IF You’ve Worked With an Advisor Before
Your guide to what to expect, how we work, and answers to your most common questions.
About half of our clients come to us after working with a previous advisor or company, and often you have questions about how we’ll be different than the advisor you’re moving on from. Here, we try to answer the most common questions we get from clients with previous experience with an advisor relationship:
We’re pretty high-tech
Although we can always meet in person if needed (or preferred), most of our clients choose a virtual experience for the majority of our relationship. This eliminates your having to drive to our office, find parking, and all of those hassles that turn a 45-minute meeting into a whole afternoon of commuting.
We have been mostly a virtual office since 2017, long before the Covid-19 pandemic made it a standard way to do business. And our other tools, like scheduling meetings, sending us documents, and gathering your personal information, are easily handled from your smart phone.
We can customize investments or use a model – your choice
Most clients coming from other fee-based advisory programs are used to being placed in an investment model based on their risk tolerance and other financial concerns. Here, we also use proprietary models, but we have the ability to customize your investment approach if necessary.
Most of our clients grant us discretion
Unlike commission-earning advisors who cannot control your accounts (because they’re paid if they buy and sell for you), we are fee-only and full legal fiduciaries. That means, we can take discretionary trading control over your investments for day-to-day business without having to bother you for permission every time.
You’ll be informed of any changes to our strategy, of course, but you don’t have to be pestered about each decision before we take action.
We send proactive communications that you can see when you have time
We know you’re busy. In fact, working with our preferred clients, who are still active working and raising families, we know that getting you in for regular meetings can be challenging. If anything is urgent, or we have questions, we’ll of course call or text you. But most of our communications tend to be “FYI” type of information; not urgent enough to interrupt your day.
That’s why we created a unique approach to most of our communications. Instead of booking phone calls or scheduling meetings, we will send you a regular, recorded video message (like a one-sided Zoom call) to go over the important things in your plan or investments, that you can watch when it’s convenient. Then, you can reply with questions or comments, or book a follow-up meeting if you need one.
Our clients LOVE this approach as a time saver and for its convenience. We hope you like it, too!
We have a standard set of custodians to work with
Unfortunately, we do not manage investments accounts anywhere a client may open them. Our client custodians are currently BETTERMENT and CHARLES SCHWAB for most clients. We also have five other custodians for 401(k)s and other retirement plans.
We negotiate the services and fees to the best of our ability at these custodians, and will always recommend the one that best fits your needs.
Our focus is more about the economy than the markets
Of course, we watch the markets regularly, but we don’t structure our investment models or strategies around what wild unpredictability the markets will offer on a given day.
We don’t “trade” client assets. Instead, we set the course for your money based on proven investing principles, and make changes to our strategies based on broad changes in the economy. It’s called “top-down” investing, but we like to say that we let the world tell us where we should be invested, not the wild, often chaotic casino of the markets.
