In a world where financial security and prosperity are paramount, navigating the complexities of wealth management requires a trusted ally by your side. Welcome to Barrons Advisors, where they redefine the landscape of financial empowerment through personalized strategies and unwavering commitment to your success. Their team is warm and welcoming, just how you should feel walking into their office.
What types of financial products and services do you offer, and how do you select them for clients?
We have a diverse set of financial products across fundamentally unrelated asset classes in order to minimize risk overlap among them. We have investment products within equities, fixed income, liquid alternatives, and inflation hedge asset classes. The decision on how to select comes back to their risk tolerance and their preferences.
What investment strategies do you employ to help clients achieve their financial goals?
We customize our portfolio solutions to include both public and private investments in order to provide diversification for our clients. We utilize low-cost ETF and Mutual Fund strategies in the public investment space while utilizing a number of private solutions that are researched, vetted and monitored by our experienced investment team.
Given the strong investment background of our firm, we are able to provide customized solutions to clients with significant concentrated positions and large capital gains exposure in order to provide tax-efficient diversification and wind-down strategies.
Can you explain your fee structure and any potential conflicts of interest?
Our fee is structured to align our interests with our clients. Clients pay a small percentage fee based on the assets we manage for them, and they receive comprehensive service, including financial planning, investment management, tax strategies, insurance, retirement income planning and estate planning. There are no hidden fees for separate managers, mutual funds, or private investments
How do you customize investment plans to meet the individual needs and risk tolerances of clients?
We recognize that every client has distinct financial goals and risk tolerances. Our solutions are specifically designed to align with our clients’ preferences and maximize the potential for growth while mitigating risks. We first determine a client’s risk tolerance & liquidity needs. We look to understand a client’s cash flow situation and determine if a cash runway is needed to ensure they can make it through an economic cycle without having to potentially sell equities during a time of market volatility. We also determine how much risk a client needs to take vs. how much risk they can take. We then look to understand the client’s tax situation in order to determine an investment approach that is tax efficient, as each client’s situation can be uniquely different. We can better position instruments such as municipal bonds in portfolios where it makes sense. Once this is all understood, we identify a client’s preference for ETFs vs. mutual funds vs. individual securities, and other factors such as their desire to utilize non-traditional asset classes such as alternative investments and investments specifically designed to hedge against inflation. Often a client may have unique investment preferences such as socially responsible investing, the use of private equity, or the wish to diversify from concentrated stock positions, all of which we are able to satisfy through our fully customizable investment platform.
What is your approach to tax planning and minimizing tax liabilities for clients?
We take a very active approach to a client’s tax life outside of providing tax advice. While we are not Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), we are fiduciaries which means that our clients’ interests are our only interests. That said, we try to have a strong working relationship with our clients’ CPAs to provide them with accessible and accurate tax information while also building a financial plan around their tax liabilities outside of the portfolio. We also have an in-house centralized tax team that provides round-table advice to us in order to tackle complex tax situations for clients. Our Roundtable approach of tax, investment, and estate experts allows us to develop very tailored and holistic strategies not only from a portfolio perspective but also with respect to tax and estate planning. We also have expertise in the area of wealth transfer strategies in which we provide solutions that enable clients to pass their wealth to their heirs in the most tax-efficient manner.
How do you handle client inquiries, concerns, and requests for changes to their investment plans?
We are very team-oriented and ensure our clients have access to our team at any given moment. We work collectively to ensure consistency within the lives of our clients. However, we have learned that it is sometimes necessary to expect the unexpected. During these times of transition, it pays off to have a financial plan that is flexible in nature. When there are concerns or changes to an investment plan we meet with our clients to discuss the considerations that need to be addressed and then use our RoundTable approach to find the best advice and solution set from our team of experts. When clients' goals and objectives change, these are always taken into consideration within the context of their financial plan. Given our annual review of a client’s investment policy statement, many of these concerns and changes often take place without the need for clients to be proactive with their advisor. We believe this is a strength of our process.
