FAQs

Registered Investment Advisors are held to a “fiduciary standard” while brokerage firms are held to a “suitability standard”. Brokers are employed by and loyal to a company, while Investment Advisors are loyal to the client. Our duty is to be a steward of your funds and place your needs ahead of our own, not to make money for a company by selling you financial products.

We are a fee-only investment advisory firm. That means clients pay a quarterly fee based on the amount of assets that we manage. We do NOT charge or receive commissions to sell any investment product. Most clients pay .25%-.40% per quarter, but this amount varies based on the total assets that are managed. Financial Planning fees are separate and range from $500-$2,500 depending on complexity.

If you have the time and can manage your investments better than us, then you shouldn’t. Successful people pay other people to do things that they can’t (or don’t want) to do. The fee is approximately 1 tenth of 1 percent per month, so for the fee to be worth it, we need to earn you or save you that much each month over time.

It’s likely that you weren’t told what you paid, how you paid and probably don’t understand the investments you were sold. Nobody works for free, so if you bought a bond, mutual fund annuity or stock, YOU PAID. We would be happy to evaluate your account to determine how much it’s costing you each year.

We have access to over 25,000 securities, but most of the portfolios consist mainly of Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s), CD’s, No-Load Mutual Funds, and Corporate or Municipal Bonds.

With over 20 years of investment experience, we focus like a laser beam on keeping internal expenses as low as possible. Rather than chase returns, speculate, or spend countless hours on research, we believe that most people should diversify across ALL segments of the economy and never try to “beat the market”. We would rather choose investments that have low expenses than try and guess what the returns will be. Lowering expenses has the same effect as raising returns. After all, “A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned.”

Wherever is convenient for you. We’d be happy to come to your home, meet you at the office or join you at the coffee shop.

Smaller firms like us, are able to focus on clients much more effectively than large banks or other firms. Since we have very little overhead to pay for, we can charge lower fees and provide a higher level of service. At a large firm, you really are just another account. With us, you will likely become a friend. We would much rather give great service to 50 clients, than poor service to 500.