Our Financial Planning & Investment Advice services are truly comprehensive. From 401(k) and Employee Plan funding strategies to Retirement planning, our holistic planning process incorporates all of the planning needs for workers of any age or employment status. From Executive to Contractor positions and everywhere in between, we can help identify and build toward your financial goals.

Our prices are always transparent and straight-forward. Meetings, phone-calls, and implementation are always free.

Our Financial Planning process always begins with a detailed Fact Finding session. It took about 90 minutes to gather all of the information we needed and do an assessment of the risk tolerances of both new clients. Creating the right plan requires gathering the right information. We see discovering investor sentiments around risk as one of the most fundamental tasks in the planning process. In our view, taking the wrong risks can lead to investors abandoning their Investment Plan at the worst possible time- a common phenomenon economists call the “behavioral performance gap.”

While Justin currently loves his Nike position in Management, he and Erin want to retire as early as possible- around age 52. At ages 32 & 30, this gives them each a couple of decades to plan and save. It’s our job to use the right mix of workplace benefits and individual investing opportunities to get them there while also planning for Ronnie (age 4) to someday go to college as well as owning their home in the Pearl District of Portland.

Justin & Erin were doing a lot of things right already: they kept an Emergency Fund with 6 months of expenses, Justin maxed out his 401(k), and they had a number of brokerage and savings accounts. Our job was to optimize their investment portfolios for their goals, find tax-efficiencies they weren’t already using, and create an over-arching plan that took everything into account.

Advice like “at least contribute up to the matching amount your employer makes” can be useful for some people to hear. For families earning significantly above the average, that number is not going to be nearly enough- especially if early retirement is a goal. Retirement accounts need to replace income in retirement, so high earners need to save a substantial enough amount of their income to replace large amounts of income in retirement. Programs like Social Security do relatively less for them.

Justin was already maxing out his contributions. His investments were spread out across many options. We determined it best to focus on housing tax inefficient assets in the 401(k)- Fixed Income investments such as High Yielding bonds and Equity investments like Real Estate. These investments generate much of their Total Return in the form of dividend and interest payments that are very tax inefficient for high earners like Justin. They’re still an important piece of the total portfolio, and the 401(k) was the perfect place to keep them.

In our comprehensive planning process, we determined the right amount to put towards the Deferred Compensation plan. This plan pays employees in the future for work they’ve done now. Theoretically, when employees know ahead of time when they’d like to retire and expect to pay lower taxes, this can lower the total tax bill. Fortunately, Justin and Erin new exactly when that will our long term cash flow projections showed they would indeed likely be paying less. Enrollment in this benefit asks for a percentage deferral amount, and we were able to confidently defer the proper amount.

When we determined what Ronnie would need to go to an Oregon college, we determined the right way to fund the savings plan for that goal was to use Justin’s ESPP earnings annually to fund it. We staggered contributions into the future to be slightly more than a year after purchase in the Employee Stock plan- this way, the family could enjoy the maximum tax-adjusted benefit to the plan. ESPP’s are often best used for these kinds of goals- saving for an eventual down payment on a house, a new car, a boat, etc.

Justin has been earning higher amounts than Erin at Nike for a number of years. Now, Erin’s not far behind in earning. The couple saw reinvesting Erin’s profits back into her firm as useful, and it’s paid off. They’re at a cross-roads, however. Erin hasn’t been taking much money from the business, and the business hasn’t needed significant new investment. That’s lead to cash sitting in an account, and Erin would like to start taking something more from the business.

After taking everything into account, we figured out that Erin could afford to defer large amounts of her compensation into a retirement account. Of all the retirement plans, we identified a SEP-IRA as a suitable vehicle for long term saving- Erin could defer $40,000 into a low cost, tax-efficient portfolio to be used in retirement. Invested at her Moderately Aggressive tendency for 30 years would produce substantial growth on 20 years of such contributions. In the worst case, if the business falls on hard times in the future, SEP contribution could be easily discontinued until things were on better footing.

We determined the maximal and minimal dollar amounts of Life Insurance Justin and Erin would both need. It turned out Justin already had maximal insurance through Nike. Erin, however, was becoming an increasingly significant contributor to the family cash flow. Given their interests in funding Ronnie’s education and Real Estate, we found the right dollar amount to cover for her.

We use low cost, no commission services to help clients obtain Life Insurance. We don’t sell insurance. What we found was that a Term Life policy that covered Erin’s peak earning years and the period of their highest joint liabilities was more than adequate for the family. Maximal coverage was not necessary in this case, and we recommended a moderate policy amount that covered Erin until 55.

The plan is to reassess at age 55 how cost effective Long Term Care Insurance is. The couple is currently young enough to not worry about LTC insurance, but once their Term policies have ended, it may be a good idea to start thinking about then.

In our process, we figured out that it was economical for Erin & Justin to continue renting their apartment in the Pearl versus buying a house. Nonetheless, for reasons that go beyond the pure financial side of things, they want to buy a house some day. Our job became creating an investment strategy to make the down payment 5 years down the road.

5 years is a short amount of time. Our investing solution involved a mix of low risk assets that covered different risk frontiers- the risk of inflation, interest rate risk, credit risks, etc. What we ended up with was a low cost portfolio that didn’t requite purchasing of individual bonds or otherwise complex strategies. Using Mutual Funds and Exchange Traded Funds, we were able to create a plan that was flexible and easy enough to manage for new cash flow into it every month yet sophisticated enough to come to maturity at the right date in the future.

One of Justin & Erin’s highest priorities in life was to provide their child, Ronnie, with opportunities. Private school was not something they were concerned with- they felt the highest priority was college savings. Our first task was to discover how much they could afford to put away monthly. The second task was to discover where to place the savings.

The couple had a high confidence that Ronnie was going to want to go to college some day. Not all parents hold this view, and we always take this into consideration. In the case of Justin & Erin, we decided together that a 529 plan was appropriate despite its inflexibility. The benefit of tax deferred growth was very compelling given the investing horizon. Our final task was to draw up an investment plan with the 529 that took the right risks at the right time. As the event horizon of needing to actually spend the money on college approaches, risk strategies need to change.

The array of financial planning projects that went into making a comprehensive plan for Justin & Erin was about the average. Nonetheless, some people need less work done- maybe they don’t plan on having children or don’t need Life Insurance. Maybe they’re in a single income household or only one spouse is involved in the planning process. Perhaps only one of these issues is pressing, but more planning will need to be done later. Our services are always flexible to the actual needs of our clients. We’ve worked on projects far more complex than Justin & Erin’s, and we regularly work on projects that are much simpler.