I. Comprehensive Overview
It is our experience that most individuals lack sophisticated knowledge of the key aspects of comprehensive personal wealth management. The impact of neglect, distractions and personal biases often produces disappointing if not damaging results.
We partner with our clients to bridge this gap. Our aim is to offer a dynamic approach to wealth management that is based on scheduling conferences at reasonable intervals, collecting and evaluating current information, providing timely updates of investment and economic developments and furnishing comprehensive appraisals of financial condition. When remedial steps are required in response to altered circumstances or changes in financial environments, we apprise our clients of the facts and recommend the necessary action steps to be implemented. In all of our undertakings with clients, discretion and confidentiality are paramount. All our endeavors are designed to inspire our client partners' trust and confidence.
Through the years, we have refined our approach to personal wealth management into a working model that is easily articulated. The model's acronym is the familiar AARP--Accumulate, Allocate, React and Protect. Its 4 core elements are briefly discussed below.
Accumulate
Accumulate begins with the discipline of spending less than we earn and acquiring the skills to enlarge the surplus. The ability to accumulate invokes a very challenging series of tasks and often starts with revenue and expense management. Outside assistance often is required to audit and reshape the dynamics of both business-related and personal cash flows yet many of us are reluctant to take these steps. With a new level of discipline and commitment, this hesitation can be overcome. The next sequential step involves channeling surplus cash flows into investments that can build wealth and long-term financial security within established risk parameters.
Allocate
Allocate pertains to time and money. Each individual allocates his or her time in a unique way, influenced by her immediate and intermediate priorities. When it comes to the allocation of money, we have less personal discretion. The allocation of assets among diverse investment sectors and investment firms determines to a large degree long-term success or failure in the accumulation and preservation of wealth. In this regard, allocate means moving assets into strategic locations on the investment map, minimizing losses along the way and devoting sufficient time to the maintenance of strategies, whether those are for general investing or retirement planning.
React
React involves making timely adjustments to our wealth management approach if there are unforeseen income or investment losses, changes in Federal and state tax laws and altered political, economic and social dynamics in the US and other countries. Conversely, respond can mean pursuing new and different opportunities for personal income and investment growth based on unique knowledge, insights and skills. Some responses can be made in anticipation of events. Others must be made in the aftermath of unanticipated events. Responsiveness is facilitated by the ability to remain adequately informed about current events and likely future events. In this important regard, we work closely with our client partners in order to better enable them to accumulate and protect.
Protect
In these unsettling times, the risks to personal wealth demand unparalleled levels of protection. Such risks include catastrophic losses (e.g., natural and man-made disasters), investment losses (e.g., adverse political and economic events, acts of fraud and errors in analysis and judgment), confiscation by the government (e.g., income taxes, estate taxes and inflation of the money supply) and adverse rulings by the court system (e.g., legal judgments). Protection is an integral part of the ongoing wealth management effort and requires a dual commitment to being personally informed and competently advised by professionals in the insurance, tax, investment and legal fields.
II. Investment Overview
We believe that traditional investment approaches engrained during the last 50 years no longer will provide the most effective means for building and preserving wealth. Dangerously elevated levels of government debts and deficits, huge amounts of leverage circulating in the investment markets and a weakening US Dollar all manifest past policy failures. This situation requires a fresh and enlightened approach to capital preservation. Several years ago, Championship Financial Advisors responded to this evidence by reconstructing client investment portfolios to withstand potential long-term damage from the continuation of these trends. In their reasoned opinion, the damage eventually will be borne via recurring and deepening cycles of inflation and deflation, higher taxes and fewer investment choices, all of which are endemic to any debt-plagued society. We are adamant in willfully protecting our client partners from the ill-effects of these debilitating forces.
Specifically, we have developed a unique asset allocation model in order to best capture our vision of the future. We have detached from the traditional Fixed Income/Equity allocation model and are utilizing an allocation model that we call Safe Harbor/Growth. Within this new model, Safe Harbor is the dominant category and embraces investments in a varied and constantly evolving mix of inflation and deflation hedges. Safe Harbor investments are balanced with Growth investments when the latter are judged to possess advantageous risk/reward characteristics. Two of our model's main components are the precious metals and natural resource complexes.
Our fluid, enlightened approach to wealth management is designed to give our client partners peace of mind and confidence that we are embracing tomorrow's challenges and opportunities and not formulating strategies based on outdated models, metrics and expectations. Our Safe Harbor/Growth allocation model will continue to evolve as long as we perceive the previously-described perils of inflation and deflation, higher taxes and fewer investment choices.
Since 2006, many very prominent investment firms have been bailed out at taxpayer expense or have been forced to close their investment funds. Essentially, they failed to properly account for risk in their pursuit of profits. In contrast, we are highly attuned to risk and always will search outside the box for important clues to understanding risk. This will contribute to our ongoing success in positioning our client partners to achieve and enjoy continued financial peace of mind.