The Advisor Premium: More Than Just Investment Management

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The Hosts:

Kevin Kroskey, CFP®, MBA – About – Contact

Tyler Emrick, CFA®, CFP® – About – Contact

Episode Transcript:

Tyler Emrick:

Looking for the right financial advisor, new research suggests that a skilled advisor can boost your wealth by over 2% annually. In today’s episode, we discuss True Wealth Design’s holistic planning approach, make sure you don’t leave that extra return on the table.

Walter Storholt:

Hey, welcome to another episode of Retire Smarter. I’m Walter Storholt alongside Tyler Emrick wealth advisor, Certified Financial Planner at True Wealth Design. Tyler’s also a chartered financial analyst as well. You can find us at truewealthdesign.com. Tyler, I may sound a little under the weather today, but feeling good and ready for a good episode. How are you, my friend?

Tyler Emrick:

Hey, I’m doing all right. I seem to be dodging the viruses that have been going around our office. [inaudible 00:00:50].

Walter Storholt:

You said circling you like sharks, right?

Tyler Emrick:

Yes, yes, yes. This weekend I thought I was in for it. Our two little ones woke up with a little bit of fevers.

Walter Storholt:

Oh no.

Tyler Emrick:

But it was short-lived and on Sunday they were back out at full bore. So yeah, but-

Walter Storholt:

Kind of funny when you see everybody around you going down and you’re like, “I know I’m next.” And then when it never comes, you’re just paranoid at that point like, “What did I do to avoid it this time? I don’t know.”

Tyler Emrick:

That’s right, that’s right. No, absolutely, and especially with two little ones, it becomes hard, especially when they’re jumping on your back and playing and wrestling around. So yeah, it becomes that much more difficult.

Walter Storholt:

Yeah, well, it’s just that time of year. We all seem to have to go through this bout at least once per winter, so hopefully it’ll be short-lived for everybody and moving on and getting done with it soon.

Tyler Emrick:

Yeah, we’ll be on the back half here soon. Let’s hope so anyway.

Walter Storholt:

Anything else exciting going on in life, other than sicknesses and avoiding those?

Tyler Emrick:

No, not at all. I mean, I think everything’s pretty status quo. We’re doing all right. The weather’s maybe starting to break here in Ohio. I mean, we were in the negative-

Walter Storholt:

Don’t speak too soon.

Tyler Emrick:

… degrees here for a while. So yes, the snow’s melting. I can see some grass and that’s always a positive.

Walter Storholt:

Nice. Well, good. Maybe the early spring will come for you, even though the groundhog saw his shadow and we’re supposed to be in for more winter, but maybe he’ll be wrong this year. We’ll see.

Tyler Emrick:

Yeah, everybody can hear me in the spring be coming up talking about how I hate picking up leaves and the blower and all the spring-cleaning that needs to get done. It’ll be here before you know it.

Walter Storholt:

That’s right.

Tyler Emrick:

So there’s always something to be a little bit pessimistic about.

Walter Storholt:

There you go. Yeah, we’re pretty optimistic folks I think generally. So we got to keep ourselves in check with a little pessimism from now and again.

Tyler Emrick:

Good deal. Yeah, no, that’s good. Well, hopefully we got some good news on the podcast today for the listeners.

Walter Storholt:

I think so. Well, we were talking before we hit the record button folks, and Tyler sort of presented the idea of today’s episode to me, as you know what, this will be a great episode for anybody who’s shopping financial advisors, whether that be just looking for a financial advisor and kind of engaging in that for the first time, or if you’re comparing advisors and wondering what’s the difference from one to another and what difference that really makes versus perhaps the DIY approach. We’ve got some stats, some data and some stories to help illustrate and hopefully make a little bit more tangible, that true difference that an advisor can make. So yeah, if that’s you, you’re shopping for an advisor, this will be a great episode to listen to and I said, “Well, that sounds like a great way to just present the show. So that’s how we tee things up today, Tyler, so I’m looking forward to where your starting point is for this and how it evolves.

Tyler Emrick:

No, absolutely, and I think we should as always start with a little bit of data, a little bit of research. As the listeners know, all the time we’re picking off crazy headlines, as I mentioned, well, you call me out for, but headlines that draw us in-

Walter Storholt:

You’re saying you don’t just shoot from the hip on these episodes, Tyler? You actually have thought that goes into them, that’s amazing.

Tyler Emrick:

I try to a little bit, a little bit. You could probably pick out somewhere I’m a little extra talkative or rambling a little bit where there’s a little less prep [inaudible 00:03:49] going in. But for the most part we try to make sure we can hone in on our key points here. And a lot of times these key points are going to come from some type of data research, some type of study to help individuals and families kind of wrap their arms around whatever the topic is for that day. The topic for today I think is really trying to understand and quantify the value of working with a financial planner. Whether you are working with someone already or if you’re shopping around and you happen to come across our podcast, I think it can be very difficult to sometimes just think about, why would I want to work with an advisor? What are some of the circumstances that would make it to where you jump into some type of relationship and where does that value come into play?

And over the years, the study I guess that we’ve really kind of leaned on a lot is the Vanguard Advisor Alpha Research. I think it goes all the way back to 2001 and has been since updated over the years, and I got to be cautious Alpha, what they’re alluding to there. Alpha is a fancy term for I think value add, you can think of it that way. In investing, we think about Alpha as your outperformance over a particular benchmark. So you can think of it in this term again as just, “Hey, what is the value that an advisor adds potentially?” And coming from a company like Vanguard, Walt, I mean that’s kind of a big deal. I mean, when you think about very fee conscious companies, I think Vanguard is probably up on my list that we run into quite a bit.

Walter Storholt:

Yeah, I would agree with that and kind of a trusted name out there in the financial world, so this is a good source to pull information from, which I appreciate. I don’t know if you were fishing for an egghead alert there, but we’ve heard Alpha too much on this show I think to egghead alerted at this point.

Tyler Emrick:

Good deal. No, that’s fair, that’s fair. But what the Vanguard study, what came out of that was essentially that an advisor can add around 3% in net returns annually, but with one kind of caveat, and they are very explicit in saying that that 3% annualized return traditionally does not come just annually, it’s rather lumpy and irregular using their terms, so lumpy and irregular. So keep that in mind as we’re talking through and we’ve got a couple stories here that we’ll share throughout the podcast, and I think it’ll really kind of hit home to that idea of like, hey, a point in time having the right advisor in place when certain things come up in your life and your situation can really add wealth over time. So that 3% annual return, it’s there, but maybe not every year and it can be a little bit lumpy or irregular in their term.

Walter Storholt:

If I’m understanding, it’s kind of like the stock market itself. If we say, over the course of this many years it’s up about this percent, but certainly year to year that’s not the case.

Tyler Emrick:

Very hard to get that. The S&P averages [inaudible 00:06:42]-

Walter Storholt:

I guess they’re not saying, if market’s up 10%, you’re going to be up 13. If the market’s down 10, you’re going to be only down seven. They’re not saying it’s correlated exactly like that.

Tyler Emrick:

Sure, yep, absolutely. And kind of what prompted the spinoff even today was another company called SmartAsset, big in our industry, their director of economic analysis came out with another study that I thought was a wonderful way to look at this idea of advisors adding value. The way she approached the topic was she kind of broke it down very similarly to Vanguard, where the way they quantify the value is in two ways, the first of which is very hard to have a specific value on, and this is the idea that financial advisors offer significant intangible value from providing peace of mind that you’re on a sustainable financial path to helping calm clients’ nerves when markets are turbulent.

So this is the softer side of financial planning and it’s really hard to put a specific dollar value on the value that an advisor would give you, giving you that I’m sure there are a number of individuals and families that I work with that would say, “Hey, the biggest reason we work with True Wealth Design is the peace of mind that we’re on track to accomplish their goals.” And I think it’s very understated, just the benefit of having set times each year to come in with you or your family or spouse or whatnot and come in and just say, “Hey, let’s dedicate some time talking about our finances.” I know it might not sound fun to everyone, maybe some nails on the chalkboard a little bit Walt for most, but really just making sure that there’s clear communication and the individual or the family understands, “Well, hey, are we moving in a direction that is congruent with where we want to be?”

And that aside, we’re not even talking about the value add from that perspective. We know that that’s out there and why a lot of individuals might work with advisors, but today we’re going to focus on some of the more tangible things and the SmartAsset study does that. So her model really focuses on investment gains and tax savings that come with working with an advisor. And the results from their work are a little shy of what Vanguard came up with. They’re in the roughly two to 2.78% annual return premium, or alpha if we’re relating it to the Vanguard study after for inflation and fees. And they also have the caveat too that there are a number of variables that really factor into this number and this percentage, what age do you start working with an advisor, your net worth, your goals, and so on and so forth. So we need to be cognizant of that.

But there was a couple comments, one in particular that was in the study that I think was pretty impactful, so Walt, we’re just going to read it line by line here, it’s not extremely long, but I’ll set everybody up. This is a comment from the work that they did, and then I’ll pick out what I like about it and then we transition to how True Wealth differentiates and how working with True Wealth Design and how we start to capture some of this alpha that these studies are working with.

But the comment goes like this, it’s, “A financial advisor strategizes both offensively to grow wealth and defensively to protect it, navigating through external factors such as market dynamics, regulatory policies and technological innovation, as well as internal factors such as psychological, emotional, and circumstantial nuances that could derail financial success for a client.Such obstacles are often unrecognizable by the layperson and could cost individuals hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetime and more.”

So what do I like about that, I took it enough to actually read it word for word and wanted to make sure that I didn’t muck it up with my shortening of it. So what I really liked about it Walt, is this idea that working with an advisor could be both offensive to help you grow your wealth and optimize… I’m thinking, when I think grow your wealth, maybe optimizing your investments, I think fall in that category and then the idea of the advisor can help you be defensive or i.e., protecting it or minimizing your taxes in that case I think is another way to put it. And as you’re thinking about working with an advisor, I think where we try to differentiate ourselves is to integrate this idea of having an offensive and defensive approach. So when you think about working with your advisor that you have now, what do those conversations look like and what do you spend time talking about?

In the traditional sense, I think most advisors maybe just talk about one particular area or idea. So you think about, hey, if you’re going in and talking to your advisor and most of the meeting is just about your investments or just about your investment performance, are they missing anything, I think should be popping into your mind, or is there decisions that need to be made with your investments that would maybe affect other things such as taxes or how you’re saving or whatever the case may be.

Likewise, I think many listeners might work with a CPA or have an accountant that files your taxes. When you go in and you meet with your CPA, is it really just you going in and handing them your prior year tax documents and coming back and they tell you how much you’re going to get back in a return? Or are you actually coming up with a strategy and projecting out the next one, two, three years and trying to come up with a game plan for how you minimize taxes over that time period? It’s a very different conversation and I think it’s something that really begs the question, if you’re out there looking for an advisor, is that a value add to you? So I like this the way they approach the offensive and defensive thinking that an advisor should be able to provide.

And then finally, on that quote, I also like this, and I want to point out the idea that they have here, that there are obstacles or factors that can affect your life that might be unrecognizable to you. I got a pretty good example where I had just met with a family here at the beginning of the year. I mean, we’re at the end of February now Walt, so we’re into 2025. This family actually, what prompted them to have the conversation and come talk to us was they wanted to get a better handle on their finances and a couple of years ago they actually inherited some land from a family member and then that land actually had grown quite a bit in value over a two-year time period and then they sold it in 2024.

And one of the questions that came up in that introductory meeting as we’re getting to know each other is like, “Hey, is there anything we can do to limit the tax hit on that land sale?” Because of course when you inherit land, you get a step-up in basis, which means that it’s like you purchased the land at the date of death, but their land actually had appreciated and value quite substantially over a two-year period and that’s called capital gains where they would actually be paying taxes on the gains on that growth. And we were into 2025, the sale happened in 2024. So Walt, you can kind of see where this is going here, there’s not a whole lot we can do after the fact, especially being into the next year. So you think about-

Walter Storholt:

A lot easier to be proactive than reactive.

Tyler Emrick:

It is. So if a conversation like that would’ve happened… They work with accountants and I think they have a CPA and if their CPA would’ve known their situation and been like, “Well, hey, did you inherit this land? All right, let’s have a conversation about how you plan to get rid of it and what you plan on doing with it.” Well then they could have done things a little differently last year to kind of help offset that. Things like, maybe they would’ve even changed their investment strategy. I mean, Walt, we did, what, three episodes on the tax aware long short investing strategy?

Walter Storholt:

Yeah. A great series, go check it out.

Tyler Emrick:

Yeah, absolutely. Which would’ve been something that really could have offset some of those capital gains. You think about how they use their retirement plans and if they could have maybe increased their pre-tax savings to lower their overall income and potentially offset some of the net investment income tax on the capital gains that they had. They had an HSA where we maybe would’ve put more in that HSA to help lower down the income. Things as simply as making an estimated tax payment throughout the year to avoid a penalty. They had this large tax bill, this one-time event where they’re going to owe quite a bit more in taxes than what they do on a traditional year. If we would’ve had some forethought in that planning, we would’ve been able to set up some estimated tax payments to help avoid a potential penalty depending on how they all fall here.

So you can kind of see on that just one situation where this particular family really, selling land, “Hey, what can we do? We know we want to sell it,” but they didn’t really maybe have insight into some of these other things that would have potentially saved them or lessened that tax burden quite substantially. But all those things, Walt, we would’ve really needed to do beforehand. We wanted to have these things in place, or the relationship in place with an advisor to help have those types of conversations and then bring up where we could potentially target and maybe strategize on how that hits when that hits their taxes.

Walter Storholt:

I think that’s great points and I just wanted to reflect on something from that paragraph that you read as well, since you seem to like it a good deal in the way that it kind of presented the information and the findings. I was thinking to myself, this is a lot of consternation over 2%, 3%, 1%, at least my layman initial gut reaction is like, “I want to hear, ‘Hey, having an advisor saves you 10% or more,'” Something really that just makes this a deal that you say, “I want to do this.” But then they put it in perspective and they said even with this more measured 2.39 to 2.78 return versus the 3 from the Vanguard study in that sentence it ended with, “Can cost individuals hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetime or more.” And I think it just kind of is a good reminder of just the difference a percent or two or even the three from the Vanguard number can truly make over the course of a career or throughout a retirement with that compounding interest and avoiding mistakes over and over again, it leads to these real dollar savings.

Tyler Emrick:

Oh, absolutely. Well, and I think to piggyback off that even a little bit, or take it one step further, I mean the connection between these smaller and more varied financial choices that might not always seem readily apparent or might seem like just a small deal, “Hey, we’re picking up pennies.” When you’re working with a good financial advisor and you talk about efficiency and being able to pick up pennies, I mean that can add up quite substantially over time.

So these decisions that might seem small, if you’re maximizing each one of them and everything’s working more efficiently together, I mean it really can have drastic impact in the long run. You think about just overall compounding of your wealth and how these returns grow and how your assets and wealth grows over time, these somewhat insignificant or what might seem like insignificant decisions truly, truly add up over the long run. So working with an advisor that’s detailed, going to present those options to you do it in a way that gives you the decision points to help you and your family make those decisions is really it’s all about so that way you fully understand some of the ramifications of good and bad ramifications of the decisions that you’re trying to make in the here and now.

Walter Storholt:

Yeah, good points. All right, zoom in a little bit then on True Wealth Design, because this has been talking about advisors kind of as a whole, what about you guys more specifically?

Tyler Emrick:

Yeah, and I would say generally most people come to us when they really get serious about managing some aspect of their financial life. They want to get serious about retirement, they want to get serious about their business and how it’s being run or the benefits that they’re using or whatnot. It’s no different than, “Hey, you’re going to go to a doctor when you start getting serious about your health.” I mean, my wife all the time is getting on me about going and getting my annual checkup. When I get serious about my health, that’s going to be part of my regimen. I mean a financial advisor is really no different and they’re here to help you with your really what we would think of as your financial health.

And when you think about True Wealth Design. I mean Kevin founded the firm back in 2005 and really going back all that way, his intention was making a substantial positive difference in our clients’ lives, our employees’ lives, and really the communities that we live in work in. So we really strive to help our clients plan smarter and live better. We really think we have some uncommon and deep expertise when we think about retirement, tax, investment and business planning and try to provide a complete integrated look into your financial life, really all in one place. So when you think about, or when I explained it to individuals and families, the areas that I kind of quantify that into or there are four kind of high level ones to kind of think through.

The first of which is really investment management and what I probably think this is what most people think of when they think of a financial planner or an advisor, probably what comes to mind first is “Hey, this team and this company is going to help me with my investment management.” The second is tax preparation and tax planning, and I think there is a differentiation there. There is a difference between tax preparation and tax planning. Tax preparation, hey, you go in, you hand your CPA your planning docs and they complete the return and tell you how much you owe. That’s very different than this idea of well tax planning and understanding, well what opportunities are afforded to you as you think about the upcoming year and the next year and the year after that. And hey, maybe we should be making decisions differently now because down the road we understand that your tax situation’s going to be changing. So I think there is a very big difference there between tax preparation and tax planning. We handle both in-house here at True Wealth Design.

And then there are two other areas. So we’ve talked about investment management, we’ve talked about tax preparation and tax planning, and then the other two high level areas would be general financial planning, which I kind of equate that to, “Hey, any decision that you make that has a dollar sign in front of it, we’re of here to help you with that.” And then business planning. So for you business owners out there that might be listening, we understand how hard it can be to potentially separate out your personal life and the business life and how does that commingle and how does that go together and really helping you make good business decisions and looking at it through the lens of your total wealth.

So those are the four high level areas. We’ll break them down a little bit more, but investment management, tax preparation and tax planning, financial planning and business planning. So let’s start with investment planning, Walt, if that sounds reasonable. At True Wealth we invest with patience, discipline and take a systematic long-term approach to building wealth. So that’s at the core of what we’re trying to accomplish. Now if you go back to some of these studies that we’ve referenced earlier, Vanguard for example, they got a wonderful chart in their study, if you look it up, where it kind of breaks down, well, how much does investment management add that 3% that they had alluded to and what are the categories that we want to be focused on?

So the categories that they break it down into I think are great. I mean, the first is they got cost-effective implementation of your portfolio, so these are paying attention to the costs that it takes to run your portfolio. They mentioned rebalancing. This is the idea that, hey, if you have a downturn in the market and your stocks go down and you started with half your money in stocks and now you only got 30%, well you should rebalance that and buy back in and get your allocation back up to 50% in stocks so that way when the market does come back, you’re able to participate at the same level as what you were before. They bring up the idea of behavioral coaching. That goes back to those not letting emotion drive those investing decisions, which I think is extremely important.

The final two are the ones I’m probably going to focus on the most. The first of which is withdrawal order for client spending. This is really big with our retirees. You retire and now it’s like, well, how are we going to use your assets, how are we going to use your wealth to live on a year in and year out basis and which account should we be using, and for what? I think sometimes that can be a very tall task to think through, but for proper planning we can really pick up some efficiencies there. In the study, Vanguard mentions that can add upwards of 1% value per year, just being diligent and being thoughtful on how and what investments you pull from when you need cash and spending. So that’s a big deal for our retirees.

And then the final one I’ll mention is tax allowances and asset location. Walt, we’ve had to have talked about asset location multiple times here on the podcast before, right?

Walter Storholt:

Yeah, yep.

Tyler Emrick:

Yep. So it’s another big one, but a lot of times I think it can be somewhat lost in the shuffle. And what do we mean by asset location? Because in the Vanguard study that can add not quite, but upwards of 1% return per year as we think about that value add from an advisor. And when I think about asset location, simply put what we’re doing Walt, is we are looking at all of your household’s accounts, every account that you have, and trying to be very deliberate and diligent about what investments we hold in each. So if you’re listening and you’re thinking about, “Hey, I’ve got a 401K, I’ve got a savings account, a checking account. Hey, I’ve got this Roth account as well.” A very easy thing for you to do is to look at maybe your Roth account and look into it and say, “Well, hey, do I have bond investments in my Roth account? Well, does that make sense for me to potentially do that?”

Roth accounts grow tax-free, we want our higher expected return investments inside of your Roth, so should we maybe have your more aggressive things in there like your stocks, so that way… And then hold your bond investments or your slower interest-pairing investments in your 401K. That’s like a simple example of you looking at your accounts and saying, “Hey, are we using the best investments that we can in that particular account?”

Another big one would be if you go and hand your CPA your tax documents and you have a big bill and you’re like, “Wait, what’s changed?” And you start getting the big interest payments and your taxable brokerage account or dividends and so on and so forth, and that increases your tax bill, which it certainly can each year. That, and avoiding that and limiting that I think is what we mean when we’re talking about this idea of asset location. And a lot of advisors really aren’t set up to be able to effectively and clearly manage that across all your accounts and in True Wealth Design, I think that’s something that we really pride ourselves on and something that we really take serious when we’re thinking about the right type of investment for you and your household.

Walter Storholt:

Great breakdown of all of this, Tyler, and I think it’s really helpful to see just how many layers this goes deeper than just the investment management side of things, more than just stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, just all the other levers that you’re able to pull and manipulate to help save clients money and help them earn more on their investments and the intangible of all of this was avoiding the big mistakes as well. Because I feel like that’s something that we can’t measure in that 2 to 3% reliably is if you make that one big mistake, that’s going to blow that 3% savings and that difference maker, I think, out of the water.

Tyler Emrick:

Sure. Well, and having a team in place for when these decisions come up that truly are going to affect your wealth in the long term, do you have a team that you can go to to ask that and have a very in-depth and clear communication and have that team relay to you what are your decision points? How does this decision impact your wealth? How does it impact what you’re trying to accomplish and your goals? And for an advisor to be able to effectively and clearly do that, they’re going to have to have some knowledge of you and what you’re trying to accomplish and where you’re at in life. And when you have an advisor and you’ve put in the work to gain that relationship and you’ve had those times to have those conversations, inevitably when these decisions come up, it’s a much smoother conversation and you feel like you can certainly have the tools in place to be able to make whatever decision that’s going to be best for you and your family.

The other high level areas, real quick here too, just like we did investment management, so we talked a little bit about investment management and what you need to be looking for there in an advisor and what they’re doing. I think this idea of tax prep and planning is another one. I’ve alluded to it a little bit in our conversations earlier, but really just this idea of being thoughtful and planning around your taxes and not necessarily having it be so transactional. A lot of times advisors will say, “Sure, we can do some tax planning for you. We’ll talk with your CPA.” If they are diligent and they can deliver on that, then that’s great, but oftentimes I find that it kind of falls short and that communication, how effectively are your CPA and your financial are strategizing around your tax situation and the opportunities that you have in the next handful of years and not losing sight of where you’re going and what you’re trying to accomplish and what that plan looks like and using that information to make better decisions in the here and now.

I mean, a lot of times we even run into it with the CPAs that we have here on the team. It’s like, hey, they are trying to maximize your refund with the information that they have. They can certainly be limited by doing that, especially in the case when we talked about the family that I just spoke to where they had the land sale. There’s not a lot that the CPA can do after the fact, a lot of it needs to be done beforehand. So having a team that is truly integrated where, hey, we are running the tax projection for the families each year in our planning process and trying to get a gauge for what the tax situation looks like. So that way we can say, “Hey, what do we need to do? Maybe we should be switching how you’re using your retirement plans. Maybe we should be looking at Roth conversions or whatever the case may be.” And that way we are prepared and we’re handling it within that year.

And then two, we’re also having those long-term goal conversations to understand, hey, retirement might be coming up here in the next year, tax brackets might be going down. Maybe we want to prioritize pre-tax savings or whatever the case may be. So understanding that your goals and where your family or your household is headed, those are invaluable information for us as planners to help you make better decisions when it comes to that tax time.

We’ve talked about it many times on the podcast, but for retirees, you’re going to be worried about IRMAA limits and if you’re pre-65, maybe you’re trying to maximize healthcare subsidies to lower your healthcare costs. You think about families and helping maybe your parents with their finances and understanding, they might be going into a nursing home, which accounts are we going to pull from and how and what? You think about, the small business owners that are listening. I mean, boy, how much wages should I take? Which healthcare plan should we use? I mean, these are all wonderful questions, and if you’re going to maybe just one individual that just knows your tax situation or one individual that just knows your investment situation, you might not be making as impactful and effective decisions as you could if you’re working with someone that kind of knows that entire picture and talks through that. So I think taxes and really tax planning is a big piece of the pie as you think about financial planning and how it fits in.

Which moves us to, I guess the general catchall here, which I did lump in just general financial planning. I’ll rattle off a few things here that I think are encompassed in here. Obviously this is going to be very different for each individual and client that we work with, but things like your healthcare, what healthcare plans are you using while you’re working, while you’re retired? Is your state documents updated? Are they in the right place and are they the way that you want them to be? Really, I kind of lump any decision that you’re making, again, when I introduced this as the title, I think I said, “Hey, any decision that has a dollar sign in front of it, we want to be able to help you with that.” I think that’s a good way to kind of frame it. And if I could expand on that a bit, I would say it’s even helping you really find the best use case for your money that is going to either help you build wealth or give you peace of mind and accomplish the other goals that you want to.

I was sitting down with a client just last week and we were talking about a potential home purchase down in Florida, and we were talking about lending solutions and he’s like, “I didn’t know you guys could look at lending solutions for me.” So ideas like that, it’s like, “Well, who’s more perfect to be able to help you with that decision?” We can help you understand how much of a house could you afford, what are some of the pros and cons that you need to look at when making that decision, whether you want to buy that house or not. And then two, hey, if we’ve gotten you to a point to where you feel like you can afford it and you want to move through, well then why can’t we be there to help you implement that, help you get the financing in place, help you decide how much should you put down on the house? What investment should you be using to do that?

So as you think about your financial planner, they should really be someone that you go to for really any financial decision that you have in front of you because again, they’re going to know your entire financial situation and really help you outline those decision points and clearly and effectively help you make that decision. So financial planning, it’s a big catch all, it means a lot for a lot of individuals. But again, I’ll go back to that comment of, “Hey, what is the best use case for your money and building wealth?” Or even from the emotional side, what are your goals that you’re trying to accomplish and how do we effectively get you there?

So financial planning obviously is a big piece of what we do. And then finally, business planning. I mean, I think small business owners have a lot of things in front of them, a lot of decisions to be made, not only just the general housekeeping stuff, which we just kind of lump in as business tax services, this is your accounting, your bookkeeping, your payroll, but also how are you effectively making decisions and using your business as a wealth management tool. These are, “Hey, what retirement plans are you using? What healthcare plans are you using? How much wages are you taking each year?” Decisions like that. And certainly your financial advisor is in a wonderful place and True Wealth Design would be in a wonderful place to help you build out that plan to make sure that you’re being efficient and maximizing those decisions you have in front of you from a business standpoint.

Walter Storholt:

Yeah, that all sounds great and I think really helpful to illustrate it out piece by piece like this, Tyler. So I know that I got a couple of kind of quick announcements here. One, the True Wealth Design website has a refresh, by the way, folks-

Tyler Emrick:

It does.

Walter Storholt:

So go check it out. And we are retiring the, Are We Right for You Button? So it’s now a, Let’s Talk button on the website. So I’ll have to undo like five, six, seven years of saying, “Are we Right for You Button,” on the website? But yeah, it’s a Let’s Talk button now.

Tyler Emrick:

Yeah, and the bright green color on the website really makes it stick out. So if you pop over and go to truewealthdesign.com, you’ll see it right there in the top right, for sure.

And what that does is when you hit on that, that gives you an opportunity to schedule a 20-minute intro phone call with us where we’re really just trying to understand, are we a good fit? Are we going to be able to meet the needs that you’re looking for? And if that we’re able to effectively and clearly answer those questions for you, then we can potentially work on setting up a more in-depth what we call discovery meeting where we’re really maybe taking a look at your financial documents at that time. We’re strategizing and game planning on where are the areas of opportunity, what do you feel like you need from an advisor? Where might we fit in? And how can we help you accomplish those goals? And at the end, those discovery meetings, I tend to talk quite a bit, so maybe they’re an hour, hour and a half, they can go over a little bit. But the main goal there is to get you comfortable with how True Wealth’s planning process works and if we’re a good fit and what a clear path forward would be.

Walter Storholt:

I don’t think anybody will ever complain about your thoroughness Tyler. So no worries on that front, my friend. And also astute listeners will notice it’s no longer the, are we right for you 15-minute call, but now it’s the 20-minute discovery conversation and meeting and seeing if you’re that good fit with one another.

But it’s the Let’s Talk button now, so go to truewealthdesign.com, click let’s talk. If you’re shopping for a financial advisor and you want to interview Tyler and the team at True Wealth Design and see if you are still a good fit to work with one another, please do that and you can have that 20-minute discovery call with an experienced advisor on the team. That’s truewealthdesign.com, we’ve got a link for it in the description of today’s show. And of course, you can still do it the old-fashioned way by calling 855-TWD-PLAN, 855-TWD-PLAN if you want to get in touch via the old phone method. Well, Tyler, thank you so much for the help on today’s episode. Great breakdown of these studies from Vanguard and SmartAsset and really appreciate all your insight.

Tyler Emrick:

Oh, no, it was a pleasure. It was fun. We’ll catch you on the next one.

Walter Storholt:

Good luck avoiding the circling sicknesses, and hopefully you’re healthy and ready to roll on our next episode. For Tyler, I’m Walter, we’ll see you next time right back here on Retire Smart.

Speaker 3:

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