Comprehensive Financial Planning for Your Future

For individuals and families, this often begins with retirement planning. The first step in building a financial plan is determining your financial goals. A "goal" for planning purposes is a clearly defined objective with three components: a deadline, a dollar amount, and a measure of importance in your life. That could be something like buying a $30,000 sports car in five years, or funding a child's college education.

For institutions, we start by examining the investment policy statement. By analyzing cash flow requirements, investment time horizon, risk tolerance, liquidity needs, and tax status, we formulate a long-term strategic asset allocation of stocks and bonds tailored to the institution's mission and obligations.

To find which investments are most appropriate for you, we consider the probability of your plan succeeding, your portfolio allocation, and your risk tolerance score. Risk measures how much your investments could potentially rise or fall. A low-risk investment might rise or fall by roughly 4%, while a high-risk investment might swing 10% or more in either direction. Understanding where you fall on that spectrum is central to building a wealth management strategy you can stick with, even when markets get volatile.

To test the viability of your investments against your goals, we use a Monte Carlo simulation. This runs hundreds of simulated investment return scenarios based on historical returns against your recommended portfolio. Those hypothetical outcomes are then aggregated into a probable range of results for each year of your plan, giving you a realistic picture of how your plan might perform under a wide range of market conditions rather than a single best-case projection.