Your Futures Starts Here
What Can We Do For You?
You often seek guidance for things that you consider important – like your health – and tasks that you have little patience for – like technical support. You turn to trusted professionals with the expectation that they have your well-being and best interests in mind. Managing your financial life shouldn’t be any different. As experienced financial professionals, we have the resources and insight to:
- Help identify and understand your reasons for investing
- Deliver tailored solutions designed to meet your short and long-term needs
- Explain how different investment vehicles function and support your financial plan
- Navigate the fluctuating financial markets
- Keep you focused on your long-term goals
Our Services
Please open each block to read details of our service offerings:
Investment Management
You have probably heard that many investors want to buy the stock market when it is low and sell when it is high. But even professionals have hard time timing the market. How can you be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful? Some people who have seen market crashes remain afraid of investing in stock market and do not know how to deal with stock market volatility. We have build our professional investment strategies to enhance returns or yields while striving to mitigate losses to the downside. Our state-of-the-art, customizable products to meet your specific individual needs and financial goals are largely unknown to retail investors. Some of our strategies thrive in periods of high market volatility, allowing us to exploit opportunity when markets get rocky or enter bear market territories. Read Our Investment Philosophy here.
Retirement Planning
Do you have a vision of work-optional life, travelling the world, or pursuing things you always wanted to but could not because you were working to build your retirement nest-egg. Taking excessive risk when nearing retirement can jeopardize your retirement plans, and not taking enough risk can significantly reduce, due to inflation, how much you can spend to enjoy your retirement years. After all, you worked hard all those years not to merely survive in retirement, but to enjoy the fruits of your labor. We can help you mitigate the sequence of returns risk while managing your investments according to your goals. It is great that the healthcare has gotten better in recent decades, and Americans are living longer, however, that has had unintended effects such as increased longevity risk and increased healthcare costs during retirement years, especially if you end up needing long term care. We can help with retirement income strategies, handling market volatility, beating inflation, dealing with healthcare costs and tax efficiency for your retirement years. At some point, you will be forced to take social security and required minimum distributions (RMDs) whether you need that income or not. We can help with mitigating paying excess taxes on that forced income.
Retirement Plans Management
You may have a substantial amount of your assets tied in your 401(k), 403(b), or 457 plans. However, you are likely not actively managing those assets, optimizing their performance or have any downside protection. We can help you with mathematical, rules-based strategies so that you can navigate volatile markets and aim to mitigate losses when market conditions change. Our strategies are geared towards taking the emotion and guesswork out of the investment decisions allowing you to move your investments to less risky or more risky vehicles as conditions change. Furthermore, you may also not have attractive investment offerings in your company/organization’s retirement plan as is the case in most 401(k), 403(b), or 457 plans. We can help you utilize self-directed options to bring attractive investment choices and manage your portfolio outside your retirement plans. Furthermore, you might not be capturing the full-power of your 401(k) to contribute significantly more than what you think is allowed. Pre-retirement or post-retirement or when you are changing jobs, we can help you with rolling over your assets to allow you to have more independence and attractive investment choices if that is appropriate for you. We can also help you consolidate your retirement plans such as IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s etc.
College Funding
Are you financially prepared for the costs of a college education? Sending a child or grandchild to college can be an amazing investment in their future, but it comes with a hefty price tag. You should not have to jeopardize your retirement to provide funding for your children’s or grandchildren’s college education. Having an education funding strategy in place is essential to ease the burden later. A college education is among the most important – and expensive – milestones in a child’s life. We can help with the following investment strategies to make it more affordable:
- 529 savings plan
- Coverdell Education Savings Account
- Uniform Gifts to Minors Act (UGMA)
- Uniform Transfers to Minors Act (UTMA)
- Insurance based solutions
- Solutions without committing assets to a named beneficiary/owner.
IRAs
IRAs can be a great vehicle for retirement planning and tax-efficiency especially if you know how to use right strategies. We can help you with with backdoor Roth and mega backdoor options to exploit the full potential of these vehicles. Whether it is traditional IRA (pre-tax with tax-deferred growth), non-deductible IRA (after-tax with tax-deferred growth), Roth IRA (after-tax with tax free growth), roll over IRA, SEP IRA, SIMPLE IRA or inherited IRA, we have your bases covered. Also, we can help you navigate your situation where IRAs may not even be the right vehicle for you and other tax-efficient investment vehicles may make more sense.
Please open each block to read details of our service offerings:
Wealth Protection
Risk mitigation is one of the core pillars of our investment philosophy. Warren Buffett once famously said, ”Rule number one: Never lose money. Rule number two: Never forget rule number one“. Unfortunately, most retail investors do the exact opposite or they take too much risk, swimming naked and getting exposed when the tide goes out. We can aim to lower portfolio drawdown through various degrees of principal protection. We can implement strategies that, depending on your situation, may potentially provide capital/principal protection as well as downside or loss protection. Our focus is on risk-adjusted returns, which may help you sleep better at night (good for your overall well-being), and allows us to leverage opportunity when it knocks at our door during times of turmoil in different markets such as stocks, bonds, real-estate, commodities, and alternatives etc. All guarantees are backed by the claims paying ability of the issuing insurer or are subject to credit rating of the issuer.
Behavioral Coaching
DALBAR is nation’s leader in studying investor behavior and their Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior (QAIB) reports clearly shows that, when it comes to investing, people are more often than not their own worst enemies. Excited by profit and terrified of loss, they let their emotions and minds trick them into making terrible investing decisions. Planning for retirement requires logical, rational, and conscious thinking. But there is a strong force fighting against their efforts to be disciplined: their own brain. According to Daniel Kahneman, a renowned economist, psychologist and 2002 Nobel Prize winner, ”The brain doesn’t like logical, rational, conscious thinking—and will take any shortcut it can.“ Having personally experienced and overcome these investor emotions have given us the strong foundation and ability to help you keep your investing emotions on a leash.
Financial Planning
Having a solid financial plan is more than just how much income you may need during retirement; it’s about how you want to live. Your needs are unique and you’ll want to make informed decisions when it comes to financial, emotional and social aspects of retirement. Whether your plan involves budgeting, insurance, retirement income, college funding, large expenses on home, wedding gifts or travel around the world, health care costs, long term care, taking care of elderly or disabled family member, transfer of wealth to your next generation, charitable giving, or leaving a legacy, we are here to help. For you as our clients, we can also build your secure personal financial website so that you can see all of your bank, brokerage, retirement, annuities, and other accounts aggregated and tracked in a single place.
Tax Efficiency
As Benjamin Franklin said, ”The only certain thing in life is death and taxes.” Real returns exclude the effect of inflation and taxes out of nominal returns. We can help you to have not only investment diversification, but also tax diversification to mitigate the risk of taxes going higher in future or to utilize different tax-buckets during retirement years. Consult with us about tax drag on your taxable investments, after tax returns, tax diversification, tax loss harvesting, tax-managed and tax-exempt investment solutions, managing assets from long term and short term capital tax treatment, step-up in cost basis, implications of wash sales rules, and converting or rolling-over an IRA.
Estate Planning
MANAGING YOUR ASSETS
Please open each block to read how we manage your assets
Investing Client
You have the freedom to choose to interact with your financial professional through a fee-based or commission relationship, or both, based on your financial needs.
Financial Professional
As an investment advisor representative (IAR) providing financial guidance to you, we are generally paid a fee for either managing assets and/or giving investment related advice, and are regulated through a registered investment adviser (RIA).
As a registered representative (RR) we are licensed to sell securities, provides financial guidance to you, and may be paid a commission when a financial product is purchased, and is regulated through
a broker-dealer.
Investment Firm
Our Registered Investment Adviser, Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. (CIRA) processes our fee-based business and holds certain responsibilities for regulatory compliance and adherence to securities laws.
Our broker-dealer Cambridge Investment Research Inc. (CIR) facilitates the buying and selling of securities on our behalf as the registered representatives licensed with the firm, and holds certain responsibilities for regulatory compliance and adherence to securities laws.
Custody and Clearing Firms
Our custody and Clearing firms such as Pershing LLC and Fidelity Institutional® provide the trade execution, clearing, custody, and other services for securities and related transactions.
Regulators
The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) is an agency of the U.S. government that oversees the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), which in turn oversees broker-dealers, clearing firms, and us as your financial professional. Both the SEC and FINRA require members to comply with various rules intended to regulate and oversee the operation of financial markets and the sales practices of financial professionals. Regulators aren’t associated with, and do not endorse, our Investment Firm Cambridge. You can review the regulatory standing of Cambridge and each associated financial professional by visiting FINRA’s BrokerCheck.
Securities Investor Protection Act
Our client assets are protected by the Securities Investor Protection Act, which is administered by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). SIPC is a non-profit, non-government, membership corporation funded by member broker-dealers. SIPC’s primary role is to return funds and securities to investors if the broker-dealer holding these assets becomes insolvent. Our broker-dealer and its non-affiliated clearing partners are members of SIPC. Securities in your account are protected up to $500,000. Please note that the SIPC coverage is limited to certain situation and does not cover market risk. For details, see sipc.org.
We as Financial Professional, our investment firms Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. (CIRA) and Cambridge Investment Research Inc. (CIR), Custody and Clearing firms are regulated and work together to serve your needs as the investing client while taking advantage of safeguards for physical protection of assets.
ARE YOUR CURRENT
INVESTMENTS APPROPRIATE?
Over the years, needs change as you experience transitions with your health, family, job, and financial situation. You need a financial plan that is able to adapt to your needs and with the ever-changing financial markets. If you are not sure you are receiving the advice and expertise you need, you should seek a second opinion. We are pleased to give you an objective review of your portfolio. We provide this
review without requiring any obligation on your part.
We have several clients who have brought their money from other financial practices and have hired us to manage their investments due to our unique investment philosophy.
Why Seek A Second Opinion?
A second opinion can give you a fresh look at your financial portfolio. We can help you confidently answer the following questions:
- Is your portfolio designed to adapt with your changing needs?
- Are you comfortable with your current risk level?
- Are there new opportunities available for you to consider?
- Do you know how long your portfolio is designed to last?
- Are you receiving the right financial guidance for you?
