Step 1: Investment Portfolio Audit
Step 1: Investment Portfolio Audit
Goals & Outcomes:
- Understand the inner workings of your investment portfolio
- Identify opportunities to optimize investment holdings
- Minimize portfolio drag and excess expenses
- Complete a Portfolio X-Ray
The Investment Portfolio Audit helps you and your team develop an understanding of your current portfolio's strengths and weaknesses.
Using this information, we can make strategic decisions on what to keep, what to add, and what to discard to fully optimize your investment portfolio.
One of the first things our team looks at during the investment portfolio audit is ETFs and mutual funds, identifying their expense ratios. In some cases, funds with high expense ratios can cause a significant drag on your portfolio.
We look for opportunities to optimize by selecting low-cost mutual funds that target the same indexes as the high-cost funds, by replacing retail-class funds with institutional-grade funds, and by eliminating altogether funds that can be replaced with groups of securities (zero expense ratio).
High investment management fees can also hurt your portfolio's bottom line. Our fees are some of the lowest in the industry (according to the Charles Schwab Benchmark Study), which can reduce the overall costs to your entire portfolio.
Our focus is on your winning over the long-term, not just the short term.
Another thing our team looks at during the investment portfolio audit is trading costs incurred. Trading costs can be an easily mitigated source of inefficiency in a portfolio. We keep trading costs to a minimum by taking a low-turnover approach to trading, and by avoiding trading fees where possible.
Strategic decisions about where to place high-yielding investments and other tax-sensitive securities can have a significant impact on your after-tax income. During the initial investment portfolio audit, we look to see where we can optimize the placement of your securities between tax-deferred and taxable accounts.
See Step 3: Tax Planning & Preparation for more information.
Your income from your portfolio in retirement can be a significant source of your overall income in retirement. Another key step in the investment portfolio audit is to help you identify your cash flow needs. By doing so, we can work backwards to target an achievable yield that supports your ideal lifestyle in retirement.
See more about a cash flow plan in Step 4: Advanced Financial Planning.
How your portfolio deals with exposure to different markets can act as both a safeguard against market downturns and a sources of potential gains. During the initial investment portfolio audit, we look to see where we can optimize your investment selection to include an optimal exposure to different markets, industries, and sources of income.
Goals & Outcomes:
- Understand the inner workings of your investment portfolio
- Identify opportunities to optimize investment holdings
- Minimize portfolio drag and excess expenses
- Complete a Portfolio X-Ray
The Investment Portfolio Audit helps you and your team develop an understanding of your current portfolio's strengths and weaknesses.
Using this information, we can make strategic decisions on what to keep, what to add, and what to discard to fully optimize your investment portfolio.
One of the first things our team looks at during the investment portfolio audit is ETFs and mutual funds, identifying their expense ratios. In some cases, funds with high expense ratios can cause a significant drag on your portfolio.
We look for opportunities to optimize by selecting low-cost mutual funds that target the same indexes as the high-cost funds, by replacing retail-class funds with institutional-grade funds, and by eliminating altogether funds that can be replaced with groups of securities (zero expense ratio).
High investment management fees can also hurt your portfolio's bottom line. Our fees are some of the lowest in the industry (according to the Charles Schwab Benchmark Study), which can reduce the overall costs to your entire portfolio.
Our focus is on your winning over the long-term, not just the short term.
Trading costs can be an easily mitigated source of inefficiency in a portfolio. We keep trading costs to a minimum by taking a low-turnover approach to trading, and by avoiding trading fees where possible.
Strategic decisions about where to place high-yielding investments and other tax-sensitive securities can have a significant impact on your after-tax income. During the initial investment portfolio audit, we look to see where we can optimize the placement of your securities between tax-deferred and taxable accounts.
See Step 3: Tax Planning & Preparation for more information.
Your income from your portfolio in retirement can be a significant source of your overall income in retirement. Another key step in the investment portfolio audit is to help you identify your cash flow needs. By doing so, we can work backwards to target an achievable yield that supports your ideal lifestyle in retirement.
See more about a cash flow plan in Step 4: Advanced Financial Planning.
How your portfolio deals with exposure to different markets can act as both a safeguard against market downturns and a sources of potential gains. During the initial investment portfolio audit, we look to see where we can optimize your investment selection to include an optimal exposure to different markets, industries, and sources of income.