Frequently Asked Questions

Absolutely. As fiduciaries:

1. We will always put our clients’ best interests first.

2. We will act with prudence; that is, with the skill, care, diligence, and good judgement of a professional.

3. We will not mislead clients, and will provide conspicuous, full, and fair disclosure of all important facts.

4. We will avoid conflicts of interest.

5. We will fully disclose and fairly manage, in our clients’ favor, any unavoidable conflicts.

We get paid a fee based on the assets we manage. The fee schedule is here. There are no commissions, retainers, or separate planning charges.

Every client will work with a team of Certified Financial Planners® that specialize in the needs of retirees. As a firm we are SEC registered and regularly file a form ADV with updates on our team members, client base, assets under management, and our business in general.

Broadly, we focus on retirement planning for client families in the Houston area who are retired or very close to it (typically 5 years or less). For a more detailed look at who we work with, check out the About Us page on our website, and the section “Who We Serve”

We are flexible. We meet in-person at our Houston office, over Zoom, or by phone. We invite you to schedule quarterly meetings. For our clients that prefer to meet less often, we have a minimum requirement of at least one meeting per year. While we extensively leverage technology and do most things electronically, we are flexible and can easily adapt to your preferences. We send out a weekly email on a relevant planning topic, we host regular in-person and online seminars, as well as regular social events for our clients in and around the Houston area. If you have questions in between scheduled meetings, your team of advisors is always available to answer questions.

We are a comprehensive wealth management firm that will evaluate income, investments, insurance, taxation, and estate planning with regular updates throughout the year.

Every client is different, and the allocation will be driven by evaluating the client’s spending needs, goals, account types, and tax bracket.

While outperforming a benchmark is far less important than being on track to achieve your financial goals, we still use a variety of blended benchmarks, aligned with the client’s target allocation, for monitoring portfolio and manager performance over time.

We custody all our assets with Charles Schwab.

Yes. While we don’t prepare tax returns, we will evaluate tax returns on an annual basis for planning opportunities and work closely with our client’s tax preparer to make sure the plans we execute are properly accounted for on the tax return.

Yes. While we don’t prepare legal documents such as wills and trusts, we will evaluate existing documents to make sure they are aligned with your goals. If changes are needed, we can then recommend an estate attorney, or work with one you already use, to make sure everything is in place.

No. We will review insurance policies to make sure they are appropriate for the client’s needs and make referrals to trusted insurance professionals when updates are required.