by Peter Prescott

When it comes to retirement planning, people commonly struggle with the first step, figuring out where to turn for a personal financial plan. There are a myriad of options. One’s bank or credit union may have a wealth management group who can produce one. The brokerage firm where one maintains their IRA or other investment accounts commonly has a financial planner, too. Although one might think that financial plans are at the core of an independent financial advisors offerings, you might be surprised to learn they are not. Or, you might be a do-it-yourself type of person and like the idea of finding and using a simple online financial planning tool, of which there are many. While all of these can be good alternatives, considering a specialty firm that combines a tax practice with wealth management expertise could be your best choice.

Tax Savings = Enhanced Investment Returns
When considering the financial plan for one’s entire life, one should make the avoidance of taxes as much of a priority as the selection of investment and retirement products. Tax savings simply can have too tremendous a positive impact on maximizing your retirement nest egg to ignore, and its importance and value can increase proportionally with your marginal tax rate. This is especially true today, given the generally rich valuations and low yields of most traditional investment options. There are other important advantages of working with specialty firms, such as Prescott Tax and Wealth Management, which are as follows.

A More Comprehensive Perspective

To be valuable and useful, a financial plan must to be comprehensive. Financial plans can epitomize the adage “garbage in, garbage out.” Not only is it necessary to take into account a complete picture of one’s assets, liabilities, income and expenses, but also an inventory of expectations, wants and needs throughout both pre-retirement and retirement life. Your tax professional requires much of this information to serve as your tax custodian from year to year. Moreover, if you have a high quality rapport with your tax professional, they also know you in an intimate way that affords them unique insight into your likes, wants and needs.

Frequency of Interaction

Another important ingredient to a sound financial plan is maintenance. Financial plans are snapshots in time that absolutely require periodic updates. Long-term impacts of near-term events, such as career, family and preference changes, need to be incorporated into the plan when they occur. So, periodic of interaction is paramount to good maintenance. And here again, unfortunately like taxes, the tax professional is with you year in and year out. Hence, maintenance of a financial plan by a specialty firm, such as Prescott Tax and Wealth Management, is a natural function of their offering.

When you’re ready to take that first step, we invite you to contact Prescott Tax and Wealth Management. Our team of financial and tax experts are eager to help make your retirement dreams a reality.