Overview
Wealth Management
Partner with an expert
No matter what your level of wealth, working with us can help you pursue your goals. Together, we’ll go through a comprehensive process for managing your financial life and creating a long-term plan customized to your needs. The process starts by examining the wealth strategies universe and its modules:
- Accumulation: how to target asset growth
- Retirement planning: how to target distribution of your assets in a tax-advantaged way
- Estate planning: how to preserve your assets
- Risk management: how to protect your assets
- Business planning: how to grow and manage your business
- Taxation: how to minimize your tax burden
Create a comprehensive plan
By exploring each module in detail, we’ll determine which ones require our immediate attention and which one.s are more long-term in nature. From our findings, we’ll assemble an implementation plan for your financial future.
Support your financial goals
Working together with us helps simplify the complexities of your financial life by focusing on managing your wealth in a systematic way for the long term.
Retirement Planning
Retirement planning involves evaluating your current financial standing and creating an accumulation strategy that will help to ensure a desired retirement lifestyle. Because an individual’s retirement years can span decades, retirement planning generally dominates other financial goals. A successful plan put into place during the wealth-building life span should address ways to maximize growth and tax-efficient distributions, as well as how to leave retirement assets to the next generation.
There are several ways to save for retirement:
- Qualified employer-sponsored plans
- Individual retirement accounts (IRAs)
- Personal savings
- Executive deferral plans
Qualified plans are employer-sponsored retirement plans such as 401(k)s and pension plans. Although there are contribution limits and strict distribution rules, these plans are popular because of their tax benefits. Generally, employers will make participation even more attractive by matching all or a portion of an employee’s contribution. It’s important that you choose the optimum plan to benefit the key people in your company.
IRAs are inexpensive, easy to establish and maintain, and also offer favorable tax incentives. They can be created by an individual or provided by an employer. Most people use IRAs to consolidate retirement savings that were previously held in employer-sponsored plans. Our process coordinates your IRA investments with your other savings plans.
You may find that qualified plans, IRAs, and social security won’t provide enough money to support your desired retirement lifestyle. By identifying your retirement gap, you can develop a strategy for personal savings invested outside of the traditional retirement vehicle.
Business owners or executives may have access to other tax-advantaged retirement savings vehicles. Nonqualified executive compensation is a generic term used to describe a compensation arrangement that provides retirement income—and, in some cases, death benefits—to key employees of a business.
At the heart of any retirement plan is the distribution of accumulated assets. The correct distribution method will help to ensure that your retirement savings last beyond your lifetime with minimum shrinkage from taxes. From premature distribution options that allow access to retirement assets prior to age 59½, to products intended to provide stable monthly payments for retirement, distribution planning is paramount to a successful retirement plan.
Estate Planning
Estate planning creates a master plan for the management of your property during life and the distribution of that property at death.
For most people, estate planning can:
- Gives more control over assets during life
- Provide care when disabled
- Allow for the transfer of wealth to whom and when wanted, at the lowest possible cost
Common estate planning issues addressed in the wealth management process include:
- Transfer of wealth
- Minimization of transfer taxes
- Asset protection
- Charitable giving
Wealth transfer planning involves the smooth transition and distribution of wealth according to your wishes. With proper estate planning, you decide to whom, how, and when your assets will be distributed, as well as who will manage your estate or business. Special issues you may deal with are providing financial security for others, planning for children of a previous marriage, equalizing inheritances fairly, and retiring from your business. Wealth transfer planning also involves the management of assets during disability or incapacity.
A major goal of estate planning is to minimize potential taxes without interfering with your other financial goals. If you give away wealth, during life or at death, you may incur federal—and possibly state—taxes. You can help protect the assets you transfer from excessive depletion by understanding these taxes and the various strategies you can use to minimize them.
If you own substantial assets, creditor protection can be a concern. Creditors can come in many forms. An asset protection plan first identifies potential exposure and then identifies preventive tools and strategies to reduce exposure. Asset protection planning deals with ownership issues, liability insurance, statutory protections, special needs trusts, offshore and domestic trusts, prenuptial agreements, divorce, and business dissolutions.
Charitable giving is motivated by both personal and tax incentives. Congress encourages charitable giving through tax legislation that can minimize your income and estate taxes. Charitable planning involves selecting the gifted property and charitable structure that will target your needs.
Our process does not end with estate planning but coordinates your estate plan with your overall plans for your business, investments, insurance, and employee benefits.
This material has been provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute either tax or legal advice. Investors should consult with a tax or legal professional regarding their individual situations.
Tax Planning
Tax planning considers the tax implications of individual, investment, or business decisions, usually with the goal of minimizing tax liability. Although decisions are rarely made solely on their tax impact, you should have a working knowledge of the income or estate tax issues and costs involved.
A major goal of tax planning is minimizing federal income tax liability. This can be achieved by:
- Reducing taxable income through income deferral or shifting
- Deduction planning
- Investment tax planning
- Year-end planning strategies
Investment tax planning involves evaluating how to best position assets in order to minimize the amount of taxes you have to pay on an ongoing basis. This requires year-round planning, and it begins with an in-depth understanding of the tax implications of various investments and investment strategies, including:
- The treatment of wash sales
- Tax-exempt investments
- Gains and losses
- 1031 exchanges
- Qualified dividends
- Option strategies
- Tax-deferred investing
- Passive income and losses
- Mutual fund taxation
If you give away wealth, during life or at death, you may incur federal taxes—and possibly additional state taxes. These taxes include gift, estate, income, and inheritance taxes. You can help protect the assets you transfer from excessive depletion by understanding these taxes and the various strategies you can use to minimize them.
Tax issues are never far from the mind of the business owner, and it’s likely that many of the decisions you make will be tax based. It starts with the formation of your business and continues through the sale. Your choice of business entity, how you pay out profits to the owners, and your accounting decisions will all have an effect on your tax liability.
Some events in life—retirement, for example—come with tax considerations. Life event planning focuses on the impact of significant events on your life, as well as on the stages of your overall investment plan.
This material has been provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute either tax or legal advice. Investors should consult with a tax or legal professional regarding their individual situations.
Insurance
When was the last time you checked your insurance policies that protect your family and your security? Chances are a lot of things have changed since you last reviewed your needs.
The benefits of insurance start with the comfort that comes from knowing you and your family are secure. An insurance review is one simple way to help ensure that you have enough coverage, the right type of coverage and have chosen the right beneficiaries.
We can help you with:
- Life insurance
- Long-term care insurance
Although it is a subject that a many people do not like to think about, it is important that you take steps to protect your family, financial assets, and lifestyle by taking out an appropriate insurance policy.
*Fixed insurance products and services offered through Heritage Capital Advisors, LLC.
401(k) Guidance
We can review outside qualified plan accounts (e.g., 401(k)), examine fund options, and make allocation recommendations.
- Existing clients can send us the investment options that your company's retirement plan offers, along with a copy of your most recent statement.
- We will analyze your current allocation and options with the same technology and methods that we use to manage the accounts you have with us and send you our recommendations.
- Upon receiving our recommendations, you will make any necessary adjustments to your own plan if you so choose.
Asset Allocation
Allocating your investments among different asset classes is a key strategy to help minimize risk and potentially increase gains. Consider it the opposite of "putting all your eggs in one basket." The first step to understanding optimal asset allocation is defining its meaning and purpose and then taking a closer look at how allocation can benefit you and what the right asset mix would be to achieve and maintain it.
What Is Asset Allocation?
Asset allocation is the strategy of dividing your investment portfolio across various asset classes, such as stocks, bonds, and money market securities. Essentially, asset allocation is an organized and effective method of diversification.
The main goal of allocating your assets is to minimize risk given a certain expected level of return. Of course, to maximize return and minimize risk, you need to know the risk-return characteristics of the various asset classes.
Equities have the highest potential return, but also the highest risk. On the other hand, Treasury bills have the lowest risk, since they are backed by the government, but they also provide the lowest potential return. This is the risk-return tradeoff. Keep in mind that high risk choices are better suited for investors who have a high risk tolerance (can stomach wide fluctuations in value) and who have a longer time horizon to recover from losses.
It's because of the risk-return tradeoff—which says that potential return rises with an increase in risk—that diversification through asset allocation is important. Since different assets have different risks and market fluctuations, proper asset allocation can help insulate your entire portfolio from the ups and downs of one single class of securities. So, while part of your portfolio may contain more volatile securities—which you've chosen for their potential of higher returns—the other part of your portfolio devoted to other assets remains stable. Because of the protection it can offer, asset allocation can be the key to maximizing returns while minimizing risk.
Deciding What's Right for You
As each asset class has varying levels of return and risk, investors should consider their risk tolerance, investment objectives, time horizon, and available capital as the basis for their asset composition. Investors with a long time horizon and larger sums to invest may feel more comfortable with high-risk, high-return options. Contrastingly, investors with smaller sums and shorter time spans may feel more comfortable with low-risk, low-return allocations.
*Asset allocation programs do not assure a profit or protect against loss in declining markets. No program can guarantee that any objective or goal will be achieved