Investment management consists of developing an investment approach with a client based on their goals and risk tolerance and then implementing it through regular monitoring of invested assets. Financial planning includes investment management, but it is only a fraction of what it entails. Financial planning looks at your whole financial life, from cash flow and budgeting to insurance, estate planning, debt, and tax planning. In doing so, we are able to come up with a plan that goes far beyond investment management and assures that every piece of your financial life is working in tandem to move you toward your life goals.

Guide Financial Planning provides investment management for our ongoing financial planning clients, which you can learn more about here. We work with Schwab as our custodian and ascribe to an evidence-based investment philosophy. We strive to harness the collective wisdom of the stock market in order to maximize returns over the long term by investing in a diversified portfolio of low-cost mutual funds.

You don’t need any set amount of money to work with Guide Financial Planning. Unlike most financial advisors, we have no asset minimums. We want to bring quality, objective financial advice to those who haven’t had a chance to accumulate wealth yet and therefore usually only have access to product salesmen.

Our clients are the only ones that pay us. (And they do so through monthly or quarterly billing.) We receive no other compensation based on products or investments we recommend, so we are fee-only financial planners.

Our goal is to provide more value than we cost. We want to help people, so if we don’t think we can put you in a better position than you are now, we won’t work with you. For examples of how we have saved our clients money or helped them earn more, read this blog post. While we do improve our clients’ financial situations, most of them say that the greatest value we provide is actually the peace of mind of knowing that they are on the right track and they aren’t trying to figure everything out alone.

We understand that people’s lives change. If you ever feel that our services are no longer a good fit for you, you have the option of discontinuing service. It’s pretty easy to do. Just notify us in writing and we will cancel your monthly billing. There are no back-end fees, no surrender charges, no cancelation fees, and no hard feelings.