Comprehensive Financial Planning

So, what is “truly comprehensive” financial planning?

It’s not just making sure that you’re retirement-ready. It’s more than actively managing your investments. And it goes beyond simply massaging your portfolio – or making investments on your behalf.  

With Signet, comprehensive financial planning is a thoughtful and interactive process that helps ensure that you’re making the most of your resources, mindful of life events, and working to guard against future uncertainty.   

A big part of it includes looking at the milestones  you desire – everything from family planning to paying for college to running a business, prepping for retirement, and preparing your estate.

It also includes anything that could derail that. We know you get the picture!

So, what’s different about Signet? Read on:

COMPREHENSIVE FINANCIAL PLANNING BY SIGNET:

Simply put, financial planning is simply the process of determining a client’s financial needs and goals for the future, looking at the current financial situation and analyzing the means a client has to pursue their needs and goals.

This is an interactive process between Signet Strategic Wealth and our client. Although most plans are written within a month, they are used over the course of a lifetime and act as a guide to help our clients seek to achieve both their short and long-term goals.

Within our Comprehensive Financial Planning services, we offer the following areas of specialty:

-Impact and Philanthropic Investing

-Charitable Giving Strategies

-Strategic Tax Planning Strategies

-Stock Option and Executive Benefits Planning

-Small Business Owner Growth, Income, and Succession Planning

Our Financial Planning Process follows the Certified Financial Planning Guideline known as the 7-Step Financial Planning Process¹

1.) Understanding our client’s personal and financial circumstances

2.) Identifying, selecting and prioritizing goals

3.) Analyzing our client’s current course of action and potential alternative courses of action

4.) Developing the Financial Planning recommendations

5.) Presenting the Financial Planning recommendations

6.) Implementing the Financial Planning recommendations

-Addressing implementation responsibilities

-Identifying, analyzing and selecting actions, products and services

-Recommending, selecting and implementing actions, products and services

7.) Monitoring progress and updating

OUR INVESTMENT PHILOSOPHY:

To understand the financial planning process, it helps to first understand our philosophy.

We focus on a systemic, strategic and disciplined planning and investment approach to long-term wealth accumulation through the use of Socially Responsible Investment filters. Socially Responsible Investing is a strategy we strongly believe in; however we can work with any portfolio and will always take tax implications, gain, loss and other factors into account before recommending any investment strategies.

Financial planning is our core business. Through Financial Planning, we can identify low-cost solutions and create easy-to-understand implementation strategies. Economic cycles, downturns, and life events cannot be predicted with any certainty and therefore we believe that patience, attention and discipline are the time-honored elements of successful investing and planning. All these factors are considered and implemented in the lens of Socially Responsible Investing.

FINANCIAL PLANNING IN A POST-COVID WORLD

Most of us have seen nothing like it. We’ve all weathered job losses. Fought through hard times. And seen recessions rear their ugly heads. But we’ve rarely before witnessed the world coming to a near-standstill.

Here are some takeaways², as the lessons from COVID come into clearer view:

-Financial planning is evolving. And we’re noting that individuals and businesses are planning on having much more in cash for emergencies.

-Your entire idea of ‘essential’ and ‘discretionary’ expenses may differ. A smaller, but permanent budget cut might be more easily-managed than a large one at a different date.

-Access to good healthcare is essential. Are you up-to-date, and do you fully understand your HSA, Medicare, or other insurance options? Is everything up to date?

-If you’re a business owner, what is your long-term plan for its eventual valuation? Do you have a well-defined succession plan, and other systems for resilience?

-With many adult children home, due to layoffs or other factors, now might be the right time to begin talking with them about your bigger financial picture³. 

MORE THOUGHTS ON FINANCIAL PLANNING:

While Signet will take into account your life goals and milestones, there are so many individual factors to consider when comprising a comprehensive financial picture. It is your life, after all!

Many of these factors to have to do with health and longevity.   

-Longevity typically refers to the long duration of individual life. But what does it really mean to a CFP? Your quality of life. Money tends to be a tool that can make that happen. We hope to approach your longevity from a perspective of empathy, instead of a dollar figure, so we can create a plan that’s comprehensive and fulfilling.

-Health is pretty obvious; it’s the state of physical, mental and social well-being in which disease and infirmity are absent. As we enter more advanced stages of life, the latter might not be as ‘absent’ as we’d like. And health and wealth are often connected more than we consider.  Have you taken care of your body and mind, in an appropriate fashion? Do you have active illnesses or diseases which cause considerations? Any upcoming surgeries? These are all variables to be accounted for in your financial planning.

HOW SIGNET CAN HELP:

It is our mission to provide investment resources and strategies to clients and financial institutions helping them develop a greater knowledge and passion for sustainable, responsible and impact investments.

Let us help you find your mark with our experience.

_{The return may be lower than if the adviser made decisions based solely on investment considerations.}

_{All  investing involves risk, including loss of principal. No strategy assures success, or protects against loss. There is no guarantee that a diversified portfolio will enhance overall returns or outperform a non-diversified portfolio. Diversification does not protect against market risk.)}

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