Wealth Builders
Pre-Retirees
Retirees
Wealth Advisory Services
Our Wealth Advisory Service combines the benefits of financial planning with ongoing professional investment management. In year one, we complete your initial financial plan to help you identify and implement meaningful solutions in all areas of your financial life. With an understanding of your goals, risk tolerance and time horizon, we develop your personalized investment plan. In year two and beyond, we review planning areas, track goal progress and maintain your portfolio to confirm that it continues to align with your personal goals.
- Financial Planning
- Investment Management
Financial Planning
Each financial plan generally includes the following components; however, individual plans may vary based on specific needs.
Goal Setting
Goal setting is an effective way of picturing what you want to achieve and what you want your life to be like. You can then move toward those images in an intentional way.
Detailed Cash Flow Planning
Understanding where your money goes is fundamental to financial planning. We work with you to compile an accurate accounting of your current spending and develop a spending plan that supports your identified goals.
Income Tax Planning
With the goal of minimizing the taxes you pay, we advise you on tax planning opportunities available to you given your specific circumstances.
Education Planning
Based on your educational goals, we quantify the savings required and identify the education funding strategy that best meets your needs for tax efficiency, control, or flexibility.
Insurance Planning
There are numerous risks that can wreak havoc on the best-laid plans. We help you determine the right type and amount of insurance and, if appropriate, refer you to licensed insurance agents.
Retirement Planning
Funding retirement is usually the largest financial challenge our clients face. If you are years away, we define how much you should be saving each year for retirement. If you’re within 5 years or less, we run scenarios to help you understand the actions that might be needed to get you to your retirement goal. If you’re in retirement, we monitor whether you’re spending at a level that is sustainable or running the risk of depleting your financial assets.
Estate Planning
Estate planning is done to ensure that during life, and at death, your assets go to the people and organizations you want in a tax-efficient manner. We educate you on estate planning issues and, if applicable, refer you to an estate attorney to have the necessary documents drafted.
Investment Management
Our disciplined approach to portfolio design and maintenance prevents your emotions from driving your investment decisions, either in a frightening bear market or an exciting bull market.
Risk Analysis
Risk analysis is a process for finding the appropriate level of investment risk you should take considering the risk required to meet your goals, your capacity to take risk, and the level of risk you’re willing to take.
Asset Allocation
The asset allocation decision (how much of your portfolio to place in low risk/low return assets like cash, CDs, and bonds, and how much of your portfolio to place in high risk/high return assets like stocks) is the most fundamental decision you make as an investor. We help you select the appropriate allocation and document that decision in an Investment Policy Statement.
Security Selection
Our portfolios are primarily composed of index funds, ETFs, passively managed mutual funds, and no-load mutual funds designed to provide the long-term benefits of diversification and keeping expenses low.
Account Transfer
We complete the account applications and transfer paperwork to move the appropriate accounts to Schwab Institutional. As the custodian, Schwab holds and prices the securities you own in each account and reports to you independently each month.
Establish and Investment Policy Statement (IPS)
We establish an Investment Policy Statement that identifies your general investment goals and objectives and how we will work to achieve them. The IPS will confirm your asset allocation, risk tolerance, and distribution requirements.
Portfolio Rebalancing
Rebalancing is the process of reallocating the securities in your portfolio to return to your desired asset class targets. Rebalancing forces an investor to buy low and sell high and is contrarian in nature—therefore very hard for individual investors to do in turbulent markets.
Efficient Tax Management
To keep your taxable accounts as tax-efficient as possible, we employ tax management strategies such as using new deposits to rebalance, placing rebalancing trades in tax-deferred accounts, using tax-free municipal bonds, placing index positions in taxable accounts, and harvesting tax losses.
Distributions as Needed
If you are taking withdrawals from your portfolio, we determine the optimum account and the optimum source for the distributions (maturing bonds, interest payments, cash from fund distributions, or equity profits); we manage the process of turning your nest egg into a retirement paycheck.
Performance Reporting
On an annual basis, we provide reports that will tell you how your portfolio performed over the year along with a cumulative analysis since we have been working with you. Our reporting package starts at the portfolio level and includes additional analysis down to the individual portfolio holding.
Our Fee Structure
We will only take you on as a new client when we feel confident that the value of the services we provide will exceed the financial commitment you make to us.
Wealth Advisory Services
Wealth Advisory Services are for clients looking for both comprehensive financial planning and professional portfolio management and is designed for clients with at least $1,000,000 in manageable assets. However, this asset requirement is only a guideline, not a managed account minimum. Clients are accepted at trueNorth's discretion.
Our standard annual fee is calculated on the market value of your Assets Under Management (AUM) based on the following schedule:
|
Managed Assets (AUM) |
Annual Fee* |
|
From $ 0 to $2,000,000 |
1.0% of Portfolio Value |
|
Over $2,000,000 |
$20,000 + 0.5% of Portfolio Value over $2,000,000 |
* $10,000 Annual Fee Minimum
For example, the annual fee for $2,500,000 in AUM will be $22,500 ($5,625 per quarter) or 0.90% of your AUM. Our fee is based on the AUM balance at the start of the quarter; initial fees for partial quarters are prorated. Wealth Advisory Service fees are billed quarterly in advance and are non-negotiable.
How to Begin
How does the process work if you are interested in working with trueNorth? Here are the basic steps that we generally take with potential clients.
Step 1. We have a complimentary introductory meeting. This gives us the opportunity to learn more about you, your financial planning needs, your questions and concerns, and how you would like to work with a trusted advisor. We also want this meeting to provide you with an opportunity to learn about us: what we do, how we work, and the potential benefits of choosing trueNorth as your financial partner. We will answer any questions you may have about our services, our fee structure, and what the experience of working with us will be like. This meeting will help both of us determine whether there is a good fit between your needs and our services. If you would like some additional time to think about moving forward, that is fine too. There is never pressure on our part.
Step 2. If you decide you would like to engage trueNorth, you will sign a Wealth Advisory Service Agreement. Our Agreement defines our working relationship and establishes our client/advisor relationship.
Step 3. We learn more about you, your personal goals, and your current financial picture through questionnaires and meeting discussions. Your initial financial plan and investment portfolio are completed with four or five meetings—with each meeting building on the next.
Step 4. In addition to our scheduled meetings, we will also keep you apprised of pertinent financial planning and investment topics with our quarterly client letters and blog postings. We are also available for all of life’s financial questions that come up between regularly scheduled meetings.