The term financial planning has been thrown around as a necessity for many investors for a long time, but as a process, it’s still very unclear to many investors. That’s easy to understand, though, when you consider that the term applies to a broad range of services from retirement planning that almost every worker needs to asset management services only required by wealthy individuals and families with diverse portfolios. If you want to get the most out of your investment help, you need to know which services are right for your current investment strategy and portfolio size. Otherwise, you might miss out on lucrative opportunities or wind up overpaying for services you don’t take advantage of. Whether you want someone to help you set up and manage a Roth IRA or a full-on wealth manager makes a huge difference to finding the right firm to handle your money.
Understanding What Your Finances Need
Generally speaking, every individual who isn’t independently wealthy needs some form of retirement planning advice. It’s moving up from there into more sophisticated services that sometimes leaves small investors confused. For example, how much money and property do you really want to have before paying for estate and trust services? If you’re not sure, it might be a good idea to work with Bay Area financial planners who can talk to you about your options and advise you when the time comes to begin setting up those structures. Generally speaking, most people begin to engage with these issues at the point where inheritance taxes might come into play for their descendants, but everyone’s needs are different. Working with people who provide as many types of service as possible means having those options at your fingertips when you need them.
Asset and Wealth Management
As your portfolio grows, it’s very likely you will have a combination of different investment accounts and retirement accounts for different purposes, as well as financial instruments you’ve set up as hedges, like whole life insurance or real estate investments. When your portfolio grows to a level of complexity and volume where you’re seriously considering additional services beyond estate and tax planning and individual investment account administration, there are a few things you should know about wealth management. Often, wealth managers make you more money for less in overall fees than other forms of investment help, but they handle your entire portfolio and they require it reach a certain minimum threshold. Often, this is $5 million. Sometimes it’s as low as $2 million.
If you’re not at the point where you feel you need a full asset management service, the right financial planning help from a team that understands the full array of options for investors at all levels can help you get there. In fact, one of the benefits of working with a large financial planning firm with a broad range of services is the ability to get advice about how to strategically grow your portfolio until you reach the threshold needed to turn things over to a wealth manager who can do the research into your financial options and present you with choices designed to reach different goals you’ve set for yourself.
Choosing Your Team
It can be hard to know who will be able to help your investments continue growing in the long term when you don’t know exactly how fast you can make them grow or what opportunities for new areas of investment will present themselves in the future. That’s why it’s a good idea to find a strong group of investment advisors and financial planners who can provide you with as wide a range as possible. That way, you can trust the same advice from your first IRA rollover all the way to your eventual investment goals.
