Apologies for a shorter blog than usual, but it’s been a busy few weeks!
Best Financial Planners
For those who were wondering, “What happened to the blog last week?” The answer is as amusing as it is mundane. While normally the blog gets written and published on Tuesdays, last week a good chunk of time was absorbed by flying to Columbus, OH, to attend the Financial Planning Association’s Annual Conference, where I was one of eighty awardees of Money’s “Best Financial Planners” awards; and the only one recognized in Colorado! While “best financial advisor” lists and awards are rather common in the industry across many publications (Barrons, Forbes, etc.), this was the first of its kind to focus on criteria other than “assets under management” or “most business development.” Instead, the Money award focused on more client-relevant metrics such as qualifications, specialties and specialization, client and consumer trust, and client service. The full methodology can be reviewed here.
Technology Updates
In other news, we wanted to give our readers a heads up that we’ll be rolling out an update across the Wealth Planning portal. Over the years, the software provider has rolled out various reporting tools to clients such as the “goals” and “workshop” views, but unfortunately those have been somewhat disconnected from the planning experience. The new module, called “My Plan,” encompasses some of the primary reporting functions such as year-by-year cash flow, net worth and investments, and goal-specific planning. While this module draws on the existing financial planning data already present in the weath planning portal, it will take us some time to tinker and get it set up properly for clients on a client by client basis. As we roll this function out over the next few months, please keep an eye out for your notification that your plan portal has been updated. In the meantime, the goals and reports functions will be disabled to ensure we don’t have data mismatching in one place or another as we go about adopting the updated modules.
Additionally, for those who haven’t already seen it, the performance reporting portal has gotten a major facelift! You should have gotten a notification over the past two weeks asking you to update your risk tolerance questionnaire under the profile tab. For those who’ve done that already, thank you, and for those who haven’t gotten around to it, now’s a good excuse to get it done and see the new layout!
Fourth Quarter Planning
Finally, we’re one week out from starting to send out invitations for the 4th quarter planning cycle for our comprehensive wealth planning clients. As a reminder to our veterans and a refresher for our newer clients, in the fourth quarter we focus on a few primary tasks:
- Annual income and tax projection
- Charitable gift planning
- Review of savings rates and deferrals for accumulators and distribution rates for retirees
- Career development and salary benchmarks for those in the workforce
- Employer plan and annual benefits updates (for those clients in the Q4 Cycle)
We will send out invitations to schedule appointments the first week of October. Please be mindful that we will need updated pay stubs for those clients who are working, gain and loss reports for any held away non-retirement investments, and a year-to-date profit and loss statement for any rental properties or business assets. Please note that for those in Q4 open enrollment for benefits, you should upload any relevant data ASAP and notify us directly that you have done so, so that we can get back to you in a timely manner without delaying for a meeting that may take place after the open enrollment period. Please also note that we will begin our end-of-year hiatus on December 18th, so you should schedule your Q4 meeting as soon as you are ready and have availability to do so.
As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re looking forward to wrapping up a banner year with you in our planning community!