Wealth Planning Insights

Explore: Wealth Planning Founder’s Perspectives Books

Nearly 20 years ago I developed the first iteration of Tanglewood's proprietary Retirement Illustration. This started the expansion of our comprehensive wealth planning initiative for Wealth Management clients.

The goal was to use the Illustration as a proprietary tool to quantify and visualize the alignment between a client’s invested assets and various future income streams (such as social security, pensions, etc.), with their projected future spending needs throughout their retirement years. It has served us very well.

Over the years the Illustration saw many enhancements from initial plan creation and updates to incorporating current tax laws, future tax law changes, Roth conversions, gifting and more.

I give credit to Victor Powell for advancing the spreadsheet’s capabilities and user friendliness. He took it to the next level after he joined the team in 2014.

Along with the advancements in the tool itself was the evolution of its delivery. It started with me bringing in a stack of printouts into a meeting considering various scenarios and assumptions. I now cringe at the thought of covering half the conference room table with a sea of paper reports. A major advancement was the development of an online presentation that provided the ability to make changes on the fly and immediately see the impact of those changes. Tanglewood uses tools like this to help enhance client awareness of lifetime resources and needs.

Having that level of interaction and immediate “what if” variability offered much more client confidence and ownership in the results. We want every wealth management client to see the final results as THEIR plan.

As good as it was in helping answer important questions regarding retirement timing, income and asset distribution planning, industry tools and technology were swiftly advancing as well. Over the past several years, we thoroughly evaluated several comprehensive planning programs and selected one that best supports the four pillars of Tanglewood’s wealth planning process.

Our new comprehensive program checked all the right boxes for us as it provides an exceptional balance between depth and detail without sacrificing ease of use and simplicity. Here are some of the highlights of what this advanced tool offers as part of our hands on wealth planning.

Goal Based Financial Planning:

A comprehensive goals-based approach with the capability to create comprehensive plans that incorporate retirement planning, investments, insurance, tax planning, college funding and more.

Scenario Modeling:

We can run multiple scenarios to analyze the impact of different variables in real-time. We can make adjustments to lifestyle spending, savings rates, retirement ages, investments and other factors to understand the potential change in outcomes.

We can also incorporate probability analysis that goes beyond traditional linear projections to understand the impact of variable returns over time.

Interactive Client Portal:

The software allows us to provide a secure and user-friendly client portal, enabling interactive access to a client’s financial plan as well as progress toward their goals. It is also capable of account aggregation to bring together all investment accounts, assets, and debts to build a balance sheet that automatically updates values over time.

Tax Planning and Optimization:

We find the tax planning features, including future tax projections, tax-efficient withdrawal strategies and Roth conversion analysis particularly helpful. Helping clients make wise decisions regarding their lifetime tax exposure not just year-over-year.

Cash Flow Management:

With its robust cash flow management capabilities we can track client's income, expenses and debt repayments. It automatically categorizes these transactions from linked accounts, generates reports and offers insights into spending patterns for making better budgeting decisions. Detailed cash flow transactions are for the client’s eyes only and not seen by your Wealth Advisor unless shared by the client.

With this program we can provide greatly enhanced flexibility and “what if” capabilities and with it we can provide clients the confidence, clarity and definitive path to move forward in reaching their personal financial goals. Equally important is that as each client's situation and goals change, the plan can easily change direction as well.

We are working with additional clients on this platform seemingly every day in preparation for Wealth Planning review meetings. Contact your Wealth Advisor to discuss this further or to set up a review meeting at your convenience.

Disclosures