Wealth Management Questions

• Can you explain Wealth Management for a flat-fee/rate versus Investment Management for a percentage-based fee?

  The fee model best for clients varies, especially if you have a large amount invested. 

  For example, if you have $1,00,000 invested, you’ll pay $10,000 annually to an advisor charging 1% of assets under management without any financial advice and planning. That $10,000 payment will increase as your investments rise.

  However, you may only pay $10,000* per year for flat-fee wealth management with Mountaintop Wealth which includes investment management, comprehensive financial advice and planning. Plus, we don’t change the price of this service based on a percentage of assets under management.   

• What is the family tree option?

  By keeping the family’s investments at Mountaintop Wealth, they may qualify for discounted pricing compared to using separate providers. Benefits include: 

  Building Generational Wealth:

  • Strategic Investing: By carefully managing and growing the family’s assets, the firm helps build wealth that can be passed down to future generations. This can create a legacy of financial security and opportunity for children, grandchildren, and beyond.

  • Open Communication: The financial planning process encourages open communication about money within the family.
  • Shared Goals: Working together towards common financial goals can create a sense of unity and shared purpose.
  • For Spouses and Partners: Both partners are involved in the financial planning process, leading to shared understanding and informed decision-making.
  • For Children: The firm can provide financial literacy education for children, empowering them to make smart financial choices as they grow.
  • For Aging Parents: We can assist with elder care planning, ensuring the family’s patriarchs and matriarchs are well-cared for.
• Is investing risky?

  All investing strategies we offer involve risk and may result in a loss of your original investment which you
  should be prepared to bear. Many of these risks apply equally to stocks, bonds, commodities, and any other
  investment or security. That’s why we focus on long-term investing which has a proven record of success. 

• Which investment company will have my money?

  Charles Schwab. Although clients may request us to use a broker-dealer of their choosing, we generally recommend that clients open brokerage accounts with Schwab. We are not affiliated with Schwab. The client will ultimately make the final decision of the custodian to be used to hold the client’s investments by signing the selected broker-dealer’s account opening documentation.

• What is your company investment philosophy? 

  We prefer index investing to keep fund expense fees low.  Through strategic asset allocation, we construct our long-term target weights for asset classes and strategies based on the client’s time horizon, risk tolerance, and required rate of return to meet his or her financial goals. Through tactical asset allocation approaches,
  we may deviate from target long-term weights established according to our strategic asset allocation approach within tolerance ranges based on our return expectations for asset classes and investment strategies at a given point in the market cycle. 

• Do you provide active and passive investing options?

  We may choose investment vehicles that are considered passive, active, or a combination of both styles.
  Passive investing involves building portfolios that are composed of various distinct asset classes. The asset classes
  are weighted in a manner to achieve a desired relationship between correlation, risk and return. Funds that passively
  capture the returns of the desired asset classes are placed in the portfolio.
  Active investing involves a single manager or managers who employ some method, strategy or technique to
  construct a portfolio that is intended to generate returns that are greater than the broader market or a designated
  benchmark. Actively managed funds are also designed to reduce volatility and risk.
  We may engage in both passive and active investing in your portfolio. However, we strive to construct portfolios
  of funds and individual securities that we believe will have the greatest probability for achieving our clients’
  personal financial goals with the least amount of volatility and risk rather than attempt to outperform an arbitrary
  index or benchmark.

• How we determine our fee for wealth management?

  The fee determination is based upon the complexity of the client’s financial profile and therefore the resources required to service the client during the year.

  Clients whose annual fees are on the low end of the fee ranges are clients whose financial profiles have minimal complexity.

  Typical aspects of a client with minimal financial complexity include, but are not limited to, the following: single with no children, no ex-spouses or no other dependent persons, a W-2 wage earner as opposed to self-employed, does not own any real estate, does not own any investments besides liquid publicly traded securities and pooled investment vehicles, does not have any particular legacy goals for his or her estate, etc.

  Clients whose annual fees are on the high end of the fee range are clients whose financial profiles contain a lot of complexity. Such clients may include, but are not limited to, business owners, clients with large holdings of real estate or other less liquid assets, clients with highly structured legal estates, clients whose household has multiple different investment accounts, business retirement plans, and complex divorce cases.

  No increase in the annual fee shall be effective without agreement from the client by signing a new agreement or amending their current advisory agreement.