How We’re Different

  • A solid relationship is the bedrock on which a good advisory partnership is built. We do not sell products. We are only interested in acting in a fiduciary capacity for you and your loved ones. You’ll never feel pressured to work with us or buy the “next great thing.” Your comfort and trust is the only thing that matters to us.

  • We will always take the extra time to help educate you. We’re not going to bore you to death with technical jargon; nobody wants to hear that. We do, however, want to make sure you understand why we’re making certain decisions together.

    Personal finance isn’t taught effectively in school, and we’re here to be that resource.

  • We believe that the average costs in the financial services industry are not transparent, confusing, and above all, too high. We’ve seen “Robo-advisors” enter the market to offer a low cost option, and they’ve done a great job! In our opinion, where they fall short is the personalization because everyone’s financial situation is different.

    We’ve done our best to reduce costs as much as possible while still providing the individualized, advanced planning everyone deserves.

A Fanatical Focus on Cost

Advisory Costs -

On average, we are able to offer comprehensive financial planning and investment management for less than our peers based on the study cited below.

How are we able to do this? A fanatical focus on cost and efficiency. We have partnered ourselves with some of the best financial technology partners in the industry to ensure our processes are streamlined and efficient.

Further, we spend a lot of time upfront understanding each individual client to make certain we’re a good fit for each other.

Advisory Cost by Assets Under Management

*Financial comparison data as of 2021 from a study done by AdvisoryHQ using the prior three year's data. Subset of data shown above. Averages could have changed.

Investment Costs -

This is a source of cost in a portfolio that is not talked about nearly enough. If a portfolio is invested in mutual funds and ETFs, an investor is also paying an annual fee to the fund managers through what is called an “Expense Ratio". This is not something that you can see on your statement; it is purely built into the overall value of the fund.

Expense ratios can have a huge impact on a portfolio’s value over time. **The average mutual fund has an expense ratio of 1.25%, and ***the average ETF has an expense ratio of 0.49%. We focus on building portfolios with low cost ETF’s, and the goal for our portfolios is to have an average expense ratio between 0.10% and 0.20%.

It doesn’t seem like a big difference, but over 30 years, the differences in these costs can add up to an enormous value. The graph below illustrates the difference in a portfolio value over time - one portfolio has an average expense ratio of 0.25%, and the other has an average of 1.25%

In this scenario, the lower cost portfolio ends the 30 years with over $140,000 more than the more expensive portfolio!

Difference in Hypothetical Investment Growth

This assumes 6% investment growth per year every year for 30 years less the expense ratio to illustrate the impact of compounding. This is for illustrative purposes only and does not guarantee any kind of return. Past performance does not predict future results.

Performance -

You may ask yourself, “the more expensive funds must perform better than the less expensive funds, right?”. The answer to that is - not as often as you might think, and in our opinion, the risk of underperformance does not justify the cost.

****As of December 31, 2021, 83% of active mutual fund managers focusing on large, US companies underperformed their benchmark.

That being said, we do not pick stocks and concentrated positions to try and beat the market - because the likelihood of that happening is very, very small. So, we broadly diversify your portfolio, and we ensure the amount of risk you’re taking is appropriate for you.