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What is a Financial Plan?
In my world, a Financial Plan is a “Life Plan”—a
strategy for you to use to reach your financial objectives so that
your life is what you want it to be. A plan should be based on the
facts and figures of your life, and should attempt to project your
circumstances into the future. Tax rates, inflation rates and the
long-term return of various investment components are used in a
Financial Plan to try to anticipate the future. A Financial Plan
is best seen as a “living, breathing, changeable roadmap”
that works with you as your life evolves. In my practice we use
a planning perspective as the backbone for all of the decisions
that are made.
What do you offer?
I offer a full range of investment and insurance products designed
for middle America. This includes, but is not limited to, Mutual
Funds, Money Market accounts, Stocks, Bonds, Variable Annuities,
Fixed Annuities, Certificates of Deposit, Life Insurance, Disability
Income Insurance, Long Term Care Insurance, Group Insurance for
small businesses, and various retirement and pension plans. We use
these products to create solutions for your life issues.
Asking what we offer is a bit like walking into a hardware store
and asking what products are for sale on the shelves. There are
a wide variety of products and they can be put together differently
to create an infinite variety of different results.
What process do you use in your work?
The MyFuture? process involves a series of steps that all clients
go through, but the content of the steps is customized for each
client. First meetings are the time when I evaluate your financial
circumstances and what you would like to accomplish, while you evaluate
my style, expertise and way of working with you. Once we determine
what you want to accomplish first, second, and third, I then put
together one or more suggestions on how you can accomplish your
goals.
The second meeting involves you deciding what you want to do.
There is a lot of education/explanation/”what-if” discussions
at the second meeting. Also all costs and fees are completely disclosed
so that you are making an education decision. Then we begin the
paperwork to take the plan from an idea to reality.
From there on, the process is one of taking care that the paperwork
gets done properly so that finances are set up the way you want
them to be set up. We monitor the progress of the accounts, report
back regularly to you on how your investments are doing, meet with
you periodically to make sure we are still on target for what you
are trying to accomplish. We communicate by phone calls, in writing,
by e-mail and fax, depending on what works best for you.
We always remain available to you on an unlimited and ongoing basis
as the circumstances in your life change. (One of my clients recently
commented to me that she’s been amazed at the broad range
of entirely different topics she has needed to discuss with me over
the years—everything from the sale of the family farm, jointly
owned by her Mom and her siblings, to her recent early retirement
from a long time employer. None of what she came to talk about was
ever what she expected she would be talking about the year before!)
Who are your clients?
Decent, honest, hard working regular middle-class people. My clients
are largely from the following two groups of people: middle-aged
married couples and single women.
Couples - Because I make sure
the concerns of women are addressed in my meetings, the kind of
couples who come to me are couples with a husband who is concerned
that his wife be included in the process as an active participant
and couples with the wife as the primary financial decision maker.
Single women – A number
of my clients are single women—widows, divorcees and never-married
women. The often come to me at the point of a major life transition—death,
divorce, retirement. Again, my concern for the needs of women brings
women to me as clients. My clients range in age from 18 to their
90’s, but most are in their 50’s and 60’s. Their
net worth ranges from zero (just getting started) to several million
dollars, but my typical client has been saving and investing for
a number of years and has a net worth of several hundred thousand
dollars. Most live and work in central New York, but I have clients
in about a dozen states and a few clients who currently reside outside
of the United States. I am currently sercurity licensed in all states
where my clients live.
How do we get started?
You have to contact my office and we arrange for a first meeting.
A phone call to the office is the most efficient way to begin. The
first meeting is an honest disclosure of who you are and what you
want to accomplish and who I am and what I think I can do for you.
Then you decide if and when there is to be a second meeting. There
is no cost for the first meeting. The decisions are yours.
How am I compensated?
Good question. I can be compensated in several ways.
| 1. |
Some of the products I sell
provide commissions that are paid to me by the investment
or insurance company that issued the product. My commissions
come directly from your invested dollars and reduce the principal
you invest.
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| 2. |
Sometimes I’m paid commissions by
those same companies but your invested principal is not visibly
reduced by my commissions. The commission is reflected in
the contingent deferred sales charge. In this second case,
although you do not have a reduction in the amount of your
investment, you pay for it over time through an increased
expense ratio in the product.
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| 3. |
I can be compensated by an annual fee
for money under my management—typically 1% per year
for the amount of money that I manage and invest for you.
This fee automatically comes out of your funds and is paid
directly to me quarterly.
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| 4. |
On rare occasion I am compensated on an
hourly rate for a specific task that I do for you. This is
for work that is not related to money I invest for you or
products that I sell to you.
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| 5. |
Occasionally a client comes to me with already
invested money that is perfectly fine where it is and how it
is. In those cases, you make me the “representative of
record” and I’m paid a continuing service fee (trails)
for the servicing of the “takeover” account. |
Often there is a combination of these compensations over a period
of years, as investments and needs change.
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