Will you outlive your money or will your money outlive you?
The purpose of wealth management is helping you identify your personal goals and then working with you, over time, to develop and implement strategies that will allow you to realize your goals. As your adviser, our focus is on assisting you in accomplishing your life’s goals.
The financial planning process is designed to bring order to your financial affairs. By following a disciplined and comprehensive approach, we can better integrate today’s financial decisions with your lifetime goals (and thus increase the probability of achieving those goals).
The financial planning process has many components. Your comprehensive plan will typically include some or all of the following:
- Defining your personal goals – Our clients must set their own goals and objectives. It is our responsibility to assist them in defining, quantifying and prioritizing their goals.
- Personal Statement of Net Worth (Balance Sheet) – This lists your assets and liabilities and calculates your net worth (assets minus liabilities). Your Statement of Net Worth provides an accurate picture of your current situation and provides a useful measure of your progress over time.
- Statement of Cash Flow – Cash management and budgeting provide the base of a comprehensive financial plan. Fuller Advisors helps you identify your expenses, determine income sources and uses, and develop multi-year projections of the actual net cash inflow or outflow. We also analyze your employer’s savings plans and evaluate the tax and cash flow impact of different levels of participation. We will work with you on debt management – arranging your credit to be tax-efficient. Cash flow planning and budgeting helps identify funds available for retirement, investments and expenses.
- Income tax planning – We estimate your income tax liability for current and future years and provide strategic recommendations to further reduce your taxes.
- Stock option planning – We assist you with planning for the exercise of stock options. We fully understand the complex tax issues surrounding both incentive and non-statutory stock options. We are well versed in the Alternative Minimum Tax issues and related AMT Credits that are associated with the exercise of incentive stock options.
- Capital needs analysis for retirement and other financial objectives – With your assistance we develop a number of assumptions about your future and analyze your financial circumstances to answer the question of what you need to be doing to successfully reach your retirement and other financial goals. Once we have developed your Capital Needs Analysis, we employ sophisticated statistical modeling techniques (Monte Carlo Analysis) to assess the probability that your plan will enable you to obtain your goals and not run out of money. This analysis will identify key financial considerations and steps you can take to increase the likelihood of achieving your financial goals.
- Estate planning – Our services include working with the individual or family in determining the impact of federal taxes, state inheritance taxes, and administrative expenses; recommending ways to carry out desired bequests while minimizing taxes and expenses; analyzing current situations and making suggestions to meet testamentary desires; reviewing legal documents such as wills, trusts, and powers of attorney; and reviewing and updating the estate plan as desires change.
- Education Funding – We assist with the analysis of the numerous options available for funding education. Our services include capital needs analysis for both public and private schools. We help determine the optimal use of such education funding vehicles as UGMA accounts, Educational IRAs, 529 plans and employee benefit plans.
- Employee Benefits – Our services include a review of your available employee benefits. One of the major sources of wealth for the corporate employee is their employee benefit package. We help determine strategies for exercising stock options, the tax benefits associated with utilizing a flexible spending account, the mix of retirement account investments vs. taxable investments.
- Implementation – We assist you with implementing the numerous recommendations that result from a comprehensive financial plan.
- Revisions – During periodic reviews we answer any new questions you may have, we integrate new research, products, and tax laws, and we learn about your updated goals. We do this so you can continue to make informed decisions and we can update your strategy so it stays optimized, prudent, low cost and tax smart.
