Focused Wealth Stratgies offers four types of services to its clients: Focused Financial Planning, Investment Advisory Services, Financial Life Planning, and Modular Financial Planning services. 

All our services are offered on a fee-only basis.  We accept no sales commissions or referral fees.

Focused Financial Planning:

We offer Focused Financial Planning to clients who don't believe they need comprehensive financial planning or asset management, but who need help with their investments and retirement planning.  

This service option often appeals to "do-it-your-selfers" who have the time and don't mind spending their time doing their own finances and investments.  Investment planning involves portfolio design but does not include ongoing monitoring of the client's portfolio, making trades, or performance reporting.  The client makes all trades and monitors their own investments.

Retirement planning includes goal setting and preparing a spending plan and a tax projection to determine how much you can afford to  save going forward.  We do multiple "what if" scenarios to determine when you should apply for your social security benefits, how early you can afford to retire, how much you need to save, the impact of working part-time after retirement or switching earlier to a career you enjoy, and which retirement goals you can afford.  We then "stress test" your plan using actual historical returns and inflation from different periods in history.  This helps determine the likelihood of you outliving your money if there is a bear market early in retirement or a period of high inflation.

In subsequent years, we often meet with clients once a year to review their portfolio and recommend changes and show them what rebalancing trades to make. This ongoing coaching helps clients stick with a disciplined investment strategy even through down markets and helps protect their wealth. 

You receive a fixed fee quote for these service based on the complexity of the project and whether you need help with any other financial planning areas.  

Investment Advisory Services:

Investment advisory services are available to those who desire ongoing help in managing their investment portfolio and who want access to institutional and load waived mutual funds. 

We focus on designing lower volatility portfolios to help protect your principal.

We often design "core and explore" portfolios.  The goal of the core portfolio is to reduce portfolio volatility and to earn returns at least equal to the market.  We use a combination of active mutual funds with relatively low expenses and index and exchange traded funds.      

The goal of the explore portfolio is to earn returns in excess of the market, while controlling the higher volatility that comes with higher returns through the use of hedges such as bear funds and long/short funds, when appropriate.  

The client makes the final decision as to what portfolio strategy we use, how it is implemented, and what funds we use.

Fees are billed based on the amount of assets under management.


 Financial Life Planning Services:

What do we mean by financial life planning?   

It is a type of fee-only comprehensive financial planning that involves a very customized, holistic approach to help people use their money to accomplish their life goals.  Performance is measured by the client's success in meeting their life goals.

Financial life planning works best for clients who either don't have the time to manage their finances and investments or who prefer to spend their time doing things they enjoy more.  It also benefits clients who are afraid they won't maintain a disciplined savings and investment strategy without ongoing coaching and support.
  
We set up quarterly meetings and focus on a separate area of financial planning in each one.   We spend the time to educate and empower you to make better financial choices going forward and customize your plan to meet your specific needs and goals.

This breaks both your education and the implementation of your financial plan into manageable pieces.  We then take a very active role, like that of a fitness trainer, in helping make sure that all the key pieces of your plan get implemented.

Comprehensive financial planning covers areas such as goal setting, cash flow forecasting, the development of a spending plan (when needed), risk management, education planning, tax planning, legacy planning, retirement planning, and investment management.  

Fees are negotiated upfront and depend on the complexity of your finances and on whether you want ongoing money management.

Modular Financial Planning Services:

We give you a fixed fee bid for help with specific financial planning issues or questions.  It is calculated based on the anticipated hours to complete the project .  

If you would like to learn more about our Guiding Beliefs and Values, please click here.