Accumulation planning addresses your investment needs, asset allocation, and the suitability of different types of securities in light of your goals and risk tolerance. In addition to investment planning, our accumulation planning also encompasses areas such as education funding, personal debt analysis, and proprietary cash flow modeling.
Investments
Asset allocation is used to distribute your investable assets among a variety of investment categories. This process will:
- Reduce overall investment risk
- Create more reliable investment forecasts
- Improve the risk/return trade-off of your portfolio
Accumulation planning also involves the choice of securities for your investment portfolio. Basic securities are stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Separately managed accounts, indices, option strategies, short-term assets, and annuities are also used to optimize your portfolio.
Alternative investments may also be an option for the right investor. One of the premier benefits of alternative investments is diversification, resulting from the inclusion of investments that react differently to the markets than more traditional investments. Managed futures, commodities, hedge funds, long-short funds, currency strategies, and real estate are all examples of alternative investments.
Some situations require different expertise than typical stock and bond portfolio implementation. These situations usually pertain to employer-related retirement plans and stock options, margin strategies, and real estate exchanges.
Most investors understand that as risk increases, the potential for return also increases. But there is a point for every individual where the level of risk is not worth the potential return. The goal of asset allocation is to provide you with the risk/return scenario that is most comfortable for you.
Other Accumulation Planning
In addition to creating and implementing an investment strategy for our clients, our planning process focuses on several other areas that have an impact on creating and preserving wealth for our clients.
We assist our clients in meeting their educational funding objectives for children or grandchildren. This includes making recommendations on the best funding vehicles, funding amounts, and investments. We also work with our clients to analyze their personal debt and devise an optimal personal debt strategy to minimize costs and maximize tax benefits.
Our proprietary cash flow model is the cornerstone of our accumulation planning. This is a highly customized model that uses multiple variables and sophisticated Monte Carlo analysis to develop future cash flow trends for our clients. These models are invaluable for us and our clients in making decisions about all aspects of their financial lives.