The Objective: In this context, "employee benefits" are defined broadly to include nearly all "benefits" provided by your employer such as choice of retirement plans, pension options, health, dental and life insurance, stock options, etc. It also includes the coordination of benefits between prospective and former employers. Employers often make a vast amount of information about these various choices available to their employees. However, the sheer size and density of this information keeps employees from truly understanding and feeling confident in the decisions that they are forced to make. As with every other financial decision, the choice among the numerous options available cannot be made in isolation. Our objective is to coordinate the various areas such as estate planning, retirement planning, survivorship planning and tax planning to ensure that each choice you make fits into your plan and furthers your goals and objectives. Again, this "big picture" analysis is one of the most important needs we fulfill for clients.

The Process: We have experience in this area and will work with your employer to explore and explain all of your options to you so that they make sense. When faced with any employee benefit choice we can use all of our prior analysis, including cash flow, retirement, survivorship and estate planning to work with you and determine which combination of choices gives you the best chance of fulfilling your dreams and desires.

Our analysis of employee benefits does not just include benefits offered by your current employer. If you are thinking of changing jobs, we will evaluate any package being offered by another company and advise you accordingly.

Why it's important: Your benefits decisions can literally make or break a retirement plan. A large amount of one's net worth may be tied up in an employer sponsored retirement plan. Deciding what to do with these assets when retiring or changing jobs is a far-reaching decision that, once made, may not be able to be undone. Additionally, selecting among various pension options involves not only questions about current cash flow but also concerns about the cash flow of a surviving spouse. As discussed above, companies typically make a large amount of information about these choices available. However, most people only read and understand a fraction of the information.

Our role is to explain your options in a way that makes sense to you. We will also put these options into the context of your complete financial plan so that the choices that you make in this area are in harmony with your overall goals and objectives.