Six Keys to Optimizing Your Health, Longevity and Well-Being

It’s pretty safe to say that everyone wants to experience optimal health. It’s also pretty safe to say that most of us know the steps we should be taking to enjoy those benefits—but that we too often don’t bother.

Enter Shawn Wells, a leading nutritional biochemist and dietitian. His book, The Energy Formula, lays out six critical steps that can potentially help people gain focus, be more productive and unleash their full potential. He’s even framed his advice in a way that makes it easier to remember and implement:

EXPERIMENT • NUTRITION • EXERCISE • ROUTINE • GROWTH • YOUR TRIBE

Experiment. Until you scientifically track something, it’s very difficult to know how you are doing and whether any changes you make are providing positive results. So begin with a series of lab tests to assess your mitochondria. Wells notes that nearly every disease and perhaps even aging itself is tied to mitochondrial health and function. Additionally, Wells suggests two lab tests that can help you get a strong general baseline to gauge future progress:

Vitamin D, which not only supports the immune system and prevents infection but also is related to many other body functions

Lipoprotein(a), which is correlated to cardiovascular disease risk and is superior to other heart-related tests like those for HDL, LDL and total cholesterol

Next, use a “wearable” that tracks your sleep quality, heart rate variability and other important data points. The best of these devices will not only provide you a baseline of important metrics but can also track the duration and quality of your sleep. The result: cumulative data and specific readouts of exactly where you currently stand.

Nutrition. Keep things simple here. The best diet is one focused on whole foods with as little processing and as few additives as possible. Armed with this foundational view, your own bio-individuality and preferences can help point to which kind of whole-foods-based lifestyle diet is best for you. Three options to consider are:

  •  The ketogenesis (or “keto”) diet, which is 0–10 percent carbohydrates, 20–25 percent protein, and 65–75 percent fats
  •  The Mediterranean diet, which is 10 percent meats and sweets, 10 percent poultry and eggs, 10 percent seafood, and 70 percent vegetables and fats
  •  The Paleolithic (or “paleo”) diet, which is 15 percent nuts and berries, 15 percent fruits with a low glycemic index (ones that don’t spike blood sugar), 30 percent meat and seafood, and 40 percent vegetables

Finally, Wells is a proponent of the supplement berberine, which helps lower glucose levels.

Exercise. Wells notes that each additional hour of daily sitting increases all-cause mortality rates by about 2 percent. One solution is movement breaks and “exercise snacks.” The idea is that if you have only one hour a day to dedicate to movement and exercise, you are better off breaking that up into 12 five-minute segments than doing it all at once. You can walk or run inside or outside, do air squats, do planks, climb stairs, bounce on a mini-trampoline, jump rope or do anything else that is fun and at least moderately raises your heart rate.

Routine. Seek to align your body with your circadian rhythm and do whatever else is necessary to get sufficient sleep. Health, healing, exercise, mood, performance, disease resistance and longevity itself have all been shown to be directly related to sleep.

The second routine focus is starting our days the right way to set ourselves up for success—not stagnation. Wells recommends waking up 30 minutes earlier than you normally do so you can take your time and engage in the following types of activities:

  • Take in bright light early in the day.
  • Meditate, or do a mindfulness or breathwork practice—such as deep breathing through the nose with slow exhales.
  • Stretch and take a short walk.
  • Hydrate and eat a high-quality breakfast.

Growth. Growth refers to having a growth mindset—whether it is with regard to your body, your mind, your business or career, or your inner emotional and spiritual life. For example, to get your body to the next step, one very powerful and increasingly popular tool is intermittent fasting. Likewise, for developing our inner lives, Wells suggests considering the Japanese concept of “ikigai,” which translates to “reason for being”—or, as Wells puts it, your “reason to jump out of bed in the morning.” A sense of purpose and a growth mindset go hand in hand. To be fully energized, we have to discover for ourselves what works at every level of our bio-individuality, from the physical to the spiritual.

Your tribe. A 75-year Harvard study looked at many factors (such as money, race and occupation) to see what was most important for healthy aging. Ultimately, the most critical factor for leading a healthy, happy and long life was the quality of our close relationships.

The key, however, is not necessarily having a lot of friends or even being in a long-term relationship. What really matters is whether there are others in your life with whom you can be vulnerable and authentic. Knowing we can rely on others relaxes the nervous system, helps keep the brain healthy, and reduces both physical and emotional pain.

Conclusion

Some of this advice may be new and surprising to you, and some of it you may have already known for a long time. But by having it put together in an organized way that connects the dots, you may find it easier to turn insights into action steps that bring you closer to living your best life.

Fidato Wealth LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser. Dan Carlin, M.D. is not affiliated with Fidato Wealth LLC. This brochure is solely for informational purposes. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Fidato Wealth LLC and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by Fidato Wealth LLC unless a client service agreement is in place. Copyright 2018 by AES Nation, LLC. If you are not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are notified that any review, copying, distribution or use of this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please (i) notify the sender immediately by e-mail or by telephone and (ii) destroy all copies of this message. Please note that trading instructions through email, fax or voicemail will not be taken, as your identity and timely retrieval of instructions cannot be guaranteed. If you do not wish to receive marketing emails from this sender, please send an email to sayhello@fidatowealth.com.

 

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Wealth Planning for Ages 90, 100-and Beyond

Thanks to medical technology advances, we’re living longer and in better health than ever. Some experts—like Harvard University Professor of Genetics David Sinclair, author of Lifespan: Why We Age—And Why We Don’t Have To—even proffer that “there is no biological limit, no law that says we must die at a certain age.”

That tremendously exciting prospect comes with a big challenge: planning financially for golden years that might extend to age 90, 100—or even longer. If you tack on an additional ten or 15 years to your life, you could face the very real and dangerous risk of running out of money while you’re still alive—or having so little left that your lifestyle becomes seriously compromised.

The good news: Longevity planning is becoming an increasingly important part of successful families’ wealth management efforts to combat the financial risks inherent in living much longer than previous generations. Here’s a look at two ways wealth management is being used to position wealth to go the distance.

CONCIERGE AND SPECIALIZED MEDICAL CARE

Any discussion of funding a longer life should involve the topic of paying for medical care, so that you and loved ones can continue to enjoy lives that are not just extended but also healthy.

Of course, the medical care landscape is changing at a rapid pace and the traditional health care system is very unlikely to be able to keep up with demand. For those who are concerned, and who can afford it, concierge medicine can be a viable solution.

Essentially a broad term covering a wide variety of health care delivery models, concierge medicine is at its core a membership model: For a fee, you get access to “boutique” medical practices with relatively small ratios of patients to physicians—enabling shorter wait times, longer visits and significantly more personalized care given (in many cases) by physicians with greater expertise than the typical provider has.

The issue: High-quality concierge medicine can be extremely costly, depending on the care needed and the providers. Therefore, the ability to use wealth management solutions to address the potential costs of concierge health care and specialized medical care can be extremely valuable—even to those with significant wealth. Consequently, some of the foremost wealth managers, accountants and attorneys are working with families to make certain that their financial and legal world is set up to benefit from high-quality longevity planning. In some cases, for example, certain forms of insurance can potentially address health care needs in tax-efficient ways.

Estate planning is another key aspect of longevity planning. Due to longer life spans, people and families may need to rethink their existing estate plans and even their entire mindset about wealth transfer. Indeed, the potential to live much longer can create an estate planning minefield for wealthy families as well as their wealth managers and tax experts.

Specifically, we’re seeing significant issues develop for high-net-worth families in terms of how and when to transfer assets to subsequent generations.

For example, among many wealthy families, a critical longevity-related question must now be asked: “When does the next generation get to benefit from and control the assets they are intended to have?”

If a successful business owner, for instance, expects to live past 100 thanks to medical advances, when do the inheritors take control of the family-owned and -managed company? Is it in their 70s? 80s? 90s? Potentially disastrous family confrontations could arise from not thinking through the possibilities and being proactive.

Consider one example of a family business where the son was in his early 50s and his father (the founder) was in his early 80s. The son had expected to take over the business years ago—but his father, who was in good health, had no intention of stepping down. Fed up, the son left to start a competing firm. Ultimately, this led to a split within the family that negatively impacted the owner’s relationship with his grandchildren.

Controlling wealth until death is a common practice among self-made millionaires. But this philosophy can lead to poor estate plans, especially when the people involved live a long time.

Often, it can be wise to transfer assets before death, which can head off lots of possible problems—such as family disputes, lawsuits and assets strangely disappearing. Shifting some wealth before death can also prevent problems if the wealth holder suffers dementia and is exploited by staff or even family members.

Consider the following questions:

  • Are you as concerned as you should be about rising health care and state-of-the-art treatment costs potentially causing you to run out of money—especially if you live to 100 or beyond?
  • Are you adequately concerned about how living to 100 or older could impact your assets—and your ability to pass on those assets to loved ones, according to your wishes and as you see fit, using smart estate planning strategies?
  • Are you working with a wealth manager who is knowledgeable about longevity planning and who can help you take steps to afford the health care you want and leave a legacy on your terms?

    The fact is, with longevity planning garnering tremendous interest, elite wealth managers and aligned professionals are going to play critical supporting roles in areas like paying for concierge medicine and estate planning. There’s a famous toast that says, “May you live as long as you like, and have all you like as long as you live.” Longevity planning can potentially help make that statement less of a wish and more of an actual outcome.

Fidato Wealth LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser. This brochure is solely for informational purposes. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Fidato Wealth LLC and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by Fidato Wealth LLC unless a client service agreement is in place. Copyright 2018 by AES Nation, LLC. If you are not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are notified that any review, copying, distribution or use of this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please (i) notify the sender immediately by e-mail or by telephone and (ii) destroy all copies of this message. Please note that trading instructions through email, fax or voicemail will not be taken, as your identity and timely retrieval of instructions cannot be guaranteed.  If you do not wish to receive marketing emails from this sender, please send an email to sayhello@fidatowealth.com.

 

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Smart Money Moves To Make While You’re Still Mentally Sharp

As we age, we tend to lose some of our cognitive abilities—and that, in turn, can cause us to make financial decisions that aren’t in our best interests.

Commonly, people experience a degradation of financial decision-making abilities and “mental sharpness” beginning sometime in their 60s or 70s. When you consider that there are some 10,000 Americans turning 65 every day and all the baby boomers will hit that age by 2030, the issue of cognitive decline—and its potential impact on wealth—is a truly serious one.

Don’t panic. There are steps you can take right now that can potentially set you up for success even if you begin to experience some form of cognitive impairment that might otherwise threaten your financial future.

ACTION STEPS

Research reveals that our ability to be good stewards of our wealth may decline as we age:

  •   Financial literacy scores decline consistently after age 60, with the annual rate of decline being both significant and similar among all the cohorts studied—which included men, stockowners and people with a college degree.
  •  Financial decision-making peaks for most of us in our early-to-mid 50s, while investing skills can start to decline sharply in our 60s and 70s.
  •  Bankruptcy filings rose fastest among those age 65 and older.
  •  Even mild declines in cognitive performance reveal evidence of diminished financial capabilities.

The good news: There are numerous steps you can consider taking that can potentially help safeguard your assets from mental mistakes you may one day make.

1. Start early. The ideal time to be thinking about how to protect your assets from the impact of cognitive decline is well in advance of when the need arises. Based on the data above, that means during our late 40s or early 50s for most of us. You can’t make a legally binding will or set up other legal documents (like power of attorney and trusts) unless you are considered to be “of sound mind”—which essentially means you understand the consequences of your decisions and you act of your own free will.

2. Simplify your financial life. Consider consolidating disparate accounts under one roof. For example, you might place most or all of your investments with one trusted financial advisor, or merge multiple bank accounts into one. Such “clutter reduction” will not only help you, but may also help if another person—such as a family member or advisor—needs to step in to assist you down the road.

3. Have clarifying conversations with family and advisors. Sit down with the people you’d want to help you navigate through life if your capacity were to become diminished. Identify who will help you make sensible financial, health care and other decisions if there’s a serious mental or physical health issue. Discuss your wants, needs and values with those people. If your future caregivers and decision-makers know today about your goals as well as how you want to be helped in the future, they can prepare themselves to honor your wishes.

4. Set up—or review—important legal documents. Here’s where your intentions meet up with execution. Some of the key documents you should consider having in place in the event that you experience serious physical or cognitive decline are obvious—such as a will. But others are too often overlooked or never updated, including:

  •  Durable power of attorney for finances. This allows you to appoint one or more people to manage your financial assets if necessary.
  •  Health care directives. These documents spell out clear directions to family members and physicians about preferred health decisions and related matters—effectively relieving family of having to make life-and-death choices about you without any guidance.
  • Living trusts. A revocable living trust can allow you to name a successor trustee who can take control of the assets in the trust if you become mentally or physically incapacitated.

5. Compile key documents and other important financial information. If someone eventually needs to help in making financial decisions on your behalf, it’s best to make it easy for them to step into that role. To that end, start compiling a comprehensive inventory of your key financial information. You can create a digital file or folder, or keep hard copies in a specific spot like a desk drawer. Whatever route you choose, tell someone you trust—ideally the person who is on board with helping you if needed, be it a family member, friend or attorney—the location of the paperwork and other details.

The specific information you compile will depend on the details of your financial situation, but should likely include:

  •  Assets (details for checking accounts, investment accounts, annuities, business interests, real estate)
  •  Liabilities (mortgages, credit cards, recurring expenses)
  •  Beneficiary designations on qualified plans and IRAs
  •  Insurance (life, long-term care, disability, etc.)
  •  Contact information for key people/advisors (accountant, wealth manager, lawyer, physician)
  •  Digital information (IDs, passwords, PINs)
  •  Location of your most up-to-date will with an original signature, durable power of attorney, deed for house, car title and any safe deposit boxes/keys
  •  Location of birth certificate and certificates of marriage, divorce, etc.
  •  Copies of any business succession plans and the location of ownership-related documentation (for entrepreneurs)

CONCLUSION

Let’s be honest with ourselves about the possibility that we may experience some form of cognitive decline. Then we can take action steps aimed at minimizing the potential for making wealth-erasing mental mistakes. By working in partnership with family and trusted advisors, we can seek to protect the assets we’ve worked so hard to build and grow over our lives.

Fidato Wealth LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser. This brochure is solely for informational purposes. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Fidato Wealth LLC and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by Fidato Wealth LLC unless a client service agreement is in place. Copyright 2018 by AES Nation, LLC. If you are not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are notified that any review, copying, distribution or use of this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please (i) notify the sender immediately by e-mail or by telephone and (ii) destroy all copies of this message. Please note that trading instructions through email, fax or voicemail will not be taken, as your identity and timely retrieval of instructions cannot be guaranteed.  If you do not wish to receive marketing emails from this sender, please send an email to sayhello@fidatowealth.com.

 

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A Wealth Planning Process For Pursuing Success On Purpose

One of the best things you can do when managing wealth is to be extremely clear on what you’re looking to accomplish and what hurdles stand—or could stand—in your way.

Why? Success—in investing, in business, in life—rarely happens by accident. When you’re clear-eyed about where you want to go and what could get in your way along the journey, you can both create a better map and build in better contingency plans.

The good news: There’s a process you can implement in your financial life that can better enable you to resolve your issues and arrive at your desired destination.

SIX STEPS THAT BUILD ON EACH OTHER

We call the process the Virtuous Cycle because it’s a multistep approach that continually reinforces itself over time. The Virtuous Cycle has six components (see the chart on the next page) that are highly customizable.

  1. Profiling. Truly effective wealth planning happens when you—and any financial advisors you work with—have a deep understanding of yourself and the people in your life who will be involved in, or impacted by, your planning decisions. Without these insights, all the specialized financial expertise in the world or the most advanced solutions are of little use. It’s like a doctor treating a patient’s illness: If the diagnosis is incorrect, the treatment is not likely to be effective.

That deep understanding has to include your financial situation and goals, of course. But it also needs to go well beyond that information to include your financial values, your interests, your most important relationships and other key factors. The goal is to develop an extremely detailed and expansive understanding of you and your world. That information, in turn, allows your advisors to work effectively with a professional network of experts.

  1. Consultation with a professional support network. No one—not even the very best financial professional out there—is expert enough in all areas of managing wealth to deliver the highest-quality advice across the board. The best advisors realize that fact and therefore create and maintain strong networks of other expert professionals to turn to when necessary. The very best of these professional support networks have four characteristics:
  • Specialized expertise. The members of the network should be top authorities in highly specialized areas that are relevant to your financial life.
  • Integrity. The highest ethical standards are indispensable in all aspects of wealth planning.
  • Professionalism. The network participants must embrace professionalism in every way.
  • Personal chemistry. Everyone within the network must “play well together in the same sandbox.”

FROM “WHAT IF” TO IMPLEMENTING A PLAN

  1. Scenario thinking. With profiles created and a professional network in place, advisors can engage in scenario thinking with you. Simply put, this is a method of generating alternative futures—it’s when all the “what if” questions are asked and answered. Some possible examples:
  • “What if I die early, while the children are young? Who will decide when they should have unrestricted access to the money?”
  • “What if I want to pay the lowest possible tax bill on my investments without having to give up control over how the money is managed?”
  • “What if someone wants to take advantage of us when we’re a lot older and not as with it?”
  • “What if someone falls in my building, hurts himself and sues?”
  • “What if I want to expand my business to other countries and want to legally minimize the amount of taxes I will have to pay?”

From the meaningful possible outcomes devised in this phase, the most viable course or courses of action are selected.

  1. Framing the recommendations clearly. At this point in the process, you’re looking for a wealth manager to communicate the various scenarios and recommendations to you in a way that makes a great deal of sense. Depending on the complexity of your situation, this might be very straightforward or quite complicated. What’s essential is that you understand—in broad stokes or in excruciating detail, depending on your preference—how the recommended solutions can enable you to achieve your agenda, and any limitations of those solutions.
  2. Implementation. Once you’ve chosen the way you want to proceed, the plan is put into motion. Implementation—taking action—is typically very straightforward, and it should be. By this point, the hurdles have been identified and the approaches to surmounting them have been specified. This doesn’t mean implementation is easy; it often demands a great deal of work. However, it should be something advisors and their teams do extremely well.
  3. Ongoing monitoring and refining. Laws change—and lives change. It’s smart to ensure that any wealth planning you do stays up to date with such changes, and that the plan remains positioned to generate the results you want. Therefore, a major aspect of the Virtuous Cycle approach is to continually monitor any and all changes that could impact your future success—and make modifications to the plan as required. Ongoing monitoring often involves periodic reviews and responses to important changes and innovations.

The upshot:  Wealth planning should be a continuous process of refining goals and needs along with the strategies and tools to achieve them. The same should hold true for you and your wealth plan. Think about it: If your plan becomes outdated—it no longer reflects your situation and needs, or the tools it uses are suboptimal—it’s you and the people most important to you who lose out.

 

Fidato Wealth LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser. This brochure is solely for informational purposes. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Fidato Wealth LLC and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by Fidato Wealth LLC unless a client service agreement is in place. Copyright 2018 by AES Nation, LLC. If you are not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are notified that any review, copying, distribution or use of this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please (i) notify the sender immediately by e-mail or by telephone and (ii) destroy all copies of this message. Please note that trading instructions through email, fax or voicemail will not be taken, as your identity and timely retrieval of instructions cannot be guaranteed.  If you do not wish to receive marketing emails from this sender, please send an email to sayhello@fidatowealth.com.

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Finding Advisors Who Are Truly Client-Centric

It’s extremely common for financial professionals these days to advertise how well they focus on their clients—and with good reason: After all, you’re probably more likely to consider working with people in just about any capacity who say that they will make the experience “all about you.”

The good news is that, in our experience, more financial advisors and wealth managers today are paying greater attention to their clients’ needs and concerns than they did a few decades ago. But although advisors have become better at understanding their clients on a deeper level, we see that advisors don’t always go far enough. In contrast, elite wealth managers actually use a process for becoming intensely client-centric—getting to know their clients extremely well so that they can offer a broad range of solutions that are both impressive technically and highly aligned with the results their clients want most.

With that in mind, it’s a great time to assess your advisors’ level of client focus and determine whether you’re getting the experience you want and need.

GAINING DEEP KNOWLEDGE

When it comes down to it, you want to see whether an advisor takes the time to truly understand you—as a person, a member of your family, an investor, or whatever the case may be.

One of the signs that can indicate that an advisor is client-centric is if they employ a process that helps them see you as a total person across many different areas. For example, consider the following form of client profiling that hones in on seven areas of a person’s life:

  • Values. What is truly important to you about your money and your desire for success, and what are the key, deep-seated values underlying the decisions you make to attain these things?
  • Goals. What do you want to achieve over the long run—professionally and personally, practically and audaciously?
  • Relationships. Who are all the people in your life who are important to you?
  • Assets. What do you own—from real estate to investment accounts, restricted stock to retirement plans—and where and how are your assets held?
  • Advisors. Whom do you rely on for advice?
  • Process. How actively do you like to be involved in managing your financial life, and how do you prefer to work with your valued advisors?
  • Interests. What are your passions in life—including your hobbies, sports and leisure activities; charitable and philanthropic involvements; religious and spiritual proclivities; and children’s schools and activities?

Note that just one of the areas concerns assets. A full six of the seven are focused on helping the financial professional better understand who you are (and what you want to achieve) as a person, a spouse, a parent and so on.

The reason that’s important is because if financial professionals understand you at that deep a level, they can potentially be far more comprehensive in terms of the types of strategies they can offer you—and they can better identify the specific solutions within those strategies that really line up well with what you want to accomplish in your life.

Example: If all a professional knows about you is your investments and your retirement goals, the solutions he or she offers you will probably begin and end with those topics. In contrast, if that professional understands the hopes and dreams you also have for your children or grandchildren as well as the concerns you have about their ability to achieve those outcomes, the advisor can potentially craft a broader, more far-reaching plan.

Ultimately, you can think of all this as a process of deep discovery—about you and the people who are most important to you, and what you want most.

Conclusion

It makes sense to learn about the process that an advisor has in place to understand you. A process that seeks to help an advisor know you in a full and comprehensive way can be a good sign that an advisor “walks the talk” when it comes to being client-centric.

Fidato Wealth LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser. This brochure is solely for informational purposes. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Fidato Wealth LLC and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by Fidato Wealth LLC unless a client service agreement is in place. Copyright 2018 by AES Nation, LLC. If you are not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are notified that any review, copying, distribution or use of this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please (i) notify the sender immediately by e-mail or by telephone and (ii) destroy all copies of this message. Please note that trading instructions through email, fax or voicemail will not be taken, as your identity and timely retrieval of instructions cannot be guaranteed.  If you do not wish to receive marketing emails from this sender, please send an email to sayhello@fidatowealth.com.

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Do You Know Your High-Net-Worth Personality?

One of the best ways to make smart decisions about your wealth is to work with professionals who are able to connect with you and relate to you. You want to surround yourself with experts who know you well enough to really “get” what you want your money to accomplish and why.

In fact, we’ve found over the years that a personal connection between advisors and their clients is as important to financial success as traits such as advisors’ competence and resources.

To get advice that works, it’s incumbent on you to understand your own high-net-worth personality so you can select and work with advisors who are an ideal match.

High-net-worth (HNW) psychology is all about understanding what the affluent want from the professionals they work with, as well as the “how” and “why” behind their attitudes and decisions about their money. Extensive research into HNW psychology has helped identify numerous HNW personality types. That said, most affluent investors fall into one of these five categories:

  • The Family Steward. Family Stewards’ chief financial and investment concern is taking good care of their loved ones. Their goals usually center on issues like paying for children’s tuition or passing on wealth to heirs. Family Stewards are often conservative financially, and want financial advisors who make them feel that their goal of caring for family is protected.
  • The Independent. This type of affluent investor wants the freedom that financial security ensures—freedom to do what they want, when they want to do it. To them, wealth is a means to a desired end. They want to work with financial advisors who can give advice that will allow them to attain—and maintain—financial freedom and flexibility.
  • The Phobic. Phobics don’t like investing, don’t understand it and don’t want to learn. They prefer to delegate investment duties to a financial advisor they trust and who demonstrates reliability and dedication.
  • The Mogul. Moguls seek power, influence and control, and they tend to view investing as yet another arena where they can exercise those things.
  • The Accumulator. These investors save more than they spend, live below their means and don’t show outward signs of affluence. They may have millions of dollars, but might wear only sale-priced clothes from discount stores. Their goal is capital appreciation, pure and simple. The more money they have, the better and more comfortable they feel.

Note: There’s nothing inherently good or bad about any of the personality types. Each one simply reflects someone’s core beliefs and ideals about money and wealth.

IDENTIFY YOUR HNW PERSONALITY

If you choose to work with an advisor, it’s important to partner with one who shares your particular HNW personality—or who at least knows how to work well with your type. We believe that working with an advisor who doesn’t understand or appreciate your core values could cost you financially.

Example: Say you’re a Mogul type who is seeking outsized returns and willing to take substantial risk to maximize the probability of obtaining your goal. You’ll probably be poorly served and disappointed by an advisor who favors conservative investments. Likewise, if you’re a Phobic and your advisor constantly wants to talk about the gyrations of the markets, you’ll find yourself having an unenjoyable investment experience.

So which HNW profile fits you closest? We tend to see that many people are Family Stewards—they do what they do in order to help give their spouses, children and grandchildren more opportunities in life.

If you’re not sure, write down some answers to these questions:

What would you like your investments to achieve? If you’re a Family Steward, your answers will revolve around what you would like your money to do for your family, ranging from funding the college education of a child or grandchild to taking care of an elderly parent to estate planning that ensures a harmonious division of assets for your children. You’ll want an advisor who focuses in those areas and has an in-depth understanding of families and family dynamics.

If, by contrast, you’re an Independent, your answers will probably include goals like buying your dream house or sailing around the world. In other words, you will place the highest value on using money to buy personal autonomy and freedom to do exactly what you want to do in life—and your advisor will need to understand and account for those drivers when serving you.

When you think about money, what concerns, needs or feelings come to mind? If you write down a phrase like “I want my money to grow as quickly and safely as possible” or “I want to have $5 million by the time I’m 60,” you can be pretty confident you are an Accumulator looking mainly to acquire more assets. That might mean you should seek out an advisor who pursues strong growth over time.

If you associate feelings of power, importance and control with money, you are most likely a Mogul. You see having more money as having more ability to influence people—ranging from family members to business contacts to community leaders—and events to your advantage.

How involved do you like to be in the investing process? If you feel investing is uncomfortable, a burden or even a bit scary, you are probably a classic Phobic—and you’ll probably want an advisor who doesn’t throw a lot of detailed information about investing at you.

Conclusion

Armed with a good idea of your high-net-worth personality type, you can assess whether the advice you are getting today reflects that type. It’s another key step in helping to position yourself to achieve an elite wealth management experience.

Fidato Wealth LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser. This brochure is solely for informational purposes. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Fidato Wealth LLC and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by Fidato Wealth LLC unless a client service agreement is in place. Copyright 2018 by AES Nation, LLC. If you are not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are notified that any review, copying, distribution or use of this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please (i) notify the sender immediately by e-mail or by telephone and (ii) destroy all copies of this message. Please note that trading instructions through email, fax or voicemail will not be taken, as your identity and timely retrieval of instructions cannot be guaranteed.  If you do not wish to receive marketing emails from this sender, please send an email to sayhello@fidatowealth.com.

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Financial Planning for a Special Needs Child

 Raising children and grandchildren is challenging in the best of circumstances. But when a child has special needs or a disability, the hurdles can look more like mountains and the potholes can feel more like bottomless pits. 

That’s especially true when it comes to paying for the many expenses that can accompany raising a special needs child as well as positioning assets for the child’s future. 

The good news: There are savvy financial moves that parents and grandparents of children with special needs can make that may potentially deliver big benefits to both themselves and their kids—today, tomorrow and down the road. 

MULTIPLE FINANCIAL CHALLENGES 

Parents of children with special needs can face some unique financial concerns. For example, a child’s special needs often are identified when problems occur after the child is born—giving parents no advance warning or time to look into what it could take financially to address the issue. Also, while many health care needs require a one-time expense, special needs health care expenses are often ongoing—requiring monthly, weekly or even daily services that could be needed for years. 

What’s more, those ongoing costs might be highly inconsistent from year to year—making it even harder to plan. 

NAVIGATING TODAY’S EXPENSES 

Smart financial planning around special needs involves thinking about the foreseeable road ahead, along with the distant and more uncertain future. 

Start with some basic wealth planning, such as budgeting. In addition, many families qualify for financial help from government agencies. One example: Monthly Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is available to some individuals who meet the SSI disability standard. 

Important: Don’t assume you earn too much or are too wealthy to get any benefits. The rules can vary from state to state, making it possible you’ll qualify for some amount of assistance. 

That said, it’s important to look to more advanced solutions. One tool to consider: an ABLE account—essentially a 529-like savings plan to help families caring for children or adults with disabilities. ABLE account contributions grow tax-free and withdrawals are tax-free when used for qualified disability expenses. Anyone can contribute to an ABLE account, including grandparents. 

Another key benefit of ABLE accounts is that the contributions are shielded from asset-based limits that could jeopardize an individual’s ability to access government assistance. That means an ABLE account could be a good way to provide financially for a child with special needs without making a direct financial gift to him or her that could jeopardize access to other financial support. 

However, there are some potential downsides. Example: If the ABLE account exceeds $100,000, the individual is no longer eligible for SSI. 

WEALTH PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE 

Special needs financial planning also has to address estate planning, in the event you die and are unable to care for your child. 

Often, parents who want to help ensure their child with special needs will be taken care of after they’re gone will set up a special needs trust that’s designed to hold and safeguard assets to benefit the child. (That said, parents also set up these trusts while still alive to help supplement the cost of care.) The trust can be set up with terms and language for how and when the money should be used, although keep in mind that many specific terms must be met for the trust to be deemed acceptable. And as with many other types of trusts, a special needs trust can potentially protect assets if the child is sued or becomes divorced at some point. 

In general, there are two main types of special needs trusts that most families with assets to invest tend to consider: 

▪ A first-party trust is set up when the assets contributed to the trust belong to the beneficiary—that is, your special needs child or grandchild. This can happen if the child inherits wealth or gets money from a legal settlement. The beneficiary is considered to be the owner of the assets in this scenario. The good news is that when those assets are put into a special needs trust, they’re excluded from government aid calculations determining eligibility for the types of benefits noted above. The bad news: As with the ABLE account, when the beneficiary dies, the government can claim assets still in the trust to reimburse it for payments it made. 

▪ A third-party trust is used when the funding assets come from parents, grandparents or anyone other than the beneficiary (who in this case would not be considered the owner of the assets). A third-party trust also allows a beneficiary to retain his or her government assistance—but because the assets contributed belong to someone else, the government won’t seek to collect remaining assets when the beneficiary dies. The upshot: A third-party trust gives you more flexibility to transfer remaining wealth to another beneficiary (such as another child or a charity). 

(A third type of trust, a pooled trust, is aimed at families with relatively modest assets.) 

As with other trusts, you must carefully consider who is the right person to name as trustee and how to best fund the special needs trust—two issues we’ll explore in a future report that focuses on special needs trusts. 

CONCLUSION 

There are a number of steps that families with a child with special needs can take to help ease the financial burden of ensuring their children get the care they need, as well as set their children up for better and more stable financial lives as they grow up. 

Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all answer given that one family’s particular situation can be quite different from another’s. But for families experiencing the confusion and uncertainty that accompany raising a child with special needs, knowing that there are options to consider can be a helpful foundation from which to create a plan for today and well into the future. 

Fidato Wealth LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser. This brochure is solely for informational purposes. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Fidato Wealth LLC and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by Fidato Wealth LLC unless a client service agreement is in place. Copyright 2018 by AES Nation, LLC. If you are not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are notified that any review, copying, distribution or use of this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please (i) notify the sender immediately by e-mail or by telephone and (ii) destroy all copies of this message. Please note that trading instructions through email, fax or voicemail will not be taken, as your identity and timely retrieval of instructions cannot be guaranteed.  If you do not wish to receive marketing emails from this sender, please send an email to sayhello@fidatowealth.com.

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Why Advisors Are Rethinking The 4% Rule

In this article from Financial Advisor Magazine, “Why Advisors Are Rethinking The 4% Rule,” Marissa Beyer of Fidato Wealth asks, “What happens if the stock market has a great one-to-two-year period and the account balance goes up—does the distribution amount get recalculated? What if the opposite happens, and the account value goes down? The rule also doesn’t account for unexpected expenses, such as healthcare emergencies, troubled grandchildren or ‘bucket-list trips.'”

A Wall Around Your Wealth: The Importance of Asset Protection

 Success can come with a major downside: It can make you a potential magnet for lawsuits—including frivolous and unfounded ones—and other attacks that can wreak havoc on your financial health and stability. 

Indeed, you may very well know someone in your life who has been sued. Maybe it was you! 

That means you’ve got to take steps to protect the assets you’ve worked so hard to build from being unjustly taken. Otherwise, you may jeopardize your financial security and that of your company and your family. 

WHY YOU NEED ASSET PROTECTION 

Asset protection planning as we define it is pre-litigation planning that is designed to deter lawsuits if possible—and if not, to encourage favorable settlements. 

The logic of asset protection planning is clear: You build a wall around your wealth that is as difficult as legally possible for litigators, creditors and others to scale. Instead of trying to fight it out with you in court for months or years and risk losing, the litigant sees that the only reasonable option from a legal standpoint is to settle for pennies on the dollar—or, ideally, to leave empty-handed.

Important: Asset protection isn’t about “hiding money” from the world—quite the opposite, in fact. You want anyone who might come after your assets to clearly see what you have done to build a wall around your wealth. Why? It shows them the difficult legal path they’d have to take to get at that wealth—which, hopefully, will cause them to settle, negotiate or (ideally) throw up their hands and walk away. 

 

The good news is that the threats to your wealth from other people and entities may be on your radar screen. Take successful business owners, for example. More than 85 percent of successful business owners say they are concerned about becoming the object of unjust lawsuits or being victimized in divorce proceedings. The bad news: Only about a quarter (27.5 percent) of them actually have a formal asset protection plan in place (see the exhibit at right). The percentage is even lower among those business owners who say they are concerned about protecting assets. Given the risks that our litigious culture presents, these numbers are likely far too low. 

 

FOUR ASSET PROTECTION ACTION STEPS TO CONSIDER 

If you’re among the many types of successful people out there who lack an asset protection plan—or if you’re simply curious whether your existing plan is still as strong as it needs to be—consider taking a few key actions. 

1. Get protected before a claim against you is made. You can do a lot to protect your wealth before a liability arises—but thanks to a concept known as “fraudulent conveyance,” very little can be done after. As with insurance, the time to have asset protection in place is well before you need it—or even think you might need it. 

2. Cover the basics. Evaluate your liability insurance and other related policies and maximize them as best you can. Probably the fastest, easiest and cheapest move you can make is to take out a large umbrella policy to safeguard assets. Another simple but powerful strategy is to place your assets in someone else’s name, such as your spouse’s. If you’re sued, those spouse-controlled assets are often untouchable. 

Pro tip: Be sure you have a great deal of trust in your spouse and your marriage before transferring ownership of assets to him or her. In a divorce, your spouse could potentially walk away with those assets—or you could be forced to fight for them at least as hard as you’d fight a creditor who went after them. 

3. Consider a variety of other asset protection strategies. The asset protection strategies you may need will depend on your specific situation, of course. That said, it’s generally a good idea to consider your options, which might include: 

▪ Ascertain appropriate utilization of risk transfer through property-casualty insurance (homeowner’s, auto, rental, personal excess liability [umbrella], health, disability, life, long-term care, directors’ liability and professional liability insurances). 

▪ Consider various forms of ownership that either put assets beyond the reach of a creditor or make these assets less desirable for creditors. 

▪ Discuss gifting assets when there are no current creditor issues in order to lessen the likelihood of raising fraudulent transfer issues. 

▪ Structure any expected gifts and/or inheritances to protect them from claims of creditors. 

4. Be sure your attorney or other professionals are qualified to help you protect your assets. We see that far too many financial professionals aren’t in a position to provide guidance on and implementation of many asset protection solutions. Assess the asset protection expertise among your professionals—either the expertise they possess themselves or the resources they have access to via their professional networks of other experts. 

CONCLUSION 

You can’t necessarily stop someone from suing you. But you can take steps that will make it harder for litigants to collect money from you unjustly—and maybe even prevent those litigants from coming after you in the first place. 

When you think about how hard you’ve worked to grow your assets, we think you’ll agree that it makes sense to put strategies in place to protect them too. 

Fidato Wealth LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser. This brochure is solely for informational purposes. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Fidato Wealth LLC and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by Fidato Wealth LLC unless a client service agreement is in place. Copyright 2018 by AES Nation, LLC. If you are not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are notified that any review, copying, distribution or use of this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please (i) notify the sender immediately by e-mail or by telephone and (ii) destroy all copies of this message. Please note that trading instructions through email, fax or voicemail will not be taken, as your identity and timely retrieval of instructions cannot be guaranteed.  If you do not wish to receive marketing emails from this sender, please send an email to sayhello@fidatowealth.com.

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Big Wealth Mistakes the Super Rich Don’t Make

 No one is perfect—not even the smartest or most famous among us. But some people veer closer to perfection than others. 

Take the self-made Super Rich—a group we define as those with a net worth of $500 million or more that they earned through efforts such as starting a business. These extremely wealthy individuals aren’t immune to making mistakes with their wealth. But we find that they do tend to avoid certain crucial errors that might otherwise impact their bottom lines and financial futures. What’s more, these are the same mistakes that can trip up investors and families at just about any level of wealth. 

The message: Sidestepping errors consistently can be just as important as making a lot of winning moves. You can potentially help yourself and your bottom line by learning what the Super Rich don’t do with their wealth! 

With that in mind, here are three of the biggest financial blunders that the Super Rich make a point to watch out for so they can avoid them. 

1. Losing sight of goals 

The Super Rich are generally very skilled at developing and spelling out their goals and even determining their deeper philosophies and beliefs about wealth and values. They might, for example, craft a family vision statement about the family’s optimal outcomes and the reasons (both practical and psychological) for wanting them. Then they create a mission statement and a plan with the steps to take to realize that mission. 

From there, all decisions about wealth are made only after considering the family’s vision, values and action plan. Any moves or changes should reflect those underlying factors. By having systems in place to never lose sight of their key goals and the factors underlying those goals, the Super Rich do a superior job of not chasing hot investments or “opportunities” that don’t amount to anything. 

That doesn’t mean the Super Rich are rigid and inflexible when it comes to their wealth planning. When goals change significantly enough, they make adjustments. 

The big lesson: Be very clear about what you want to accomplish. While it is important to be flexible, any decision to make adjustments or large shifts in strategy should be deliberate and carefully considered. Likewise, your decisions should certainly not be the result of a lack of guidelines for making smart decisions or because you’ve discovered a “shiny and new” investment product that has nothing to do with your financial goals, values and philosophy. 

2. Working with professionals who are subpar—or worse! 

The Super Rich know better than most that there are far too many “professionals” who are actually pretenders (who have good intentions but lack necessary skills), predators (who want to steal from them), or exploiters (who promote overly aggressive solutions). 

That’s why they take specific steps to help confirm they are working with consummate professionals: 

◼ Look for leading authorities. The objective is to work with recognized experts—such as industry thought leaders. 

◼ Rely on referrals. The most consistently effective method is to garner referrals from high-quality professionals they are currently engaging. 

◼ Pay for quality. While the Super Rich make a concerted effort to minimize costs, as we all do, they don’t forgo desired results simply because pursuing those results might require them to spend some money. 

The big lesson: By turning to leading authorities—thought leaders—and soliciting referrals from high-caliber professionals you already know and trust, you can potentially greatly increase your chances of working with truly skilled professionals. 

3. Failing to get second opinions and do stress tests. 

Remember “Trust, but verify”—the phrase made famous by Ronald Reagan when talking about the Soviet Union? The Super Rich take that message to heart. They are fully aware that even the top professionals they tend to hire can make mistakes. They also know that changes in their lives or the world at large can impact how a solution they have in place will behave. 

Therefore, the Super Rich rely on second opinions and stress testing. 

Ideally, a second opinion occurs before action is taken. Example: Say you’re considering a particular tax mitigation strategy. You might get a second opinion from another noted leading tax authority to be certain about the validity and viability of the strategy. Second opinions are commonly sought whenever there is any question or any sense of uncertainty, but really, they can be done at any time. 

Stress testing is typically done when the Super Rich want to evaluate an existing strategy that’s already in place. It is a check to see whether what they implemented in the past remains (and is likely to continue to remain) both viable and valid, that things are working as predicted. Stress testing is like an annual medical checkup. There may not be anything wrong, but it is a very good way to catch a problem before that problem becomes severe. 

The big lesson: No matter your level of wealth, getting a second opinion when you are unsure or uncomfortable about a strategy or idea or product is usually worthwhile. Similarly, periodically stress testing your overall wealth plan or aspects of it can enable you to avoid problems now or down the road. 

ADOPT BEST PRACTICES 

By and large, the self-made Super Rich have proven that they know what to do—and what not to do—in order to create, grow and maintain sizable wealth. By avoiding major slipups on your own path to wealth creation, you can potentially encounter fewer financial potholes along the way. 

Fidato Wealth LLC is a Registered Investment Adviser. This brochure is solely for informational purposes. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Fidato Wealth LLC and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by Fidato Wealth LLC unless a client service agreement is in place. Copyright 2018 by AES Nation, LLC. If you are not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are notified that any review, copying, distribution or use of this transmission is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please (i) notify the sender immediately by e-mail or by telephone and (ii) destroy all copies of this message. Please note that trading instructions through email, fax or voicemail will not be taken, as your identity and timely retrieval of instructions cannot be guaranteed.  If you do not wish to receive marketing emails from this sender, please send an email to sayhello@fidatowealth.com.

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