Meyers Wealth Management

We firmly believe that successful financial planning is an ongoing process.  No plan is set in stone, and no matter how comprehensive, it’s going to require updating as you go — which is why we recommend an ongoing comprehensive financial planning relationship with a professional.  However, we also understand that not all people are ready for that level of work or commitment, or that they may just have a question or two and feel like the rest of their financial matters are already being addressed.
Nevertheless we believe that everybody should have access to qualified, unbiased financial advice, and therefore reserve a certain amount of our professional time for hourly, as-needed financial consultation.
If you just want to come and pick our brains for an hour or two, or you have a project, let us know and we’ll do our best to arrange for hourly consultation.
More comprehensive or research-oriented work is typically done through a combination of meetings and offline research and notes preparation, and we try to estimate in advance how much billable time it’s likely to take, and if it looks, while we’re working on it, that it’s going to take longer than we’d estimated, we’ll make sure to check in and let you know and get your approval before continuing on the project.
We’re highly conscious of the fact that when we’re working on an hourly basis, our time is your money and given that our goal is to help you keep (and grow) your money as much as possible, we are very careful with it. 

We’ll be happy to review your portfolio as part of any of our regular services.  Usually, a “portfolio review” is  in the context of planning for some specific goal such as saving for retirement (or living off an existing portfolio for folks already in retirement), or some specific purchase such as a house, or college.

We work with you to figure out what your goals are, level of risk is appropriate for you and your portfolio, what your time horizon is, and how a portfolio may be constructed to reflect all that.  Additional considerations may include cash-flow needs, withdrawal rates, liquidity, tax management, legacy assets (i.e., that stock you’ve had forever, stock you got from your employer, etc. — keep it? dump it? tax consequences?)

Once we have a handle on the parameters for your portfolio needs, we’ll design a portfolio starting with a target asset allocation, and fill in more details with asset sub-classes, and may recommend specific securities, services or funds to use for those various parts of the portfolio.

Sometimes, portfolio construction is complicated by additional constraints such as limited list of securities in an employer’s 401(k) plan.  We’ll do our best to help you select the best options available there, and if necessary, balance them out with the parts of your portfolio outside of those plans.

We generally favor low-cost index-based mutual funds and ETFs, though, of course, there are exceptions.

This summary is taken from the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc., and Meyers Wealth Management stands by it:

• You have the right to a planner who has integrity
• You have the right to objective advice
• You have the right to a planner who is competent
• You have the right to be treated fairly
• You have the right to privacy
• You have the right to a planner who is professional
• You have the right to a planner who is diligent

The CFP Board has a nice discussion of these issues here: <http://www.cfp.net/learn/knowledgebase.asp?id=13>.

In short, no. Meyers Wealth Management is a provider of financial planning and portfolio management services. We are not attorneys.

Meyers Wealth Management does not provide legal services.  We are not attorneys, nor do we directly employ any attorneys.  As such, we do not give legal advice, we do not draw up wills or trusts or powers-of-attorney or other legal documents.  Our clients are responsible for consulting with their attorneys for these things.

We are happy to advise our clients in the financial aspects of estate planning and very strongly recommend to all of our clients that they have up-to-date wills and other legal documents related to estate planning, when appropriate, such as trusts and powers-of-attorney.

Note that not everyone needs a trust!  Sometimes they are very helpful, but sometimes they really don’t do all that much.  Everyone’s individual situation is different.  Many assets will get transferred to beneficiaries automatically upon death outside of the action of a will, a trust, or going through probate.

As part of the financial planning process, we’ll review our clients wills, trusts, the ownership of various assets (ie. how accounts are titled), and especially the beneficiary designations which are attached to various accounts (IRAs, insurance policies, 401(k)s, etc).  We are happy to consult with our clients attorneys in the process. And we strongly recommend working with a qualified attorney. We cannot stress that strongly enough. We are happy to collaborate with your attorney to make sure your plans do what we want them to do.

Whether or not you walk through all the details of the management of asset transfers with an estate planner or attorney, you probably still need a will.  And if you have kids, there’s no “probably” about it.  You need a will, at a minimum, to designate who will take care of your kids if something happens to you.

There are defaults – and they vary by state – (do a web search for “intestacy” if you like) but we strongly recommend not relying on them.

The State Bar of California previously provided a very simple fill-in-the-blanks will form, in accordance with California law.  Unfortunately, it no longer seems to be available, though the actual will form is, in fact, specified in the California law itself and may be found by searching California law.

Alternatively, one may also consider some lower cost stop-gaps such as various will-construction software packages.  Nevertheless, even if you use such packages or the statutory fill-in-the-blank will –once again, we cannot stress enough that we strongly recommend working with a qualified attorney.

Finally, and perhaps even more important than all of that stuff about “stuff”, and especially if you are not married, there are non-asset-related issues you will want to address – things like powers of attorney, medical decisions and hospitalization visitation and HIPAA releases.  These are essential for married couples and even more important (because there often aren’t helpful defaults) for unmarried ones.  A good attorney will address and discuss all of these with you, so even after reviewing all your beneficiary designations, and trusts and “stuff” – we generally still recommend that folks consider seeing an attorney.  

Meyers Wealth Management is not an accounting firm, nor do we directly employ accountants, CPAs, enrolled agents or tax preparers.  We do not prepare tax returns for our clients.  We’ll be happy to refer our clients to some local professionals, and to coordinate with our clients’ tax professionals.

We do have expert knowledge of many areas of taxation. David Meyers has volunteered for several years [2009-2012] as a tax counselor with the AARP’s Tax Aide and the IRS VITA/TCE program.  http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=107626,00.html

Our advice, plans and guidance for our clients takes into consideration tax matters — for example, in many cases, it’s in our client’s best interest to save for retirement in certain tax-favored accounts such as IRAs and 401(k) plans; if a client has a taxable stock portfolio containing both unrealized capital gains and losses, we will work with the client to try to take maximum advantage of those gains and losses to manage the tax impact of any trading and portfolio rebalancing.

If you already have an accountant with whom you’re working, we’d like to know.  We may ask you to have your accountant compute things (such as how much you may put into a SEP-IRA, for example) or address specifics about your financial situation which will help us plan for you.

Some of our clients do their own taxes at home using off-the-shelf software packages or online tax prep programs.  For many folks, that’s more than adequate and we’ll be happy to take a look at their results. 

We ask all of our clients to bring in a copy of their most recent tax return because it’s a great source of information which helps very much in drawing up a financial plan for the clients, and we do occasionally come across issues about which they or their accountants may not have been aware.  For some clients who self-prepare, we’ll strongly recommend that they do see an accountant, especially if they have complex tax situations such as income in more than one state, self-employment income, investment real estate, or a business, or if they are partners in a partnership, for example.

Unfortunately, the term “financial advisor” has come into common usage.  The unfortunate thing about it is that the term has no precise meaning whatsoever.  Anyone may call himself a “financial advisor”.  Just because someone calls himself a “financial advisor” does not mean that he has any specific education, background, experience, or certification which actually qualifies him to give financial advice.

What makes this especially unfortunate is that the most common usage of the term “financial advisor” nowadays is for a salesperson.  Stock brokers and insurance agents, especially, call themselves “financial advisors” all the time.  This can be highly misleading because one might expect one’s “advisor” to work for his client and in his client’s best interest.  In fact, stock brokers and insurance agents do not work primarily for their clients but, rather, for their employers.  Insurance agents have a fiduciary obligation to the insurance company, not the customer.  Stock brokers are held to a “suitability” standard rather than a “fiduciary” standard with respect to their customers.  This means that when these brokers and agents have a choice of several products which are “suitable” they may actually recommend whichever of those products makes them and their companies the most money, rather then the ones which cost their clients the least or make their clients the most money.

This doesn’t mean that all “financial advisors” are looking out for themselves to the detriment of their customers.  Most financial advisors do have the best intentions and mean well for their customers.  And most of them do very good work for their customers.  But at the end of the day, people respond to incentives.  Always ask just how folks get paid and take that into account when evaluating their advice.

Because the term “financial advisor” is so loosely used and unregulated, Meyers Wealth Management tries to avoid the term.  We do fee-only financial planning and portfolio management.  We do not get commissions or any other financial incentives to put our clients into any particular product.  If we advise a client to invest in or use some particular financial product or security, it’s because we believe that it’s in our client’s best interest.  Period.  We are held to a fiduciary standard with respect to our clients – at all times.

There are some terms with precise and legal meanings which do apply.  Meyers Wealth Management is a Registered Investment Advisor, registered with the state of California.  Mr. Meyers is an Investment Advisor Representative.  As a Registered Investment Advisor, Meyers Wealth Management is required to register with the states in which we do business and provide various disclosures to our clients.  Moreover, as a Registered Investment Advisor, we have an explicit fiduciary obligation with respect to our clients.

David Meyers is a member of NAPFA, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors.  NAPFA is the leading organization of fee-only financial advisors and all members of NAPFA must sign and renew a fiduciary oath every year, and follow NAPFA’s code of ethics.  Members of NAPFA may not receive commissions, and in order to join the organization, they must submit a comprehensive financial plan for peer review and approval.

Meyers Wealth Management operates on a Fee-Only basis.  This means that all financial compensation we receive is explicit fees paid directly by our clients.  We get no commissions, no “offsets”, no financial incentive whatsoever to sell or place our clients into any particular product.  When you do business with Meyers Wealth Management, you will know precisely what you are paying for  – the services we provide.

“Fee-Based” is an unfortunate term used in the financial advisory business.  It means almost exactly the opposite of what it appears to mean.  “Fee-based” financial planners both charge fees and collect commissions, sometimes these commissions will not be obvious. Fee-only advisers do not collect commissions at all.  

Further, there are certain products which have enormously complex compensation structures built into them, much of which is as hidden from the client as possible.  This doesn’t mean that those products are inherently bad — it just means that when one is told that one needs such a product, one needs to be as careful as possible to make sure that one’s “need” for the product is not really a reflection of a broker or agent’s “need” for you to buy it so he or she gets a huge payout.  Some products particularly notorious for having enormous payouts for the person selling them include permanent life insurance, variable annuities, “exclusive” limited partnerships and mutual funds with high “loads”.  

We work with people in two primary ways: (a) hourly, as-needed consultation; and (b) ongoing portfolio management which generally includes ongoing financial planning consultation as part of the portfolio management process.

Please see the Services page for more details.

Before committing to any particular service or project, we will be happy to have a brief, no-cost, no-obligation consultation.  Please follow this link to schedule an introductory conversation.  This conversation typically takes half an hour or so and by the end, we hope you’ll have a clear picture of what sorts of work we do and where you’ll find value in our services.

We’ll send you a client welcome kit which includes a detailed questionnaire, a comprehensive list of documents we’d like you to bring in to our first meeting, some worksheets for your family balance sheet and cash-flow analysis.

The collection of documents and the questionnaire include a lot of material.  Please don’t be alarmed!  Not all of it applies to everyone, but we encourage you to try to get as much together as you can.  The more complete the information you bring, the more complete and accurate our work together will be.  And you may just be surprised at how much you’ll get out of just getting all that information together.

We also include access to and use of a personal financial dashboard, which is a personalized website built just for you.  It lets you link in all sorts of parts of your financial life, from bank accounts and investment and retirement accounts to your mortgage, life insurance, credit cards, etc.  It’s also got a secure ‘vault’ area where you can safely upload to us copies of documents, and it’s where we’ll place notes and reports we prepare for you.

Ask us questions!  The more comfortable you are with this, and the more complete our information is, the better a job we can do.  Don’t be shy!

We’ll meet, review together all the materials you’ve brought with you, and proceed from there.

We operate on a fee-only basis.  This means that we are paid only and directly by our clients.  We don’t get commissions for selling products nor do we have financial or other incentive to prefer one product over another – we recommend only the products that we believe are the best for our clients.

Our charges for specific services depend on the services in question.

For hourly consultation, you’ll pay us directly, either by check or using a third party system (ie. paypal or similar) in order to pay via credit card.  We use an online invoicing system which makes this easy.  We never have access to your credit card, nor do we ever automatically charge anything to one.

For portfolio management services, you’ll be keeping your portfolio with a qualified broker-dealer/custodian with whom you’ll have your own direct agreements in place, and which gives us very strictly limited abilities to manage your portfolio on your behalf.  This arrangement allows us to make trades for you — and with very strict limits, to pull our advisory fees directly from the accounts.  An invoice detailing the fee computation is made available to you, and then, with your prior authorization, the fees are deducted directly from your accounts.  

Sometimes our fees, or part of them, may be deductible or otherwise affect your income taxes.  Sometimes our fees are paid to us with pre-tax money (ie. when pulled from an IRA, our fees are generally considered non-taxable distributions).  We’ll be happy to discuss this, and refer you to your accountant to see how it’d actually work for you.

Thanks so much for asking. We have an entire Getting Started page. Please take a look there! 🙂