Comprehensive Planning
To address each client’s unique situation, we take a comprehensive approach to planning. While your investment portfolio is what we take direct responsibility for, we will review other areas such as taxes, estate planning, and even your various insurance policies that may have a direct impact on your future and specifically your future cashflow. As such, we take a comprehensive approach to the advice we give since, really, everything in your life with a dollar sign is interconnected.
Life Changes
Plans aren’t meant to be created, bound, then tucked in a desk drawer. Life changes, and so should your plan. We review our clients' plans on a regular basis and adjust as needed. We also use these plans as a basis to help clients explore new opportunities that may present themselves.
Our Planning Process
Step 1. Getting to know you
During our initial planning meeting, we listen as you explain your goals, needs, dreams and challenges. Through our conversation, we uncover the details of your financial life. We discuss your long-term and short-term goals, priorities, and the investment strategies you already have in place.
Step 2. Building the first draft
After our initial planning meeting we set out to create the first draft of the plan using all of the information that we gathered. As we build out this initial first draft it’s not uncommon for us to uncover additional questions. After a couple of hours, we’ll likely come up with a rough first draft.
Step 3. Recommending your customized plan
Our next step is to present our recommendations. We get together again to review the draft together and make changes based on your input and preferences. We’ll then take that back to the drawing board and repeat the draft/presentation process until we have a solid final plan to implement.
Step 4. Implementation
The plan document acts as our map. While a map is important, it’s the turn-by-turn directions that help us get to our destination. Implementing all the necessary actions in the plan is one of the most valuable steps of the whole process. This may include, adjusting investment asset allocation, changing contributions to an employer retirement plan, or meeting with your attorney to update your trust.
Step 5: Monitoring
We chart your progress and meet with you regularly to review and adjust your plan so its stays up to date and in sync with your changing life. This may be at regularly scheduled intervals or ad hoc as new opportunities and challenges present themselves. By tracking your ongoing investment results against your “Target Zone,” you’ll always be able to easily answer the question, ”How am I doing?”
Although the Firm provides general information about the impact of taxes on various investment categories and the potential impact on estate planning, Wells Fargo Advisors is not a legal or tax advisor.