long-term success. Dividing assets across various asset classes can help manage the overall volatility of a portfolio, as well as potentially increase expected returns. Different asset classes have a variety of risk and return characteristics, as well as imperfect correlations, meaning that they do not all move in the same direction at the same time. Favorable environments for some asset classes may be less favorable for others. It is impossible to predict with any certainty which asset classes will be the best, or worst, performers in the future. Broad diversification helps investors avoid this folly. Investors who broadly diversify may never have all their eggs in the winning basket, but they may not have all of them in the losing basket either. Regularly rebalancing a diversified portfolio back to the target allocation helps reduce risk by systematically selling assets that have appreciated, and may be overvalued, as well as purchasing assets that have underperformed, and may well be undervalued. There is no guarantee that a diversified portfolio will enhance overall returns or outperform a non-diversified portfolio. Diversification does not protect against market risks.