Working Together for a Common Goal…Yours
At Per Stirling, our commitment to help you build and manage your wealth begins with a detailed understanding of your specific goals and situation. A deep knowledge of your needs and aspirations is key to implementing the services listed below, each of which is designed to help you to achieve the lifestyle and goals that you envision.
Trust is at the core of our relationship with our clients. It is earned over time, and justified by our commitment to Fiduciary Standards of Care, which means that we pledge to always act in the client’s best interest.
What is Wealth Management?
From our perspective, when done properly, wealth management must be a fiduciary process, where the best interests of a client are always placed above the interests of both the advisory firm and the financial advisor. From the most comprehensive standpoint, wealth management is a consultative, multi-disciplinary and holistic process that takes into consideration a client’s financial circumstances, their retirement plan, their income tax situation, their estate plan, their family situation, their portfolio, risk management strategies and even legal issues, and considers all elements when advising a client. It is also an ongoing process of consultation, advisement and portfolio management and encompasses virtually all aspects of a client’s financial life.
A wealth manager often works in cooperation with the client’s other advisors, including their attorneys and their tax professionals. Many wealth managers are generalists, who have a broad base of knowledge regarding a wide array of issues. Others are specialists, who might be, as examples, experts in planned giving, tax planning or portfolio management. At Per Stirling, we believe that both approaches provide great value, and we bring together these different approaches in a way that benefits clients across the firm.
At our core, we believe that every client is unique, which means that every client’s plan and every client’s portfolio should also be unique. It is on that core assumption that every aspect of our wealth management process is based.
Retirement Planning
Retirement goals are unique for every client. Whether you plan to retire early, pursue a lifelong passion, travel more, or continue working, there are many questions that need to be considered today.
Will you have enough money to maintain your current lifestyle, or will there be an adjustment once you retire? Do you intend to reduce your estate to zero, or leave a legacy to your heirs and/or to a favorite cause? What can you do today to realize the retirement lifestyle you desire?
How ever you and your family envision your golden years, we’ll help you articulate your hopes and dreams for the future so that together we can create an actionable Retirement Plan to make your dreams a reality.
- Your “need” and “want” goals
- Your current financial situation
- Qualified plan rollover and conversion opportunities
- Anticipated future life events (marriage, starting a family, college funding, etc.)
- Assets and accounts
- Inflation and market changes
- Expected future cash flow
- An optimized Social Security and Medicare strategy
- Your legacy (charity, securing your family’s financial future, etc.)
- A potential inheritance
Factors that can make or break your Retirement Plan:
Tax Planning
As your life and financial situations evolve from year to year, so should your Tax Planning. That’s because every choice, action, and decision we make may trigger tax consequences, and therefore must be viewed through the lens of taxes.
Evaluating the performance of your portfolio based on stated return doesn’t tell the whole story: it’s your after-tax return that really counts. From properly allocating income from various sources, to choosing certain investment strategies, to selecting a retirement plan and disbursement strategy customized to your situation, proper Tax Planning is an essential and complex wealth management component.
- Bracket management strategies
- Assessing how, where, and when to best defer taxes
- Optimizing tax-efficient distributions
- Tax-aware asset allocations and strategies
- Annual tax-loss harvesting
- Managing tax liability – instead of letting your tax liability manage you
Your Per Stirling advisor may work with your CPA to best coordinate:
Education and College Planning
College and post-graduate costs continue to outpace average inflation – and this trend shows no signs of abating.
Since 1985, the inflation rate for higher education has more than quadrupled the general rate of inflation (115% vs. 500%). That’s why constructing an Education Plan early, funding it consistently, and investing assets wisely is more important than ever, regardless of whether you’re planning for your children to attend a public or private university, or have hopes for a private school education before college.
- Starts with your vision of education
- Considers your current cash flow and lifestyle needs
- Identifies your best tax-advantaged savings vehicles
- Leverages education-related tax deductions & credits
- Considers your time horizon with respect to investment strategy
We can help you craft a plan that:
Cash Flow Planning
Budgeting underscores the obvious importance of both being aware of how your money is spent, and utilizing good judgment in regard to your spending habits.
It’s critical to ensure that upcoming essential expenses will be taken care of without disrupting your lifestyle and longer-term financial planning objectives. What makes this even more complicated is that most clients have many different financial assets and investment accounts, each with different advantages and disadvantages that must be considered.
Whether you’re steadily accumulating assets and wealth, or retirement is right around the corner, we can coordinate these assets and income sources (including Social Security) with respect to your Cash Flow Plan, so you can live day-to-day with fewer unexpected interruptions, all while moving steadily towards the realization of your financial goals and dreams.
Risk Analysis & Insurance
Reviewing existing insurance coverage is often overlooked in wealth management, yet is a critically important component of your financial well-being.
Risk management tools like life, disability, long-term care, and even property and casualty insurance are especially critical, as major life events can have enormous consequences if not properly planned for. Having the right coverage can not only provide a smooth transition through an otherwise traumatic situation, but may also increase and diversify your investment portfolio, thereby placing a vital importance on Risk Analysis and Insurance in your overall wealth management strategy. Per Stirling advisors are independent and thus free to represent a client’s best interest.
Our Risk and Insurance Analysis aims to evaluate the suitability of existing and potential policies in order to optimize this important part of your financial plan. And through periodic reviews that help ensure that your current strategy tracks with all of life’s changes, we’ll put together an insurance plan that can produce tax benefits and generate additional emergency funds, all while building the wealth protection and coverage you need for peace of mind.
- Life insurance
- Short-term and long-term disability
- Long-term care insurance
- Medigap coverage
- Homeowners insurance*
- Commercial and business insurance*
- Fixed and Variable Annuities
- Umbrella liability coverage*
We’re ideally positioned to advise you on the types of coverage that best suit your situation, including:
*Working in conjunction with a property and casualty agent
Wealth Transfer Strategies
Securing your family’s financial future – today – is a major component of any sound financial plan.
Whether you intend to endow loved ones or a charitable organization, gift during your lifetime, or to make testamentary bequests through your will, tell us when and where you wish to direct your assets, and we can help to find the most advantageous ways to accomplish your objectives. By working closely with your CPA and estate planning attorney, we can work to coordinate efficient wealth transfer strategies during and after your lifetime, in alignment with your goals and dreams.
Important considerations in wealth transfer planning include:
- Basic estate planning documents (wills, powers of attorney, medical directives, etc.)
- Specially designed trusts, such as:
- Generation-skipping trusts
- Management trusts
- Bypass trusts
- Testamentary trusts
- Real estate trusts
- Family Limited Partnerships
- Beneficiary designations
- Trustee and Guardian selection
- Assets held in multiple legal jurisdictions (including foreign assets)
- Annual exclusions and lifetime applicable tax credits
Asset Protection Strategies
Another key objective of wealth management is to strategically insulate your property from legal attachment with Asset Protection strategies.
Through the careful selection of legal and financial vehicles, it’s possible to protect many of your assets from harmful risks. Plus, different strategies provide varying levels of financial privacy and protection – each of which must be matched to your unique situation and goals with care. Properly structured Estate Planning techniques can help you to simplify or even avoid the probate process to help protect your privacy, to ensure that your legacy is carried out as desired, and to protect what you have worked so hard to build.
- Pre- and post-nuptial protection
- Debt and creditors
- Bankruptcy
- Personal and professional lawsuits
- Guardianship challenges
- Will contests
We can work together to evaluate several types of risks and strategies:
Charitable Giving Strategies
Not only can a Charitable Gifting strategy bestow personal and philanthropic benefits aligned with your beliefs and values, but it can also serve as an effective tool within your overall financial plan.
A natural complement to other Wealth Transfer strategies, a proper Charitable Giving strategy provides an elegant way to leave a legacy during your lifetime or after death. When employed properly, planned giving strategies can even increase current income to the donor while simultaneously magnifying the after-tax value received by one’s heirs.
In working with your attorney to construct a Charitable Giving strategy, we may consider:
- Direct gifts to charities
- Donor advised funds
- Pooled income funds
- Charitable lead trusts
- Charitable remainder trusts
- Charitable annuities
- Supporting organizations
- Private foundations
Executive & Employee Benefits
When it comes to designing a captivating Executive and Employee Benefits package that makes sense for you, certain tax considerations may also help offset cost.
Business owners understand how essential it is to attract and retain top talent in today’s competitive marketplace with an attractive overall benefits package that addresses individuals’ needs for proper health care coverage, retirement contributions, and more. And when it comes to your extremely valuable key executive employees, going above and beyond their expectations – within your parameters – can make all the difference in their decision to join or stay with your company.
In customizing your ideal Employee and Executive Benefits program, we may consider:
- Business succession plans
- Defined benefit plans
- Defined contribution plans
- Deferred compensation and other non-qualified plans
- Investment selections
- Personal insurance
- Disability income insurance
- Executive benefit programs
- Group life insurance
- Long-term care insurance
- Stock options
- Equity vesting programs
Individually Customized Portfolios
We’re pleased to design customized and individually managed portfolios that are as unique and diverse as the financial needs of our clients.
Our custom-designed, individually managed portfolios are always based upon the best interests of each client, and feature styles and objectives that are distinctively customized for each client and situation. Individually Customized Portfolio styles may incorporate long and short-term goals, or even a mix of both, and can range from fairly traditional and strategic approaches (such as Modern Portfolio Theory) to more active and tactical strategies.
Depending on your needs and goals, your Per Stirling advisor will work with you to create a customized portfolio designed for your current situation, future aspirations, and your overall financial plan.
Investment Philosophy
At Per Stirling, we believe that investing – when done correctly – is neither sexy, nor sport, nor gambling. Rather, investing is ultimately the means to an end.
Our philosophy is that any investment program must always begin with an understanding of that “end:” your goal, reason, or purpose for investing. Only then can we consider the “means,” or what it will take to design a portfolio to reach your goals.
Once we have a clear understanding of your objectives, we can craft an individually-customized investment program that provides a realistic likelihood of achieving those goals, while accepting no more risk than is likely necessary to attain your dreams and ambitions.
