Unfortunately, there are many advisors or advisory firms who now refer to themselves as wealth managers without offering the range of services encompassed by true Wealth Management. Many of these advisors are nothing more than portfolio managers. A step above the portfolio managers are those who incorporate basic financial planning and portfolio management. While that’s an improvement, it doesn’t address many of the concerns of wealthy individuals and families. In order to address those concerns, it’s necessary to offer advanced financial planning services.

Therefore, genuine Wealth Management is the integration of portfolio management, core financial planning, and advanced planning. At Sierra Wealth Advisors, we call this advanced planning Legacy Planning.

Legacy Planning.

Legacy Planning can be viewed as the integration of three broad areas of advanced financial planning: Wealth Protection, Wealth Enhancement and Wealth Transfer. The boundaries between these areas of advanced planning are subtle and overlapping, underscoring the necessity of a holistic approach. Wealth Management and Legacy Planning go beyond traditional solutions to encompass all types of financial needs throughout all phases of clients’ financial lives.

Wealth Protection.

You’ve worked hard to earn your wealth, and one of the most important jobs of your financial advisor is to help you avoid making mistakes that could put your wealth at risk. Wealth Protection encompasses numerous forms of risk management, from minimizing portfolio risk (for a given return), to ensuring adequate insurance coverage, to choosing the right structure for a privately held business.

Wealth Enhancement.

With regard to portfolio management, Wealth Enhancement means maximizing expected return for a given level of risk. However, the primary focus of Wealth Enhancement is advanced income tax planning. The vast majority of financial decisions are effected by taxes, so Sierra Wealth Advisors take taxes into account in our portfolio management, retirement planning, education planning, insurance planning, estate planning and philanthropic planning. While we do not prepare tax returns, we work with our team of experts and our clients' CPA's to design and implement strategies that will protect and grow wealth rather than lose it to federal and state taxes.

Wealth Transfer.

While Wealth Transfer planning encompasses business succession planning and charitable giving, at its core is estate planning. When properly done, estate planning  can provide for the financial needs of survivors, ensure that property is distributed as the client intends, avoid the costs and delays associated with probate, make provisions for incapacity, and minimize taxes. When a family or closely held business is part of the equation, estate planning can also structure an orderly transfer of ownership between family members or other owners. Too often however, estate plans are designed only with an eye to minimizing taxes and not to creating a means for the continuation of the client's values and/or a legacy for future generations. At Sierra Wealth Advisors, we make sure that our clients’ personal goals and values are at the core of any Wealth Transfer planning.

The Benefits of Wealth Management.

There are three primary benefits of Wealth Management:

1. 1.Wealth Management enables clients to streamline their complex financial affairs.
   

2. 2.Wealth Management provides the specialized expertise that clients want and need.
   

3. 3.Wealth Management facilitates a close advisor-client relationship.
   

Let’s look at each of these benefits in more detail.

Streamlining Your Financial Affairs.

With wealth comes complexity: more financial products and services from which to choose, more types of expertise to retain and more information to manage. The ability to consolidate multiple needs with a single Wealth Manager can greatly simplify clients’ financial affairs by providing a primary advisor who can coordinate the efforts of numerous financial experts.

Specialized Expertise.

Affluent clients have a great deal at stake, and they reasonably expect their advisors to have the skills needed to achieve their goals. While it might be ideal to find a single advisor who is an expert at everything, that’s of course not realistic. Wealth Management provides the top-shelf expertise and specialized services that clients need. With the Wealth Manager at the center of an expert advisory network, the appropriate specialists can be called in on a case-by-case basis to provide perspective, expertise and access to the requisite products and services.

A Close Advisor-Client Relationship.

Affluent clients want strong relationships with their financial advisors, and for good reason. They want, and need, their advisors to focus on their evolving financial needs. Without strong client relationships, advisors often won’t even know what those needs are. It’s very telling that when affluent clients switch financial advisors, it is most often due to dissatisfaction with the relationship rather than with investment returns. However, because Wealth Management is centered on a consultative process, it demands that Wealth Managers methodically uncover their clients’ values, needs, fears and goals, all the issues that are most important to the clients as people.

As Wealth Managers provide the services that address their clients’ financial challenges, the relationship only grows stronger over time. It’s a self-affirming loop: The better Wealth Managers know their clients, the better they can meet their needs. The better they meet those needs, the stronger the client relationship and the better the Wealth Managers know their clients.