Financial Planning

Our Philosophy

This isn't meant to give you an A-Z formula for investing in the stock market. Instead, I look at financial planning from an asset protection point of view: take the least amount of risk needed to reach your financial goals. It sounds simple, but few people actually approach it that way.

What are your investment goals? Have you actually sat down with someone to lay them out? Most people haven't — they simply put money into the market and hope they picked the right stocks in their 401(k) or IRA, or that their money manager is doing a good job for them. How have you actually done with your portfolio over the last 5, 10, 20 years? Most people can't answer that question with a real number, which is itself a sign that the plan was never really a plan.

What "Least Amount of Risk" Actually Means in Practice

This isn't a philosophy of avoiding the market entirely, and it's not code for "everything in cash." It means starting from your actual number — what your retirement genuinely costs, year by year — and only taking on the risk necessary to get there, instead of taking on whatever risk your portfolio happens to have because that's how it was always set up. For most people, that means a mix: some money kept safe and liquid for near-term needs, some money working toward growth with a longer time horizon, and — where it fits — principal-protected tools that let a portion of the plan grow without being exposed to a down year at the worst possible time.

The order matters as much as the total. Two people can retire with identical portfolios and identical average returns and end up in very different places, purely because of the sequence in which the gains and losses happened relative to when they started withdrawing money. That's called sequence-of-returns risk, and it's one of the most underappreciated risks in retirement planning — a risk you didn't really have while you were still working and adding to your accounts, but one that becomes very real the moment you start drawing income from them.

No One Can Predict the Future

Do you believe the stock market is going to average double-digit returns anytime soon? Can you predict the next downturn, the next global event that moves oil prices and markets, or who gets elected and what policies follow? None of us really knows which stocks or funds will be the big winners, or when the next major disruption will hit.

Independent research (the DALBAR studies) has repeatedly shown that the average mutual fund investor earns meaningfully less than the market index itself over long periods — not because the index underperforms, but because investors, as a group, tend to buy high and sell low, chasing whatever's hot and panicking at the wrong moments. Having a plan — and, just as importantly, having someone to talk you through the moments that tempt you to abandon it — is often worth more than any single investment decision.

The bottom line: no one can predict the future. Many people are tired of chasing returns and the next hot fund while hoping the next downturn doesn't hit right when they need the money most. I concentrate on wealth-building tools that mitigate or eliminate that risk and let your money grow — and come out — tax-free when you're ready for retirement. Learn more about how I approach this on the Fixed Indexed Annuities and Retirement Life pages.

What This Looks Like in a Real Plan

Financial planning here isn't a single product recommendation — it's a coordinated set of decisions across several areas that all affect each other. A typical plan touches:

• Income strategy — how withdrawals are sequenced across accounts to manage taxes and reduce sequence-of-returns risk.
• Social Security timing — when to claim, since the decision affects income for the rest of your life and often your spouse's as well.
• Tax positioning — coordinating with tax planning so decisions in one account don't create an avoidable tax bill in another.
• Protection — making sure a bad market year, a lawsuit, or a long-term care event can't undo the plan — see asset protection.

Retiring Without Risk

My approach is closely aligned with Roccy DeFrancesco's book Retiring Without Risk, which asks the questions I think matter most:

• Is investing in the stock market really the "best" place to grow wealth?
• What do the real statistics show about what the "average" investor actually earns in the market — versus the hype?
• How do you build a tax-free retirement nest egg in the most efficient, least risky way possible?
• Does it make financial sense to overfund a tax-deferred qualified retirement plan or IRA?
• Is Retirement Life insurance a good tool for building retirement wealth?
• Does it make sense to use a wealth-building tool with a guaranteed lifetime income you can never outlive?

My philosophy is in line with this book: help clients reach their financial, estate, and tax-planning goals in the least risky manner possible, with the least amount of taxes paid — both while living and upon death.

Frequently Asked Questions