The essence of financial planning is helping you define your personal goals. We would like to work with you over time to develop and implement the strategies that will help realize those goals. The planning process is designed to help bring order and rationality to your financial affairs. By employing a disciplined and comprehensive process, you can better integrate your financial decisions with your broader life goals and increase the probability of achieving those goals.

We are now living longer lives and thus will have a longer period of retirement. Many of us are also relying less on traditional pension plans and social security to support us in retirement. Therefore, pre-planned retirement strategies have taken on a larger importance. In our planning process, we will calculate approximately how much you will need to save for retirement, given your planned retirement age, income needed in retirement, place of residence and amounts to be left in your estate for future generations. We will then formulate a strategy on how to best reach your retirement goals through use of tax—deferred retirement accounts (which which can potentially boost your after-tax amounts available on retirement) and investment in appropriate asset classes and vehicles based on your risk tolerance and timeframe. If nearing retirement, we will also address distribution strategies for withdrawing your retirement assets. In retirement planning, we harmonize your lifetime goals with your overall investment strategy and cash—flow situation to provide a balanced solution.

Estate planning is used to essentially accomplish four (4) tasks:

• To facilitate the smooth transfer of assets to your designated survivors;
• To carry out your wishes;
• To protect your privacy;
• To preserve the value of your assets from estate and other transfer taxes.

Insurance planning is also known as risk management or the usage of insurance to protect against specific risks. Some specific risks which could significantly impact your standard of living are:

• The risks of having inadequate income and cash flow should a family member die or become ill or incapacitated;
• The risk of lawsuit from third party as a result of an accident, misrepresentation or omission;
• The risk of property damage or an inability to replace property if a catastrophic event should occur.

Federal and state income taxes often represent the single greatest expense a household incurs each year. This expense should not be taken for granted. Through a careful analysis of your situation, we can recommend customized strategies that can have a meaningful impact in reducing this burden. The result can be an increase in disposable cash flow that can be reallocated towards meeting other desired goals. In making our recommendations we will often work with competent accounting and tax professionals to assure proper tax compliance and implementation.

WSG sees Charitable gift planning as an integral part of your overall financial planning. Please take time to read about the strategic philanthropy services we provide in our "Share the Wealth Program."

WSG partner Steve Silver, CFP®, CDFA, CLU is one of only a handful of providers locally who hold the specialized designation of Certified Divorce Financial Analyst. Find out more about these services in the Divorce Financial Planning section.

Securities offered through National Planning Corporation (NPC), Member FINRA/SIPC. Wealth Strategies Group and NPC are separate and unrelated companies.