Financial Planning

At Reef Resources Financial Management, the financial planning process starts with a detailed understanding of your long-term goals. We don’t lump you into a predefined group. Rather, we aim to learn about your specific needs and objectives and tailor a recommendation accordingly. On joining our team, we will gather information on your current financial situation, including your investment goals, time horizon, income and expenses, portfolio distributions and cash flow needs. We will use that information to prepare a personalized financial plan with clear, easy-to-understand information to help you make the right decisions about your financial future.

We can help you prepare for the future with a financial plan designed specifically for you. A good financial plan is a blueprint that lets you save, spend, invest, manage risk, and approach tax and estate planning with confidence.

Like a finely-tailored custom suit, financial planning advice is typically more effective the better it fits. Just as you may not be able to grab a jacket and shirt off the rack at a store and expect them to conform perfectly to your measurements, you may not be able to walk into a typical financial firm and leave with a financial plan best suited to help you reach your goals.

Many financial firms focus on selling you complex, often expensive products, like annuities, mutual funds, insurance or tax services. Many financial firms may not take the time to qualify your aspirations or access what might be in your best interests, because they’re interested to sell you pre-packaged commission-based products.

At Reef Resources Financial Management, we focus on taking a personalized approach to financial planning not on selling products for a commission. We understand every investor is different. Maybe you’re focused on finding ways to avoid running out of money in retirement. Perhaps, you plan on growing your wealth or living a more comfortable lifestyle. Or you may want to pass money on to your children or grandchildren. Whatever your long-term or short-term financial goals, Reef Resources Financial Management will design a plan that aims to help you reach them.

Drilling down further, you might require help understanding how vehicles like trust funds work and how to establish them. Or if you’re trying to assist a grandchild with college tuition, you might seek advice on how to proceed. Once we learn about you and your needs, we provide portfolio strategy recommendations, financial planning advice and actionable considerations on estate planning, Social Security and insurance. We recognize you require thoughtful, principled financial planning to meet your objectives and we’re determined to help you get there.

Our Financial Planning Approach

A Personalized Financial Plan For Your Situation

We approach financial planning comprehensively, seeking to help you prevent negative eventualities and prepare you for the unexpected. Together, we’ll work with you to build your monthly budget, calculate retirement plan contributions (if applicable), and evaluate annuities or other insurance products effectiveness (as applicable) in meeting your long term investment goals. We’ll discuss the differences between income and cash flow and provide guidance on how to avoid financial predators who often seek to take unfair advantage of retirees.

Why reefresources-fm Financial Plan Might Be Right For You?

First, because of the things we do:

We provide an asset management strategy and recommendation based on your specific needs, analyzing time horizon, investment objectives and other factors specific to you.
We can help you understand your legacy and how to ensure your wishes are met in the future.
We educate you on financial planning topics like: Social Security optimization, legacy and charitable gift planning, perspective on annuities, life insurance and long term care.
We provide access to professional resources.

Secondly, and importantly, because of the things we don’t do:

We won’t sell you annuities or other high-fee insurance products. We don’t receive referral fees from other professionals.
We don’t share your information with third party groups to develop your plan.
We don’t charge you confusing ongoing or hourly fees to produce your financial plan.

Accessing Your Financial Plan

When we work with you to build your financial plan, we go through several important steps and major factors to consider:

Does your financial plan provide an investment strategy to help you reach your financial goals and objectives?
The overall success of your financial plan is partly dependent on an appropriate investment recommendation, based on your long-term financial goals and objectives. At Reef Resources Financial Management, we take into account everything from your family health history to the specific stocks, bonds or other investments in your portfolio to help build an in-depth understanding of the objectives for your assets. Using tools like portfolio simulations and historical modeling, we can provide an investment recommendation we believe is most likely to help you reach your goals. This recommendation provides the foundation for your future financial success and may help you avoid running out of money in retirement.
Is your financial plan helping to ensure you leave the legacy you want?
Many investors find their investment time horizon may last beyond their lifetime, giving them the opportunity to use their assets to support someone or something important to them. While supplementary to an appropriate investment recommendation, planning for a legacy is a common desire for many of our clients. At Reef Resources Financial Management, we provide education and resources to help you invest and prepare for your retirement and legacy goals.
Does your financial plan provide perspective on financial planning topics such as Social Security, taxes and insurance?
Many investors want to feel they are making informed and prudent decisions about all aspects of their wealth, not just their investment strategy and legacy. Understanding the relationship between taxes, cash flow requirements, and Social Security benefits may influence how you meet your living expenses both before and after retirement. Additionally, recognizing the connection between your investments and insurance needs (e.g. health, long-term care, and annuities) may help you decide whether purchasing coverage is appropriate.

Financial Planning Tips

Mapping Out Your Financial Future

Achieving your long-term investment goals typically requires a meticulous financial plan built specifically to help you succeed. But not just any plan can get you there. To reach your investment goals, this plan must address your individual needs, incorporate advice and help you avoid common pitfalls. Most importantly, your financial plan should place your needs first—not your advisor’s.

At Reef Resources Financial Management, we’ve developed a distinct approach to financial planning. Our method is designed to help you make the right decisions for your future—not to sell you complex products you don’t need. The process starts by asking you to consider four critical questions outlined in our guide, A Financial Plan You Can Trust:

Does your plan answer the basic questions you have about retirement?
Is your plan personalized to your situation?
Does your plan address key financial planning subjects?
Is your plan easy to understand and act on?

We believe the answers to these questions are the foundation of a successful financial plan. They help you address questions such as whether you’ll have enough money to last you in retirement, how inflation might affect your savings and the potential cost of long-term care.

We believe a successful plan also includes these factors:

Access to professional resources with minimized conflicts of interest.
Personalized investment recommendations.
Income and expense timelines.
Legacy and charitable giving planning.
Estate planning advice for establishing your will, trust and power of attorney.
Capital gains and Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) guidance.
Social Security benefit optimization.
Perspective on annuities, life insurance and long-term care insurance.
Plan updates and informational review reminders.

Importantly, we don’t use our financial planning process as a primer to sell you annuities or other insurance products you don’t need, we focus on learning your investment goals and identifying the best approach to help you achieve them. Once you’re comfortable with your plan, we provide you with a dedicated Investment Counselor who knows your plan and your personal situation.

We also take into account some potential life events and their potential impact on your financial plan, including caregiving responsibilities, the loss of a spouse, your health and where you’ll decide to live in retirement.

Avoiding the Big Mistakes

Successful financial planning requires more than just evaluating your current assets and estate plan. Throughout the process, it’s easy to make mistakes that can seriously impact your long-term financial well-being. Some mistakes we can help you avoid include:

Planning for your financial security based on improper goal-setting.
Underestimating the complexity of estate planning.
Failing to determine an effective tax strategy for your cash flow needs.
Ignoring the impact of capital gains and losses.
Underestimating how long you’ll need your assets to provide for you.
Disregarding Social Security.
Relying too heavily on annuities for income in retirement.
Purchasing insurance products to cover future income gaps without considering alternatives.
Not hiring the right professionals to assist you.

We place great emphasis on helping our clients avoid these mistakes in their financial planning. In addition to addressing your individual needs, we spend the time necessary to educate you in each of these areas and answer any questions you might have. We want you to feel confident and comfortable with your tailored financial plan.

Creating Your Financial Plan

When you work with us, you will understand the importance of creating a financial plan to help address your needs in retirement. We will work with you to provide a better sense of how much your retirement may cost, how you will pay for it and whether or not you will need to generate additional income in retirement. Our resource, The Definitive Guide to Retirement Income, further explains how we can help you answer these kinds of questions.

The guide takes you through key considerations, including:

Making sure your plan takes into account potential life expectancy and all expenses you might incur.
Determining what sort of income you can expect in retirement and whether it meets your needs.
We help explain how you might benefit from specific investments, asset allocations, and discuss tax strategies which may fit into your plan.

How Reef Resources Financial Management Is Different

Some financial firms focus on selling life insurance and annuities. However, we work with you to determine the necessary steps to help you reach your financial goals—not sell products for a commission. We learn about your entire financial picture and seek to understand your financial goals and objectives. Our financial planning service is based on your goals.

When you work with us:

Your portfolio is constructed based on your needs, taking into account your investment objectives, time horizon, cash flow needs and other factors specific to you.
You receive proactive service from your Investment Counselor, who will keep you up-to-date on your portfolio.
You have the opportunity to interact with the people making investment decisions through in-person events including exclusive client programs.
You can take advantage of global investing opportunities with our significant experience investing domestically and overseas.
You won’t be limited to a single style of investing (like growth or value), because we can shift our strategy based on our forward-looking view of market conditions.
You will have competitive, transparent and easy to understand fees that align our interests with yours.

We believe that our team here at Reef Resources Financial Management can help build you a more secure financial future, and taking advantage of our financial planning service is a great first step.