Investment management

INVESTMENT ADVISORY GUIDANCE TO HELP WITH YOUR UNIQUE GOALS

The truth is, most Americans don’t take the time to think about their financial future. They think having a savings account is enough protection. But not having a comprehensive financial plan puts you and your loved ones at risk later in life.

Investing is key to making sure that you are letting your hard-earned money work for you. Whether you invest in bonds, stocks, real estate, or other investments, our goal will be to grow your wealth so you can achieve financial freedom. When you work with Thinking Big, you’ll receive expert investment guidance tailored to your unique goals and milestones.

WHY DO YOU NEED AN INVESTMENT ADVISOR?

Investment management is a fancy term for managing all your assets—anything from your stocks and bonds, to your real estate and artwork. These are things you’ve worked hard to secure. Your assets are a reflection of what you value, and they need protection.

It’s no surprise then that the most common pitfall for new investors is giving into emotional decisions. It’s hard not to: a crisis happens and the market tanks. We panic and pull our money out of our investments. We don’t want to lose the things we’ve worked so hard to gain.

After years of working on Wall Street, I know firsthand that’s the exact opposite of what you should do. When you work with Thinking Big, you’ll have someone to stand between panic and knee-jerk reactions. I’ll support you in playing the long game with your investments, because I want to help you build your wealth, plain and simple.

But investing is bigger than the stock market. Good investment management finds a strategy that fits your vision. After getting to know you, I’ll help you choose the right options for investing your money. That way, you can feel secure—even when the world doesn’t.

Our approach to investing

Thinking Big’s approach to investing is all about controlling the controllables: keeping costs low, managing risky behavior, avoiding things we don’t understand, and keeping an eye on your taxes.

Each investment plan is created with you in 3 steps:

  1. We’ll assess your plans for your money after we do some financial planning.

  2. We’ll tailor an investment management strategy, or asset allocation, that fits your objectives and aligns with your comfort level in terms of risk.

  3. We’ll actively watch and manage your money to make sure it follows the guidelines we set out.
 

We believe that reaching your goals has little correlation with “beating the market.” Instead, Thinking Big helps you invest sensibly, so you’re not at risk of throwing your money away.

SOME COMMON QUESTIONS ABOUT INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT

First, we talk about why you want to invest: Retirement? A child? A dream home? Something else completely? Once we’ve established your goal, we’ll figure out an investment strategy that will make it happen. We’ll have a conversation about your risk tolerance (and your capacity to take risk). This will establish your comfort level so you can sleep soundly at night. Then, we will develop an “investment policy statement” for you. This statement will be my roadmap for how I will invest your money. The bottom line is that your goals and comfort level are what drive the investing process.

We assess your ability (or capacity) to take risk and your willingness to take risk. Once we find what makes the most sense for you, we will establish guidelines for your investments and stick to those guidelines as we manage them.

No! I’m afraid you’ve found the wrong place if that's what you're looking for. It is our firm belief that you don’t need to pick the right stocks to achieve your dream goals. Instead, an investment management discipline focused on protecting your downside and controlling the things in our control — expenses and taxes — are the keys to long-term success. The market will take care of the rest.

As a general philosophy, our investment management style is concentrated on using a mix stocks and bonds in your portfolio. This may take the form of a basket of individual stocks or bonds or through exchange traded funds (ETFs). We generally shy away from using actively managed products (i.e mutual funds) given the likelihood that you will underperform the market and pay a lot of cost.

Yes! As your investment advisor, I will look over all of your investments held at other firms if you would like. They can be an old mutual fund, a small business, or alternative investments.

The fee for managing investment is included as part of the financial planning fee, which is a formula based on income and net worth. At the outset of the relationship, the fee is calculated and remains flat and resets every two years.

A financial advisor who manages your money provides multi-faceted value. One of the biggest value-adds is that a financial advisor will tailor an investment approach appropriately to your situation. I will ensure that you are controlling for risk (not being too risky with your money), that you are optimizing where you invest your money (tax advantage or taxable accounts), and, finally, controlling the controllables (expenses and taxes). Most importantly, I help you ride out the (sometimes very emotional!) wave when markets go wild and your portfolio looks like a rollercoaster ride.