Our engagements are shaped to each client. Some households need only a watchful eye on long-established accounts; others ask us to help order affairs that have grown complicated over the years. The service lines below describe the work we are most often asked to undertake.
Portfolio oversight
Our most fundamental service is continued attention to a client's investment accounts. We review structure, balance, cost and risk against the client's stated objectives; we raise questions when holdings have drifted, when exposure has grown one-sided, or when complexity is serving no purpose. Oversight of this kind is quiet work, but it is what keeps a portfolio faithful to the plan it was built for.
Retirement and income planning
Reaching retirement, and living through it, raise questions of a different order: how much income the savings can reliably support, from which accounts it should be drawn and in what order, and how the plan endures if markets or health turn against it. We work through these questions deliberately, in writing, so that our clients can weigh them with their eyes open.
Education funding
Families saving for school and university face many vehicles and many opinions. We help clients choose among them, contribute to them sensibly, and keep education savings in proper proportion to retirement and other household aims — so that generosity to the young does not quietly impoverish the old.
Family and estate coordination
Wills, trusts, beneficiary designations and account titles are legal instruments, but they carry financial consequences. We work alongside the client's attorney and accountant to ensure these documents and designations agree with the family's intentions, and we prompt review when births, deaths, marriages or relocations change the picture.
Business owner planning
Proprietors hold most of their wealth in the business they run, and that concentration deserves its own attention. We help owners balance personal and enterprise assets, prepare for lean years, and plan for the eventual sale, succession or winding down of the business long before the moment arrives.
How an engagement proceeds
We begin with a conversation, follow it with a confidential review of the relevant accounts and documents, and then set out our observations and recommendations in writing. There is no obligation to proceed, and we do not ask for one. Clients engage us when they are satisfied; they remain with us because the work continues to serve them.
