While chatting with Alicia Lewis, President and Financial Professional at Layman Lewis Financial Group, two central themes invariably presented themselves as principles by which she is guided both personally and professionally: family and freedom.
A third-generation financial professional, Alicia, together with her father, Chuck Layman, co-founded Layman Lewis in 2007. A core family business from the get-go, the professionals at Layman Lewis take a holistic and relationship-based approach to financial strategies blending traditional and modern techniques to help clients pursue their goals, both now and in retirement.
And while they consider every aspect of their clients’ financial picture—investments, income, taxes, health care and legacy plans—their focus is on creating custom strategies to help their clients achieve their retirement goals. However, planning and investing for retirement, especially in the five to ten years as retirement draws nearer, can look quite different than any other time in life.
“When you’re still working, you have a lot of time to save and can take a lot more risk. You’ve got the paycheck coming in. But when you're in retirement, you've built your nest egg, and now you're saying, okay, how do I move from saving to spending my savings? It can be scary and it's a whole different set of concerns. It’s just a completely different type of planning.”
And it’s this type of planning that can make all the difference in the world, allowing for the exploration and freedom to achieve dream-level-status retirement. But you have to start somewhere and according to Lewis, it starts with knowing what you’re retiring to and then creating a plan around that. For the team at Layman and Lewis, this involves a deep conversation exploring what their dream life looks like, bucket list items, and gaining an overall sense of what their clients want to experience once they’ve retired. Being a huge proponent of experiencing life to the fullest, Lewis loves helping pull this information from her clients and integrate it into a strategy and a plan.
“Then we can actually show our clients that it’s possible. Without a plan, how can you possibly live your retirement dream? It’s kind of like, how could you possibly go on a road trip without having a map and saying, ‘Where am I going?'” Lewis explains.
Being in the industry for her entire life—growing up witnessing her father and grandfather both thrive in the industry and then eventually going into business with her father—she’s seen a thing or two in how people approach financial planning, especially around retirement.
“Sometimes I think people don’t have a retirement plan because they’re holding back and they’re nervous. But when they have a plan and they can see and we can show them their numbers, actually show them that they can do this, it gives them the confidence to be able to say, ‘I can do this.'”
She’s seen a different and more devastating side of the coin as well, where people wait to check off their bucket list items or do the things that they've always dreamt of.
“I want people to recognize that they're not promised tomorrow. Don't just wait until retirement to do all the fun things you’ve always wanted to do.”
And this is where the professionals at Layman Lewis come in. They are able to assist their clients at the highest level possible because they approach everything as a team. Their team works on every single case because, after all, multiple advisors are better than one. With each team member bringing something different to the table, they’re able to ensure that they’re offering the most comprehensive guidance possible.
Alicia and her team are also very family-focused. Only a tight-knit family lineage of financial planners would be able to advise from such a team and family-based perspective.
“This is not a transaction business. This is a relational business. The more we can get to know you, the better we can advise you. So for us, it’s not just picking from a menu of options, we truly work in the best interest of our clients.”
The team at Layman Lewis is also deeply vested in our local community. You can find them volunteering in the community on many occasions, often bringing their clients with them. Since moving to Loveland when she was just two years old and then marrying her husband, Josh, who is a Loveland native, her love for the Loveland community is palpable. They now have two boys, 11 and 13.
“What I love about Loveland is the small-town feel. I love that we’re so close to mountains. But ultimately, this is a family community, and ours is a business that really invests a lot in our clients, and we become great friends with them.”
“We get to build out retirement plans for people so that they can enjoy the retirement of their dreams.”