Our Pillars
How do we get you from where you are now to where you ultimately want your life to be?
01.
Big Picture Financial Planning
All the advice we give is specific to the individual, family, or business. While we use and stick to certain financial principles, we understand that everyone has different goals and history with finances. This is why our goal is to spend more time listening than speaking: you are the driver, we’re the GPS. We understand that you likely came to us to address a specific issue or concern, so we begin by discussing that. After that, we like to dive deeper into your goals, where you are now and what got you here, and gathering information to make sure that any advice we give is keeping the big picture and your long-term goals in focus.
02.
Process-Driven
In order to build on Pillar 1, we focus on processes and principles to drive our strategies. Too many advisors like to focus on desired outcomes because they sound exciting, but these are often vague or out of our direct control. We prefer to focus on habits and steps because we can control these, they are clear, and they eventually lead to the achievement of the desired outcomes. Success isn’t having you join as a client, success is having you stick to a plan, honestly and openly communicate when changes are needed or steps are unclear, and find peace of mind knowing you are working toward your goals in a systematic way. Here is an insight into our process.
Clear Meeting Process and Expectations
First Meeting – The Discovery Meeting
This meeting is focused on understanding your short-term concerns and long-term goals, explaining our services and processes, and, if we seem like the right fit for you, gathering information to allow us to address your concerns and goals. We don’t believe in charging for our services until we both agree that we’re a good fit and we can agree on a path forward aligning with our recommendations; in other words, there is no cost for our initial consultation.
Second Meeting – Financial Plan Presentation
During this meeting, we address your short-term concerns and present our recommendations as to how we would guide you toward fulfilling your long-term goals. This will include the big picture financial plan, the habits and steps we will help you implement, and all of the tools in finance that we will use to do so; these include but are not limited to planning for life after work (retirement planning), tools to both save in taxes and build toward your long-term goals (setting up employer-sponsored plans for business owners and discuss investment options with a focus on tax savings), planning for the unexpected (insurance planning), planning for your loved ones (organization of estate planning documents), the vehicles that will help us fill in the gaps (investment planning & management), a team-based approach (connecting us with your CPAs, attorneys, and other professionals), and auxiliary services when needed (education planning and funding, debt & budget management, and corporate benefits you may not be maximizing through your employer).
Third Meeting – The Official Signing of Your Financial Planning Team
After reviewing our recommendations and determining whether we are the right team for you, this meeting is focused on signing the paperwork to establish our relationship and setting up the habits and steps for the year and beyond.
Fourth Meeting & Beyond
When you choose us as your financial planning team, that is only the beginning of our relationship. As mentioned in Pillar 2, we have not succeeded unless we implement a plan you can stick to or if we do not update the plan as your life and the world changes. We have a financial planning calendar in place so that you can depend on us to update you throughout the year. This is why we check-in throughout the year with reminders about important steps you should take, and we schedule an annual review meeting to update our numbers, review your goals, and make sure we are on the page working toward your financial wellness.
Like pilots and surgeons, systematic checklists are in place to make sure we stick to the right path.
03.
Empathy & Transparency
At FWM, we pride ourselves in being experts who listen. Too often, experts feel the need to demonstrate their knowledge, when the true power in knowledge is using it in a way that maximizes the utility for those we serve. That is why ranked in our list of values as a firm, empathy comes first. If we don’t spend our time with you listening to you, listening to your goals, dreams, and worries, then we are not serving you in a way that will lead you to financial wellness. Empathy is our guiding value.
Part of creating a space where you feel properly served is making sure you understand what our services cost and how we get paid. That is why we choose to list this on our website along with discussing it when we meet. Relationships without transparency are relationships without trust.
We work under an assets under management cost structure. We have chosen this structure because it aligns our incentives (both you and the firm are happy as your assets appreciate in value and unhappy when they decline) and we limit our conflicts of interest (we don’t get paid more to sell you one investment over another, we simply are compensated for our ongoing advice). If both you and our team determine that we are the right fit for each other, depending on the services we will provide, our annual cost ranges from 1.5% to 0.6% of assets under management.
This covers financial planning, insurance planning, investment planning, retirement planning, tax & estate plan document organization, risk management, investment management, budgeting, and other issues related to personal financial planning. The underlying investments (mutual funds, ETFs, etc.) contain their own additional costs; we do not have a conflict of interest and do not receive additional compensation based on the mutual funds and ETFs we recommend. There are no transaction fees. Fee structure is subject to change with notice. Current clients can refer to the costs listed on their applications and addendums. Because our goals are to serve our clients at the highest level and share the power of financial planning with those who need it, we also can discuss planning fees if you do not yet have assets to manage.