^Answers
Frequently Asked Questions

1. Financial Planning: You can hire the Cornerstone Advisors' financial advisors specifically to create your financial plan. Under this engagement we analyze the current strategies and moves you’re making today to see whether your actions are aligned with your ideal outcomes. Next, we put together an observation to give you a picture how your life will look at various points if you don’t change your current course. Finally, we design specific solutions that fit directly into your priorities and deliver a financial plan blueprint that aims to get you to your destination. This service gives you the opportunity to evaluate what you already have in place and gives you the option to implement the plan on your own, with our firm, or with another firm. There is a flat non-commission-based cost for this service.
2. Plan Implementation: If you would like our firm to help you implement your plan, we will help consolidate your assets and organize them to work toward your goals. These goals are different for every client and range from growing assets for the future, to organizing your assets into a system that will create an anticipated income stream for your lifetime. The cost for this service is based on a percentage of the assets we manage on your behalf. The greater the assets, the smaller the percentage.

Note: We do not engage in any investment banking, there are no proprietary mutual funds used in our portfolios, and we do not get paid any differently whether we choose to use active or passive management. We have purposely designed our cost structure to enable us to choose investment options that are in the best interest of our clients.

Your cost decreases as your assets grow. If you decide to have our firm implement your plan, we will provide your estimated annual cost and we will make sure you have a clear understanding of how it is calculated. On average, annual costs are less than 1% of assets managed.

We will meet with you at least twice annually to ensure your asset allocation continues to align with your current goals and objectives. Additionally, we perform an annual stress test of your financial plan to ensure you don’t miss any opportunity to get the most out of your resources.

We actively work with you to support all your planning needs. Family decisions, distributions to children, potential loans, and savings for grandchildren, all fall within the scope of our advice.

As part of implementing your plan, we work with a network of specialists to help you navigate the complex world of health care coverage and Medicare plan selection.

We help our clients to navigate all major life decisions giving specific attention to how each decision will affect your financial plan. Nursing care, assisted living, and entry into retirement communities are common concerns for our clients and we provide education and help plan for these important decisions well in advance of when they are needed.

Our partnership with our clients is always a collaboration. We have discovered that most people (even those working with advisors) end up in a situation where their investment results are driving their life decisions. We work together with you to ensure we have a thorough understanding of your goals before any investment decisions are made. This approach ensures your own personal life goals will always be the sole driver of your financial plan and your investment decisions.

Our partnership with our clients is always a collaboration. We have discovered that most people (even those working with advisors) end up in a situation where their investment results are driving their life decisions. We work together with you to ensure we have a thorough understanding of your goals before any investment decisions are made. This approach ensures your own personal life goals will always be the sole driver of your financial plan and your investment decisions.

Tax consequences are always an important consideration. We help you get the most of your finances by creating plans based on several key factors including tax consequences.

As strange as it may seem, tax issues are some of our favorite topics of discussion because taxes play a critical role in good planning. Not only do we consider the tax consequences of individual investment decisions, we will work hand in hand with your tax planner or CPA to coordinate your plan and help optimize your overall tax savings.

As you might expect, each client’s investment performance is different. Every portfolio we manage is designed to align a client’s assets with their individual goals and objectives. Additionally, investMENT performance and investOR performance are very different. At Cornerstone Advisors we pride ourselves on prioritizing investOR performance using time weighted asset allocation, strategic selling, and proactive rebalancing. This allows us to implement a completely non-emotional system of asset management based on math. We will take the time to be sure you actually understand how we use that system with a goal to help eliminate realized losses and maximize realized gains for your investments.

Legacy planning and gifting strategies are some of the primary reasons clients engage with our firm. We help you gain clarity on what’s possible given your resources so you can strive to maximize the impact of your legacy in YOUR most meaningful way.

Yes. We can provide an in-depth analysis and recommendations for all your life insurance needs.

We create plans to help you and your loved ones address many of the difficulties related to long- term care situations. Our planning team will analyze your situation, educate you on options, and help you determine what strategy makes sense for your goals.

Cornerstone Advisors specializes in tax-advantaged management and distribution of assets. Our tax planning strategies include:

• Asset Location: We help you take advantage of holding assets most susceptible to ordinary income tax in accounts that are tax deferred while holding assets taxed at more favorable rates in your taxable accounts
• Tax Diversification: We help manage the impact of future taxes by holding assets in diverse vehicles to include tax-deferred, tax-free, taxable, and qualified accounts. This allows you to choose an suitable distribution strategy in the future despite changes in tax law.
• Tax Loss Harvesting: We help you realize tax losses without having to experience “real” losses when the opportunity arises. We do this by moving your investment from a fund in our “starting line-up” of funds to a fund in our equally acceptable “reserve line-up” of funds during market dips. This allows you to use the tax loss to reduce current and future taxable income and capital gains without having to miss out on a market recovery.
• Gifting Strategy: We help you increase your charitable giving and/or reduce the cost of charitable giving by donating selected appreciated assets rather than cash to your favorite causes. This way Uncle Sam can help to do his part in giving to causes that are most meaningful to you.

We provide solutions in a wide array of these services. We also work with a network of specialists for clients with special needs outside of our core services.

How do you work with your client’s children, parents, and other family members?

We always take a multigenerational approach to our client’s financial lives providing guidance and assistance to children, parents, and other family members on their personal financial planning.

Do you develop an investment mission statement with the client to guide the investment decisions?

Your investment decisions will always be guided by your personal financial independence plan. We define financial independence as the ability to spend your time exactly how you choose without regard to the revenue your time produces. Our mission is to help you define, create, and enjoy financial independence. All investment decisions are guided by your plan in three steps:

1. Clarify core life and legacy goals
2. Align assets with life and legacy goals using a time-based asset allocation
3. Use a non-emotional proactive rebalancing and strategic selling system to maintain the integrity of the plan

We have an unblemished regulatory record, and we encourage clients and prospective clients to visit BrokerCheck at https://brokercheck.finra.org/ to do a background check before engaging with any advisor or firm.

Yes, we are held to a fiduciary standard for all investment advisory relationships. Additionally, since many of our team members hold the Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) professional designation, our team is committed to abiding by the CFP® Code of Conduct which holds CFP® professionals to an expanded fiduciary obligation. Click here to learn more about The Fiduciary Obligation set forth in the CFP® Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct

We specialize in creating income distribution plans that are capable of adapting to today's changing financial environment. We help clients get the most out of their financial lives by implementing strategies based on several key factors including taxes, market environment, health care costs, social security planning, longevity, and legacy goals.

Planning your social security benefit is a key component of sound planning and we will provide specialized education for choosing a suitable option for your situation.

We have strategically built our team to include expertise across the board for advice on managing a multitude of income types. Members of our team have one or more of the following designations to meet your needs:

• CFP® - CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ designation
• ChFC® - Chartered Financial Consultant designation CLU® - Chartered Life Underwriter designation
• RICP® - Retirement Income Certified Professional designation MBA – Masters of Business Administration