Planning for your future is one of the most important steps you can take in securing financial freedom. Our goal is to help you attain financial peace of mind.

Retirement Planning

Achieving your retirement goals takes disciplined saving, spending, and investing. Our team of experts work with you to stay on track to live the retirement you want:

• We will develop a clear picture of your current financial situation.
• We help you decide when to retire.
• We show the income your nest egg could provide compared to your needs and goals.
• We can implement strategies designed to generate income, manage risk, and protect against inflation.
• We will continuously monitor your plan, making adjustments as markets and your circumstances change.

Estate Planning

Estate Planning includes but is not limited to the establishment and updating of wills, trusts, insurance, long term care, beneficiary designations, Powers of Appointment, and gifting. With the ever-changing tax law, healthcare overhaul and other dynamic issues at play, it is increasingly vital to consult experts in each of these spaces to ensure one’s wealth is properly managed from unnecessary tax burdens.

As fee-based fiduciaries, we will work with you to identify your risks and needs in order to try to align you with just the right professionals to get them resolved. We will also work with your existing team of CPAs, Attorneys and others as needed, to prioritize your comfort and financial well-being.

Elements of an Estate Plan

• A will lets you specify your wishes, including how you want your property distributed, who will administer your estate and who will care for your minor children.
• A trust holds your assets for the benefit of one or more people (you, your spouse, and your children). You will need an attorney’s assistance to create a trust.
• Life Insurance proceeds are paid to a beneficiary at your death.
• Long Term Care has become increasingly important as healthcare costs have skyrocketed in recent years. This type of insurance is established specifically to protect one’s wealth in the case where one’s health deteriorates to where professional care is needed regularly as the costs can erode wealth at a drastic and unexpected pace.
• Beneficiary Designations are a simple process to ensure your loved ones do not experience any unnecessary delays, hassles or loss of capital when your assets are distributed upon death.
• Powers of Appointment ensure critical decisions are made by those you deem appropriate should you not be able to.
• Gifts are transfers of property made during your life to family, friends or charity. This may be a simple way to pass money to those you choose in a tax efficient manner.

Tax Planning

We believe we can add real value for clients by managing the potential drag, or reduction of return, caused by taxes. We engage investors in discussions about providing a more complete plan and how their taxable assets may benefit form a tax-managed approach.

Some key considerations include:

The importance of knowing your tax cost basis prior to making any sells in your account

Asset location, or how to allocate assets between taxable and tax-advantaged accounts. This can add incremental benefits to after-tax total returns, which can have a powerful compounding effect over the long run.

How tax law changes can affect you, including but not limited to:

• The Opportunity cost of executing certain tax strategies and plans
• The Time Value of Money and how future inflation can affect decisions made today
• The likelihood that you may be in a lower or higher tax bracket later in life
• The possibility of tax basis step-up if an equity is never sold

At Signet Financial Management, we consider these and many more potential tax-related matters before making any changes to your portfolio. In fact, we evaluate each and every position in your portfolio prior to making any decisions on sells or purchases, in seeking to ensure that you are not hit with a tax bill that you don’t expect at the end of the year.

As always, it is important to consider your personal financial planning strategies and goals before making any decisions regarding how the aforementioned, or any other considerations, may affect your tax situation.

Insurance

The primary purpose of insurance is to provide economic protection against losses that may be incurred due to an event happening such as death, illness, or accident. This type of protection is provided through an insurance policy, which is simply a device used by companies to accumulate funds to have enough reserves to meet these uncertain losses. At Signet we will take you through a forensic review of your insurance policies to assess your insurance needs from a coverage and cost perspective. We have partnered with Sheridan Wealth Advisors.

Risk Management

We believe our clients should only accept as much risk as necessary to achieve their financial goals. We design portfolios for more than the pursuit of returns – eliminating undue risk is an equally important objective.

Because risk is a necessary part of investing, it is essential to manage those risks and find the right balance between risk and expected return for each client.

We offer a comprehensive risk assessment to help clients identify, understand, and quantify sources of risk. We ensure that the assumption of risk is intentional and consistent with your investment objectives.