By: Greg Trost, CEO & Succession Planning Strategist
Wealth Management is a long-term process involving discipline, patience, and consistency when it comes to maximizing and protecting your wealth.
Setting goals, creating a budget, contributing regularly to accounts and diversifying investments are some of the few keys to wealth management success. Something that is often overlooked is the ability to continue to educate yourself. Staying informed about financial markets, investment strategies, and other wealth management techniques can provide a vast wealth of information and knowledge that can help in your wealth management journey.
The following are strategies you can employ to maximize your wealth management.
Personal and Business Success Strategies
Trost Financial provides various types of planning for client’s finances, retirement, business succession, risk management, and taxes. For businesses, we help facilitate buy-sell agreements, establish a trust, and/or develop a succession plan to preserve the legacy of the business.
For risk management, we help clients identify their risk tolerances and employ strategies to help mitigate certain market risks. For tax planning, we review tax returns and analyze potential tax deductions a client could be making, develop strategies to defer taxes like creating Defined Benefit Plans or 401ks, and manage investment portfolios to reduce tax liabilities (tax harvesting).
Business Consulting
Our team at Trost Financial work with business owners to develop a strategic plan that aligns with their long-term goals and objectives. This involves analyzing their profit and loss statements, conducting market analysis, and developing growth strategies. We coordinate with accountants and attorneys to determine the appropriate legal and tax structure for each client’s business. This involves analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of different structures such as a sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, or corporation (Subchapter S or C).
Charitable Planning and Philanthropy
We have discussed setting up charitable remainder trusts with clients as well as legacy accounts where certain charities and philanthropies become the beneficiaries of the assets after the client’s passing. They can not only have a significant impact on taxes but also your legacy
Corporate Risk Management and Insurance
Through analysis we recommend insurance policies to ensure you have appropriate coverages to protect against potential risks. This involves general liability insurance, property insurance, and worker’s compensation. We also provide business continuity planning which helps businesses develop a plan to ensure they can continue to operate even in the event of a disaster.
Estate and Legacy Planning
Our team at Trost Financial works with both clients and estate attorneys to outline a plan of how an individuals’ assets will be distributed after they pass away. We often explore creating wills, living wills, trusts, guardianship paperwork, establishing power of attorney, and advanced health care directives.
To make it even easier for business owners to maximize their wealth management strategy, we put together a step-by-step guide:
- Define their financial goals/objectives – growing their business and developing a plan for retirement.
- Organize their finances – create budgets, track their expenses, analyze their profit and loss statements to identify opportunities to reduce costs.
- Risk assessment – identify threats to their business.
- Develop a business plan – create a strategy for their business that aligns with their long-term financial goals. This involves creating a business plan, identifying growth opportunities, and implementing strategies to optimize cash flow/ profitability.
- Asset Protection – Obtaining insurance coverage and establishing legal protections like forming a corporation and creating a trust for business succession.
- Working with a wealth management advisor – As advisors, we quarterback a client’s financials. For business owners to remain on the right path, business owners need to develop and implement all the above stated topics through a comprehensive financial plan. We help business owners navigate financial complexities and develop strategies to build and protect their wealth over time.
To learn more about how to maximize your wealth management, reach out to the team at Trost Financial.
