The Objective: The cash flow analysis is a device that helps us understand how your lifestyle needs are to be supported in the short and long term. It's important to remember that the cash flow analysis is not a budget. The cash flow analysis merely enables us to review your family's spending patterns to help project necessary retirement income and/or survivorship income needs. This analysis will help us to put in place a savings plan that will help you meet your objectives - whether those objectives include funding for college education, early retirement, travel or other objectives. The cash flow provides the objective insight needed to determine where and how savings could occur.

This analysis also helps us to learn more about what's important to you. For example, if we see in your cash flow that you're spending $100 per month to store your sailboat, we would learn that sailing is something that you might want to spend more of your time and money doing on.

The Process: While your needs dictate the priority of the work that we do for you, the cash flow analysis is frequently an early component of the financial planning process that we undertake for our clients. It is an interactive process that helps us get to know you and what's important to you and your family.

If your needs warrant a cash flow analysis, we start by gathering a great deal of detailed information from you. Examples of information are your most recent tax return, check book registers, credit card and bank statements, pay stubs, other income sources, loan information (whether loaned or borrowed), and inheritances, to name a few.

We will work with you to categorize all of the sources of income as well as outflows for the historical year. Once we're comfortable that we've captured your historical year with a reasonable level of certainty, we'll begin to project your inflows and outflows for the current and future years, taking into consideration anticipated ordinary and extraordinary expenses and income to project your likely situation, based on an accurate prior year as well as your expectations for future years.

Why it's important: A completed cash flow analysis enables us to work with you to build sufficient assets for the longer term. Additionally, the cash flow helps to design strategies to achieve greater tax efficiencies, and plan for future purchase and "wish list" items. This document will be updated as necessary to assist in the planning process and as your situation changes over time.

By keeping an updated cash flow document (or plan), we are able to quickly advise you on situations that come up. It's not atypical for people to visit a warm southern locale and call us for advice on whether or not to purchase that beachfront property. When we receive that call, we're able to start to identify the issues that come into play and provide objective advice, based on a detailed and complete understanding of your situation.

The Objective: The statement of net worth is a snapshot of your overall financial well being at a given point in time. Among other things, we use the statement of net worth to help understand how assets are spread between spouses, for estate planning purposes. Since we advise clients on all their assets, not just those that we actively manage, the statement of net worth is among the tools we use to help define overall risk segmentation for your overall investment portfolio including accounts held with other managers.

Perhaps the most important function of the statement of net worth is that it is a guidepost to help us see your progress in reaching your financial goals. As we move forward in the planning process, a regular update of your statement of net worth will serve as a history of your successes in achieving your goals.

The Process: We ask for you to gather information about all of your existing assets and liabilities - from your employer 401(k) plan to your existing mortgage and car payments. As long as we have complete and up-to-date information, the statement of net worth can be completed after our first meeting. From the creation of this statement, we'll develop an overall asset allocation to determine areas that might require additional diversification and/or changes in your plan. We will generally update your net worth statement quarterly or annually, as your situation warrants.

Why It's Important: Your statement of net worth, while relatively simple to complete, is the basis for many additional analyses. From tax and estate planning to asset allocation and retirement/survivorship planning, the net worth statement provides information that can help us make sound recommendations based on accurate information. A summary of your net worth, while constantly changing, can also provide important information about your overall financial situation, how your assets are held, the relationship of your assets to liabilities and might even point out opportunities for more effective use of debt.

The Objective: No one wants to go through the pain of losing a loved one. Without proper planning, the aftermath of such a loss can be nearly as devastating as the loss itself. While we work with you to plan for the financial aspects of such a loss, we also work with you to plan for the personal outcomes of the loss of a loved one.

The Process: In addition to the retirement analysis, the short-term cash flow that we've mentioned enables us to examine the resources needed in the untimely event of one spouse passing. While this is probably the most difficult issue to discuss and plan for, a properly completed survivorship analysis and implementation of recommendations from the analysis can provide a surviving spouse or other family members with much needed peace of mind during such a tragedy.

Like the retirement analysis, we analyze the surviving spouse's expected income from salaries, pensions, Social Security, and all other sources and balance those against your cash flow needs. We compare those needs to your balance sheet to determine what assets are available to help fill the gap, if any exists. If it appears as though an additional shortfall exists, we might recommend supplementing your balance sheet with life insurance or other assets. We work with you and outside product providers as a team to determine which products best suit your needs. Because we sell no insurance products, we can work with any insurance company to find the best product for you.

Why It's Important: Survivorship planning can be very complicated and it's a difficult topic for couples and families to discuss. Often, it's never even discussed, much less, planned for. When we work with you, we can provide objective advice based on sound analysis and without any strings attached. In some cases, we may recommend the purchase of additional insurance, but we do not sell any insurance products. We can work with you to shop for the insurance that will best meet your needs in both the long and short-terms.

The Objective: Retirement, or as we like to call it, "change of lifestyle" is different for every person. We work with you to understand if you'd like to change your lifestyle and what you'd like to do with your time and money when you're ready to make that change. This is the time in your life when you're supposed to be able to reward yourself and to achieve those goals and dreams that you've always promised yourself and your family. There may be some "hidden aspirations" that you'd like to explore - we work as a team to identify all of those hopes and goals - seeking out the things that you'd like to accomplish.

The Process: From the short-term cash flow analysis, a long-term retirement or "change of lifestyle" strategy can be developed. This analysis establishes plans to meet whatever goals you've set; whether it's a home on the lake, travel, hobbies, education or just plain relaxation.

Retirement planning is complicated. The rules are constantly changing and the environment is shifting, too. Those changes can have a significant impact on the plans you've made. We monitor those changes as they occur to provide you with the ongoing insight to adjust your plans according to your needs and to fit your objectives.

We analyze your expected retirement income from pensions, Social Security, and all other sources and balance those against your retirement cash flow needs to determine additional funds you may need.

The retirement analysis is the tool that allows us to take the emotion out of this change in lifestyle and advise you according to sound analysis based on reasonable assumptions. Should you wish to review your ability to retire at 55, 60 or 65 (or at whatever age you choose), we can run the analysis to show the lifestyle you could expect to achieve if you choose to retire at any age.

Why It's Important: Often, we will work with you long before you're ready for retirement so that we can advise you up-front on company retirement plans, health insurance, and other decisions you make throughout your career that may have an effect on how your retirement nest egg will grow. If you're already retired, ongoing planning and a close watch on the rules and regulations governing retirement plans can prevent surprises, provide for flexibility and aid in tax planning.

Whether or not you're in retirement, this analysis helps to lay the groundwork for the dreams you've already hatched.

The Objective: You've worked extremely hard to build up your assets, many of which help to enhance your quality of life. A thorough review of your existing property and casualty insurances may reveal areas for which you're not fully covered. Without adequate coverage for your existing assets, your overall financial plan - including the work you've done toward achieving your goals and objectives - might be at risk.

The Process: We will work with your agent to review your existing insurance coverage, matching those up with your assets (homes, cars, boat, antiques and collectibles, etc.) to look for any gaps in coverage. Often, people will insure their homes, possibly forgetting about specialty items or valuables that may require an additional rider. If you don't already have one, we'll likely recommend an additional personal "umbrella" liability policy for some extra coverage. This additional liability insurance provides a great deal of extra protection, often at a very low cost.

In addition to property and casualty, life insurance and long-term care insurance frequently become considerations and options for many clients. Depending on your long-term goals and objectives, different types of policies may be more appropriate than others. We team up with experts in these fields to determine the policies and provisions that complement your overall plan.

An important thing to remember about this service is that we will not try to sell you any policies and products. We are not insurance agents, nor are we affiliated with any insurance dealers. Our clients work with a number of insurance agents and companies and we work with your existing coverages and agents as well as shop other insurance companies to find the best match for your needs. Very frequently, we find that our long-standing relationships with many insurance agencies and representatives enables us to "team up" to find the policies that best fit with our clients' overall objectives.

Why It's Important: Your assets could be put at risk by a natural disaster, an accident, or some other situation for which you may or may not be at fault. We want to be certain that were some tragedy to strike; your assets would be protected. It's our job to be sure you are protected in the short and long terms, so that your goals and objectives aren't derailed by an unexpected accident, weather related event, or other situation.