What You Should Expect

The effective development and implementation of a financial plan will make a significant difference in your life. We will partner with you to build a long-lasting, trusting relationship that will help you to achieve your financial goals.

Communication is critical to the success of our relationship. We will provide timely feedback to your financial questions. We want to hear from you any time you have questions or concerns; whether it is about your investments, unexpected changes in your life, your relationship with us, or any other aspect of your financial situation. One of our primary goals is to help you sleep better at night. If you have worries that we can help address we want to hear about them.

We are your financial partners, so we encourage you to ask us for help with important financial decisions – like choosing the right benefits during your employer’s annual enrollment period, deciding whether to refinance a mortgage or how best to buy that new car. We are here to help you with any and all financial decisions.

We ask you to enter the financial planning process with an open mind. This process works best when you are willing to learn, and to see your situation in a new and different light. You may begin this process with one or two concerns, but we will probably bring up other topics you haven’t even considered.

We believe in being honest and direct. We will always tell you what we believe, not what we think you want to hear. Some of our advice may create some discomfort for you in the short-term, especially if we determine there is a conflict between your goals and your current financial status or behavior. But everything we do and say is with your best interests in mind. We want you to be successful, and the road to success isn’t always easy.

We also expect that you will be honest and direct with us. The more you can tell us about yourself, your hopes and dreams, and your fears and concerns, the better our relationship will be. The quality of our advice will depend in part upon the quality of the information you provide to us. We will ask you to disclose a significant amount of information to us, and we know that your financial information is deeply personal. We take the trust that you place in us very seriously, and we assure you that all of your personal information will be kept strictly confidential.

We do not have a crystal ball that will tell us when the stock market will go up and when it will go down. We wish we did and that we could use it to protect you from downturns. But since we don’t have a crystal ball, we don’t believe in trying to time the market. Anyone who sells stocks because they think the market is going to turn downward has to be right twice—they have to get out at the right time and then they have to get back in at the right time. We believe that market timing is a loser’s game.

We also do not have the ability to help you “beat the market”—and we don’t believe that anyone else can do this either over long-term periods. What we can do is help you evaluate your goals and how much risk you’re willing to take to achieve them, and design an investment plan that is geared toward meeting those needs. We can help take some of the emotion out of investing, and we can help you stay invested when the ups and downs of the financial markets make you nervous. We can also act as a sounding board when you have investment questions or ideas.

We believe that financial planning should be an enjoyable, rewarding and invigorating process – for both you and us. If it ever stops being a rewarding experience for you we want to hear about it. Like all relationships, ours will grow and change over time. But we hope and expect to continue to add value to your life for many years to come. Being a partner is neither jargon nor sales talk for us. We believe in the value of our partnership with our clients.