OVERVIEW

This firm is unique in that we offer both financial planning, investment management & advice, and legal services under one roof. There are only a few people in the state of Washington with the requisite education and licenses to do his. This gives you many of the core personal & family financial services in one place.

We are licensed as a financial planner, not a stock broker.  We do not sell or push any particular investments.  We do not collect any commissions for our efforts. All of our work is fee based. We charge an hourly fee for consulting services and a percentage of assets for our managed accounts.  Read through the Financial Planning pages and familiarize yourself with the various kinds of planning and consulting services we provide. We are especially proud of our “Gold Metal Client Services” - the unique and special ways that we furnish services to our clients.

We have no canned portfolios or off the shelf forms.  All of our work is customized to fit the unique needs of our client families.   We find out what you need and build on that.  The Investment Philosophy pages summarize our firm’s core beliefs. They state the underlying principles used in constructing our Investment Portfolios. We are committed to its consistent implementation. Policy design, implementation, monitoring and modification, are an integral part of the wealth management process. Our success should not be measured by performance statistics, but rather by your success in achieving your goals.

We hope that all of our managed accounts will trust us to be the “Keeper of the Big Picture” for their family. We have been distressed to uncover major problems in a families financial situation because of miscommunications among family members and their advisor/consultants, or items that were overlooked entirely. The Keeper of the Big Picture maintains an overview of their entire estate, investment and financial plan - to make sure it does what they really want, that everything fits together nicely, and that all of the steps to implement the plan have been completed.

Many wealthy families have their own private "family office" consisting of one or more attorneys, accountants, investment advisors, financial planners, and insurance agents. Other families with fewer assets may have a smaller office with just a few professionals who are dual licensed handling all of their family financial matters. A multi-family office provides those diversified services to a small group of wealthy families at once. I have been informed that English Solicitors have furnished the diversified services of a multi-family office to the dukes and duchesses of the English peerage for centuries.  So your looking at a model with solid roots.

We have noted over the past few years that people are foregoing substantial amounts of money because of major mistakes in their family financial planning.  These include inadequate estate, education, and retirement planning.  For example, not having a Credit Shelter trust can slice about $865,000 right out of a married couple’s 3 million dollar estate.  It will take most families many years of investing to make up that amount.  We figure that it will be easier to help you gain substantial amounts of money by some smart planning ideas than it is to try to enhance your investment return a few percentages points each year by taking on more risk. The Legal Services pages describe the services we offer in this area.

Since we are charging a fee for our professional services we usually recommend and buy no-load, no transaction fee mutual funds.  This means no sales charge from the fund family, or brokerage commission levied by our custodian broker. Occasionally we will buy an individual stock with its own unique diversity: a conglomerate like Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, or a Mortgage REIT holding hundreds of loans.  Our strict Privacy Policy keeps your personal information confidential.  Sometimes we invest a small portion of our client portfolios in attractive private offerings.  These offerings are structured as limited partnership interests, LLC memberships, or loan participation interests.  IRAs and 401ks can invest in them using a Self Directed IRA Custodian.  We use our unique experience & dual license to perform a “due diligence” review of each investment.