The path to financial success can include challenges
and plenty of twists and turns.
Having a plan is the best way to stay on course to reach your destination.
Multi-dimensional Plans
- Investments
- Retirement
- Risk Management & Insurance
- Education
- Estate Planning
- Employee Benefits
- Stock Options
- Major Purchase
- Business Planning
- Major Life Events
- Cash Flow & Budgeting
- Debt Service
Targeted Financial Consulting
Periodic Monitoring & Review
Financial Planning
Financial planning can serve as a solid foundation as you look to the future, facing, for instance:
- The effect of inflation on your retirement savings
- The rising cost of education
- Market uncertainties
- Changing tax laws
Your Financial Advisor Analyzes:
Financial Goals
Investment Risk
Situational Updates
Estate Planning
Ongoing Reviews
- Marriage
- The birth of a child or grandchild
- A significant change in your net worth (stock option vesting or inheritance)
- Changes in financial objectives (such as early retirement)
- The purchase or sale of a house or family business
- Divorce
- Death of a spouse or beneficiary
- Changes in the tax laws
Four of the most important reasons you need an estate plan:
- To control who manages and receives your assets at your death.
- To minimize administrative expenses and legal fees.
- To transfer a greater share of your assets to your heirs and favored charities/causes.
- To protect your heirs by providing them with wealth management continuity throughout your lifetime and beyond.
Federal estate taxes aside, state estate taxes and other expenses associated with death may still apply.
College Planning
Planning for Your Children’s Education
For many parents, paying for college is a significant challenge. Time is short and the costs are high, with average college costs typically rising faster than inflation.
Difficult or not, you need to start planning:
Your COLWYN Financial Advisor can help you determine what your savings target should be based on projected costs, and then recommend appropriate investment strategies.
Gifts of Educational Expenses:
These gifts are unlimited as long as you make a direct payment to the educational institution for tuition only. Books, supplies and living expenses do not qualify.
Education Funding Solutions:
With the rising costs of education, many families face a challenge in paying education expenses for their children. To help them plan for this financial challenge, we offer families two savings choices:
- 529 College Savings Plan
- Coverdell Education Savings Accounts (Formerly known as Education IRAs)
Just what is “comprehensive financial planning?” As you invest and save for retirement, you will no doubt hear or read about it – but what does that phrase really mean? Just what does comprehensive financial planning entail, and why do knowledgeable investors request this kind of approach?
While the phrase may seem ambiguous to some, it can be simply defined.
Comprehensive financial planning is about building wealth through a process, not a product.
Financial products are everywhere, and simply putting money into an investment is not a gateway to getting rich, nor a solution to your financial issues.
Comprehensive financial planning is holistic. It is about more than “money”. A comprehensive financial plan is not only built around your goals, but also around your core values. What matters most to you in life? How does your wealth relate to that? What should your wealth help you accomplish? What could it accomplish for others?
Comprehensive financial planning considers the entirety of your financial life. Your assets, your liabilities, your taxes, your income, your business – these aspects of your financial life are never isolated from each other. Occasionally or frequently, they interrelate. Comprehensive financial planning recognizes this interrelation and takes a systematic, integrated approach toward improving your financial situation.
Comprehensive financial planning is long-range. It presents a strategy for the accumulation, maintenance and eventual distribution of your wealth, in a written plan to be implemented and fine-tuned over time.
What makes this kind of planning so necessary? If you aim to build and preserve wealth, you must play “defense” as well as “offense.” Too many people see building wealth only in terms of investing – you invest, you “make money,” and that is how you become rich.
That is only a small part of the story. The rich carefully plan to minimize their taxes and debts, and adjust their wealth accumulation and wealth preservation tactics in accordance with their personal risk tolerance and changing market climates.
Basing decisions on a plan prevents destructive behaviors when markets turn unstable. Impulsive decision-making is what leads many investors to buy high and sell low. Buying and selling in reaction to short-term volatility is a day trading mentality. On the whole, investors lose ground by buying and selling too actively. The Boston-based investment research firm Dalbar found that from 1994-2013, the average retail investor earned 5% a year compared to the 9% average return for U.S. equities – and chasing the return would be a major reason for that difference. A comprehensive financial plan – and its long-range vision – helps to discourage this sort of behavior. At the same time, the plan – and the financial advisor who helped create it – can encourage the investor to stay the course.
A comprehensive financial plan is a collaboration & results in an ongoing relationship. Since the plan is goal-based and values-rooted, both the investor and the financial advisor involved have spent considerable time on its articulation. There are shared responsibilities between them. Trust strengthens as they live up to and follow through on those responsibilities. That continuing engagement promotes commitment and a view of success.
Think of a comprehensive financial plan as your compass. Accordingly, the financial advisor who works with you to craft and refine the plan can serve as your navigator on the journey toward your goals.
The plan provides not only direction, but also an integrated strategy to try and better your overall financial life over time. As the years go by, this approach may do more than “make money” for you – it may help you to build and retain lifelong wealth.