Meeting With Us
At our initial meeting, we will start out by discovering “What's important about money to you?” From there, we will discuss your specific financial goals that require money to achieve. Then we will review what planning you have done to date. At the end of this process I will be able to tell you what we can do for you and how we can work together. There is no cost for our initial meeting, nor is there any obligation for you to hire us.
What To Bring
In order to do the best possible job for you, it is extremely important that you bring all of the applicable items on this list to our meeting.
Items Needed for Our Initial Meeting
1) INCOME: Last year’s tax return, personal and corporate. Your most recent paystub.
2) RETIREMENT: Most recent plan statements such as for a company plan, 401(k), Keogh, Simplified Employee Pension (SEP), Individual Retirement Account (IRA), Tax Sheltered Annuity (TSA), or other annuities. Your most recent Social Security benefit estimate statement.
3) SAVINGS: Most recent statements from bank accounts, money market funds, and certificates of deposit.
4) BROKERAGE ACCOUNTS Most recent statements detailing stocks (including both stocks you’ve purchased AND STOCK OPTIONS: and options you have not yet exercised), bonds, and mutual funds.
5) INSURANCE: Policies or statements for life, disability, health, auto, homeowners, renters, liability, long-term care, or any other insurance.
6) LOANS: Loan information or statements for your primary residence, vacation and investment properties, cars, etc. Including origination date, amount borrowed, original length of loan, interest rate, and principal and interest payments.
7) BUSINESS OWNERSHIP: Current plus the previous year’s balance sheets and profit and loss statements as well as buyout agreements and a business valuation if you have on (include value of stock if publicly traded).
8) INHERITANCE: A copy of the trust, will, or other documents detailing your inheritance (if available; if not, and the inheritance is verbal and certain, write the number on a piece of paper and include it).
9) ESTATE PLAN: A copy of your own will, trust, or other document detailing what you wish to be done with your assets and liabilities when you die.
Characters Our Clients Have Shared
In reflecting on our small community of ideal clients it occurred to us that there were many things they had in common before they began working with us. These attributes were not shared by every one of our ideal clients...just most of them:
- Have important financial goals.
- Want to simplify his/her life by delegating his/her financial matters to competent, trustworthy professionals.
- Care for family, community or someone/something other than self.
- Enjoy the idea of having one advisor coordinating all financial things.
- Have $100,000 of investable assets or have $100,000 of gross annual family income.
- And most importantly they were willing to take action to implement a financial plan.
Creating a great plan without taking action to implement it is like buying an airplane ticket and not taking the trip. Taking action is vital to success. These observations enable me to praise our community of clients for recognizing their financial planning needs and choosing to delegate them to a trusted advisor. In that way, our clients are able to spend more time on their quality of life.
After working with us, I would say that the most common traits of our clients would be that they are financial delegators who are excited about and focused on their futures. They are people who sought out a trusted advisor because they refuse to spend time on less important things at the expense of those things that are most important in life. Competent money management is delegable and our community of clients “get it”.