Your Future to Create

Taking on an advisor team is a valuable step.  Our clients have a common characteristic - people are relying on them to invest wisely, to plan appropriately, to leave a legacy, to be financially independent, to cover their bases and to reap the rewards for their life’s work.  Prosperity’s approach is innovative and reasoned to help you meet your responsibilities with full reliance on a team working together.

Prosperity Theory of Relativity

With your responsibilities, you must ask yourself, “Am I risking what I have (which is enough) in pursuit of making more?”  The financial industry is seemingly all about MORE (typically more returns).  At Prosperity, we start with an important philosophical position:  Enough is greater than More (E > M).  We do not believe that responsible individuals would knowingly risk their critical capital to make more if it means they run the risk of losing it.  For this theory to be practical, you need to measure how much is enough and what are appropriate strategies to help you reach that goal.

We use a custom tool, the Prosperity Ratio™, to give us a valuable insight to your capital sufficiency and that helps us to determine the kind of investing that is most appropriate to reach sustainable needs.  Investing is as much about investors as investments. Your experiences, risk tolerance and knowledge will help us to choose from the many proven strategies for investing and planning.

Your Financial Goals, Clearly Expressed

“The MAIN THING, is to keep the MAIN THING, the MAIN THING”

We create a summary of financial objectives and timeframes, giving each a priority ranking and get your input on the things you are willing to compromise on or commit to do to accomplish your goals.  We take into consideration the multiple effects of life’s events, such as: retirement, college funding, health changes, death of a spouse, etc.

Your Prosperity Ratio™ / Retirement Feasibility

We use both the Prosperity Ratio and our financial planning software to assess your retirement readiness.  We stress-test our assumptions to provide a well-reasoned planning strategy. Your analyst will enter the data you provide and information you share in your assessment interview.  Our team has years of experience and we can create an accurate financial picture from the statements and tax returns you provide along with your interview.

The Purpose for Your Investing Strategies

Some firms refer to this step as the Investment Policy Statement.  Here, we assess your objectives and return hurdle and align those with your investor characteristics to choose from the proven strategies available.  We index each portfolio against three standard Purposes: 

• Grow (to provide a base of capital for future income)
• Harvest (to provide a current income stream that is sustainable and appropriate for your target income)
• Preserve (to invest for relative stability with a secondary objective of current total returns)

We compare the performance of your portfolio with its index on a monthly report that looks at the trailing twelve months.

The Design of Your Portfolio

With your purpose and investor profile in place, your advisor and analyst will choose strategies from the many options to create a portfolio that is appropriate for your long term objectives.  Even in the design phase, careful consideration is given to the prevailing market conditions and the perceived impact of risk and reward of each asset placed in your allocation.  We back-test each portfolio with a professional version of Morningstar Advisor Workstation.  With the professional capacity of our firm, there is never a reason to pick anything but the best investments… but it is a given that not every investment comes free of disappointments.

Adapting Your Portfolio to Markets

Our Investment Team meets with other quality advisors weekly in our portfolio team meetings.  Other advisors from peer firms participate in thoughtful analysis of relative market valuations, economic measurements and headline risk.  We also are in frequent communication with investment industry experts and economists regarding the economic and investment outlook.  This and daily monitoring of the holdings within our portfolio keeps us on top of your portfolio.  We adapt your portfolio to our current outlook that remains true to your strategy while making changes to Protect or Advance the positions based on our read of the current investment climate.

We publish frequent reports with updates of the current research on market valuations, economic assessments and advisor sentiment that is available at no obligation.

Monitoring Your Portfolio

While we monitor each of the core holdings in our portfolios throughout every day, we also have a discipline in which each individual portfolio is monitored on a schedule. During this process, the portfolio is:

• Compared to its benchmark
• Each holding is evaluated to assure correct fit into the client’s stated goals and values

We believe the top-down analysis of daily monitoring and the bottoms-up monitoring of each portfolio on an individual basis gives us a more complete monitoring outcome.  To be thorough, each monitor compares against a checklist; 180° monitors are performance-focused and assure alignment of the portfolio to the client’s purpose and Investment Team standards, 270° have specific themes and tests to consider the varied determinants of your portfolio’s success and a 360° monitor is a thorough and in-depth assessment of your portfolio against the standards of our best practices.

Succeed

Ultimately, helping our clients achieve success is our PRIMARY GOAL. We love helping host retirement parties, helping clients plan charitable giving strategies and planning to build dream homes. But we all know to reach the finish line, you must start the race. People rely on you to have your ducks in a row - let our team and our approach help you reap the rewards of your hard work.  

The ONLY definition of success that truly matters… is yours.

Momentum Model for Delivering Financial Solutions

Of the two most common models for providing financial advice, both are momentum killers.  In the classic prescribed model, the Financial Plan Document is a time intensive process that yields great insight and can be very helpful in guiding practical financial solutions.  The cost of this process is one of time and expense that is tough to endure when you consider the results start to grow obsolete within months of completion.  In the most often used process, advisers provide Investment or Insurance services and more traditional analysis is incidental and seemingly random.

The challenge that Prosperity 360° rises to meet is to deliver a thorough evaluation with practical solutions that are non-intrusive to our busy clients, prioritized to their needs, kept fresh and build momentum with time in the client relationship.

We start with a fact assessment and an action plan to address the client’s priorities.  The results of that assessment will direct the action items for you and your team members to address.  The outcome of that overview will be a summary of our observations, your objectives and resulting recommendations.  That information will feed the critical decisions for your investment process and create the base for your financial strategies.

Next, you will prioritize the areas of concern you would like us to address in the future.

Active communication between the client and advisor team on changes in the client’s circumstance, portfolio performance and market conditions will drive investing decisions.  This communication with the client on a 180° review will often occur in a phone or on-line meeting with your adviser or analyst.   We will schedule 270° reviews with you according to the priorities you have established.

These are the specific areas of focus you can choose to include:

Retirement Stress Test

Evaluate your retirement foundation with a Retirement Stress Test.  Simulate thousands of life-event possibilities to know if your plan can withstand worst-case scenarios.

Insurance Inventory

Insurance can be a useful tool in protecting your finances from the unwanted. Insurance costs can be managed to gain smart leverage where it is needed most.

Asset Protection

Having the correct ownership on each account is smart financial planning.   Titling accounts, as well as effective asset protection planning and estate planning, are ways we help ensure your assets stay yours.

Beneficiary Audits

As your life changes, beneficiaries on your accounts may need to change too. We conduct beneficiary audits for our clients to make sure all of their accounts align with their current wishes.

Social Security and Medicare options

A retiree’s transition to Medicare is as confusing as it is urgent. Your options are many and there can be a lack of objective advice. We’ll help you look at your choices and recommend a plan that fits into your overall plan.

Transition to Retirement

Transitioning from working to retirement takes adjustment and planning. Plan the retirement transition towards success. Our 100 day programs can point you to a season of life that is as meaningful as it is rewarding.

Estate Planning Confirmed

Ensure your estate is passed on in an efficient manner with as few delays and settlement fees as possible. We can help you and your beneficiaries avoid messy estate disputes and uncertainty.

Cash Flow Review

We will incorporate cash flow needs into your overall plan, finding ways to increase or decrease cash flow from assets as is appropriate.

Business Owner Benefit Plan Assessment

The benefit package you offer as a business owner not only can attract and keep talented employees, it can also be tailored to meet your personal long-term financial goals.

Business Owner Succession Plans

Creating a succession plan clears up uncertainty among employees, family and clients about how your business will be handled in the future. Making a clear plan ensures that the timing, the finances and the future success of the business happen on your terms.

Education Funding Options

Saving for college is one way to provide a great future for your children or grandchildren. But they aren’t the only ones to benefit. Many college saving strategies can give you current tax breaks or greater control and flexibility of how the money is used.

Equity Based Compensation

Stock awards given by an employer can be a significant source of a client’s wealth. Let us help you develop an appropriate exercise plan, evaluate the tax consequences and leverage these stock options in collaboration with your long term financial goals.

Year End Tax Planning

We can help you strategically plan gains and losses to complement each year’s tax situation, look at smart tax-deferral and tax-avoidance options, and work with your tax advisor to calculate adequate tax withholdings.

Charitable Tax Review

Federal income tax law allows a deduction for gifts to qualified charitable organizations, such as churches, colleges, hospitals, charitable foundations, etc. The amount of the deduction is dependent on several factors:  the type of charity, the type of asset, the portion of the asset given, and when the gift is given. We can help you determine how to most effectively give to charity to not only see your gifts make a difference, but let the tax laws work with you as well.

Repeat…

Once the complete cycle of 270° solutions have been complete a thorough review will be scheduled, with

• a review of the documentation
• confirmation of our updated Observations, Objectives and Recommendations

Then you set a new priority list and the cycle repeats every five to seven years, or more often as necessary