Two Service Models
Holistic Financial Planning
Our holistic approach integrates many the elements of your financial world into a unified picture. We work with you to design a strategic plan – a navigational strategy – to help you move forward toward your goals and achieve the things that are important to you.
One of the key differentiators of Mallery Financial is our ability to represent your entire financial world in one coherent picture. Our innovative financial planning software combines comprehensive planning capabilities with universal account aggregation designed to provide the most comprehensive picture of your financial world available. As a holistic planning client, you will have access to your own personal financial website, where you can access account information, planning documents, and legal documents in one location, with secure, single sign-on access from any internet connection.
Focused-Issue Services
Not everyone wants a comprehensive relationship. Maybe you just need help with your investments, or want an independent review of your insurance program, or maybe help with advice on a specific issue you are grappling with. We offer advisory, consulting, and implementation services on an a la carte basis if that better matches your wants and needs.
Why come to a holistic financial planning firm for a single service like a 401(k) rollover or an insurance need? Because our business model means we have a full toolbox and can provide you a wide range of options. And because we operate under an advisory business model, we are geared toward a service relationship and impartiality in recommendations, not selling products. Our ongoing service relationships with our holistic clients means we have the systems in place to provide you professional monitoring, reporting, and service.
Two Models, One Guiding Principle
Regardless of the size of account or scope of engagement, we are committed to serving our clients for long-term success.
Financial Planning Framework
Having a plan is an essential part of achieving any goal. Yet experience shows that plans can be blown off course by unexpected events or changing circumstances. There’s the rub – to have a plan, yet to realize that it must be flexible and able to adjust to changing circumstances.
“Navigation” best describes our approach to planning. We target the coordinates, map out the route to get you there, and steam ahead hard in that direction – but it is also important to be aware of potential hazards and to keep escape routes, contingency plans, and resources available in case of a major storm.
At Mallery Financial, a plan is not a stale document that assumes a static world – it is a living, breathing process that navigates the changeability of time as you move forward toward your goal.
A plan, or “navigational map,” gives context not only for your investment program, but for many other decisions, both financial and personal. It provides the framework for your life experience and the quality of life you desire as you move forward.
In fact, the real goal of a financial plan is not as much about the numbers as it is about helping you to achieve personal as well as financial freedom, to enjoy the quality of life that is meaningful to you, and to experience peace, security, and fulfillment throughout your life.
Our goal for your navigational plan is that it be sound, feasible, durable, and the best of all possible routes for you, based on your goals, circumstances, values, lifestyle, and personal preferences.
Investment Services
At Mallery Financial, helping clients with their investments is never a cookie cutter experience. We take a personal approach to designing an investment plan that matches your desired outcome with your risk position and other variables specific to your life. By taking your entire situation into consideration, we provide a holistic solution that integrates all aspects of your goals, values, circumstances, and preferences.
Key Points:
- We are independent*
- We have no proprietary products to sell
- We have a large toolbox from which to choose, a broad range of investment approaches and vehicles
- We do extensive research on investment programs before recommending them
- We strive to match clients to the most appropriate investment approach for their goals, objectives, risk tolerance, circumstances, preferences, and values
- Flexibility is important
- Your privacy and security is our highest priority
Investing in Your Values
Some clients want to invest in alignment with certain social, moral, or religious values. We offer you the ability to achieve that level of integration.
If you’re interested in exploring values-based investing, we offer a diverse menu of options, research, and full discussion and consideration in helping you arrive at the solution that fits you.
Self-Directed IRAs
If you’re interested in holding alternative assets in your IRAs (for example, real estate, precious metals, artwork, or other non-conventional assets), we work with trust companies and can help facilitate that objective for you.
Risk Management
Managing risk is an important part of financial planning, investment management, and building long-term financial security. What good does it do to have a “perfect” plan only to have everything scuttled by a major market correction, a legal challenge, a health crisis, or other unexpected calamity?
Risk management is a central focus at Mallery Financial. We apply awareness of risk and risk mitigation techniques to a broad range of strategies to manage investment risk, personal exposure to risk, protecting assets against legal exposures, and more conventional insurance-based approaches.
We are not a firm focused on trying to sell insurance products. Although insurance is often an appropriate solution, our holistic advisory approach means we look more broadly for planning strategies and investment techniques that mitigate risk. We start by helping to determine your risk exposure, analyze the impact of that risk, and then look for the most appropriate solutions for managing or transferring that risk in a way that fits your needs and makes the most effective use of your capital. Our “full toolbox approach” means we do have insurance options (often good options), but we remain agnostic, compelled only by client needs and preferences.
For more information about our approach to insurance, see the Insurance section of this website.
Insurance
Many people lump “risk management” together with insurance, for good reason. Transferring risk to a third party through insurance can be a cost-effective, powerful tool. But insurance can also be oversold, costly, and ineffective. In fact, because insurance is almost always sold, people who feel like they are being sold often pull back, raising questions and concerns about the intrinsic merits of the proposed insurance. Often those questions and concerns are not fully resolved, leaving lingering uncertainty. Sometimes those questions will save someone from a costly, unnecessary mistake. Other times it might deprive the person of what might be a good insurance solution for their situation.
Independent Advocates for Clients
As independent* advocates for buyers, Mallery Financial takes an approach that, we believe, is 180 degrees from most conventional practices. Our approach is to advocate on behalf of clients and their best interests, emphasizing transparency, objective analysis, and client-centered recommendations. It sounds strange to have to say that, but in a world of commission-based salespeople which may be trying to close deals at any cost, we believe you might find it refreshing to know that we are a firm you can turn to for objective, unbiased, non-sales-focused advice.
A Model for Every Need
You can choose the compensation arrangement -- commission or fee – based on your needs and preferences.
Independent Insurance Brokering
Traditional insurance brokering may be appropriate for average needs for families and businesses with straightforward insurance protection needs.
Fee-Based Insurance Consulting
A fee-based approach may be more appropriate for high net worth families, businesses with complex needs, and the allied professionals who serve them (attorneys, CPAs, bankers, etc.). Click the following link for more information about our fee-based insurance consulting services.
Insurance Categories Served
Insurance Categories We Serve Directly:
- Life insurance
- Disability income insurance
- Long-term care insurance
- Annuities (fixed, variable, and equity-indexed)
Insurance Categories We Serve Through Referral:
- Health (including Medicare)
- Property & casualty (auto, home, etc.)
- Liability
Client-Centered, Data-Driven Insurance Services
Regardless of the insurance type, need, or model of service, Mallery Financial always seeks to put the client's interests first. That means you will not experience pressure to buy anything or to do anything that doesn't feel 100% right, and that all analyses and recommendations are based on unusually deep analytical dives.
Retirement Planning
You’ve been saving and sacrificing to be able to enjoy a dream-filled retirement. Do you know exactly how you will turn your nest egg into regular income for what could be a long and healthy retirement life?
Retirement is a game changer. The old rules no longer apply. In retirement, you no longer think in terms of changing jobs or starting a new business, working longer, or giving your investments chance to recover after a correction. The need for income is immediate, persistent, and potentially long-lasting.
Ideas about retirement are also changing. Increasingly, the former images of rocking chairs and quietude are giving way to images of full, active, busy lives. Advances in healthcare are making it possible to experience 25, 30, even 40 years in retirement – and more fully engaged than sitting in a rocking chair (although rocking chairs are nice, too).
Planning for income in retirement requires a well-thought-out plan, specialized investment and distribution strategies, risk management, tax planning, and careful monitoring.
Consistent with our mission, our goal is to empower you to experience the kind of retirement you want by helping you maximize your income and retaining flexible access to capital throughout retirement, as well as by helping you to maximize your wealth potential.
Tax Planning**
Taxes play a critical role in your financial plan – in building wealth, creating income throughout retirement, and preserving assets. One’s wealth is not measured by the size of the account, but by the amount you can put to use after taxes, and in the flexibility with which you can access your wealth.
Our innovative software includes comprehensive tax planning capabilities. It knows the tax treatment of every element of your financial world – earned income, investment income, capital gains, annuities with exclusion ratios, taxable, tax-free, etc. – and calculates the projected impact of taxes on every transaction, distribution, and charitable gift.
We can help you optimize your assets, your income, your giving activities, and your legacy intentions to make the most efficient use of your financial resources so they can provide the most meaningful impact.
Tax Preparation
A common concern that we've heard at Mallery Financial is that tax preparers often are not providing proactive help in tax planning. The tax preparer -- the person who has the most intimate knowledge of your tax situation -- typically records what happened last year, shows you the outcome, and waits for you to provide information again next year. We hear that proactive tax planning is persistently lacking in the experience of many people.
For that reason, Stephen Mallery opened a tax preparation business to help you accomplish two things: 1) get your taxes done, accurately, on time, and affordably, and 2) gain a direct interface between the tax preparer and the financial planner for insight into how to structure income and assets designed for better tax outcomes.
Mallery has partnered with a network of top tax professionals with a bent toward proactive tax planning. For more information, see the ProActive Tax Partners website.
Estate Planning
Estate planning is important, regardless of your level of wealth or complexity of situation. Proper estate planning provides a powerful roadmap for your family, business, and other legacy interests to follow as well as simply an orderly transition of assets. This roadmap also provides guidance for late-life healthcare decisions, the extent and manner of your care, and specifics for what happens at your passing.
We start by reviewing your existing estate plan documents to help ensure they are complete and up-to-date with both intentions and current law.
We recommend uploading copies of your legal documents to the secure vault in your personal financial website that we provide you. The vault will give your agents, executors, and trustees ready access to the documents from anywhere, at the time needed.
Successful estate planning calls for an integrated approach, taking into account technical, legal, and tax considerations as well as personal lifestyle concerns and family dynamics. We work in tandem with your other advisers and legal professionals, often as coordinator, to ensure that you arrive at a holistic, integrated solution that seeks to address the many layers of concern involved in estate planning.
Trust Services
We offer access to client-friendly institutional trust service providers, and we facilitate and coordinate the establishment and servicing of trust relationships.
Common uses of trust services:
- Self-directed IRAs
- Administration of revocable and irrevocable trusts
- Creation of self-settled asset protection trusts
We can help you find and access the trust services provider that works best for your needs, and help implement, monitor, and maintain the relationship.
*Please Note: The investment adviser representatives in KMS branch offices are under the supervision of KMS Financial Services, Inc.
**This material is intended to provide general financial education and is not written or intended as tax or legal advice and may not be relied upon for purposes of avoiding any Federal tax penalties. Individuals are encouraged to seek advice from their own tax or legal counsel. Individuals involved in the estate planning process should work with an estate planning team, including their own personal legal or tax counsel. This material is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any securities.