“Our clients love that their investments are all in one place — with their financial planners and accountants. And since they have one point of contact to deal with, they know it will be a streamlined, efficient process with far more continuity of service.”
Bob Hochstadt, a Principal of GHPIA, and Principal Emeritus of GHP Horwath, P.C.
We start the financial planning process by asking you questions, a lot of them, and getting to know you and your particular situation. Once you have signed an engagement letter with us that details the estimated cost of the plan, we provide you with an easy-to-understand questionnaire that you complete at home. It asks you to list your assets and liabilities, along with your goals. As an example, we ask for details on your income, taxes, budget requirements, investments, liabilities, insurance, money owed you, anticipated future income, retirement assumptions, and your attitudes in general about investments. We can help with this process — we offer an exclusive service called ‘Personal Financial Assistant’ where we roll-up our sleeves and pitch in — setting up phone and conference calls with the appropriate financial institutions to track down documents, and much more. Our goal is to make the questionnaire process and data gathering of additional documents as easy and painless as possible.
During this meeting, we review your completed financial planning questionnaire and spend considerable time interviewing you to better understand your personal and financial situation. Getting to know our clients personally is an important part of our strategy — it helps us create a more targeted plan for you.
During this meeting, we provide you with a quantitative model of your financial life based on assets, liabilities, income, and expenses. We also project out your balance sheet and cash flow over the remainder of your expected life span. In addition, we create financial models for education funding, analyze risk exposures, and review current insurance policies and estate documents. The final step in this report back meeting is the evaluation of your current investment portfolio. Through careful analysis, we determine if you are properly diversified into asset classes appropriate to your long-term investment return objectives and capacity for risk. We provide you with a proposed asset allocation strategy based on your completed financial plan — one that is in line with your investment objectives.
Once we’ve delivered the financial plan, you can choose to have us manage your assets. All of our portfolios are custom-built, designed to achieve your particular objectives. We research mutual funds, ETFs, stocks, bonds and REITs to understand the opportunities and the risks available in the marketplace. We will frequently monitor your portfolio for performance metrics to keep your investment strategy aligned with your financial plan. We hold regular portfolio review meetings with you and stay in touch throughout the year, updating you on any significant changes in your financial picture or the financial markets. We provide quarterly, easy-to-read performance reports with very clear performance data relative to common investment benchmarks.