Financial Planning Greeneville TN

In today’s world, with rising costs for essentials like food and healthcare, not to mention the cost of a college education and the challenge of saving enough money to retire, financial planning is more important than ever. Dealing with many of these issues comes down to a core component of financial planning – figuring out how to balance saving with living your life. 

Trying to manage competing financial demands (debt, college, retirement funding, etc.) is a complicated process. This is true whatever your financial situation may be, whether getting ready to retire, just starting your career or helping care for aging parents while raising kids of your own or just wondering how you can handle all the financial demands you already face while still managing to set aside funds for retirement. 

If you are in the latter category you may find yourself becoming skeptical that you will ever be able to retire, given the many demands for your dollars in this day and age.

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A financial advisor can help you meet these challenges by showing you ways to make the most of the funds you have available. At Sapiat Asset Management we offer a comprehensive approach to financial planning that takes into account the multitude of factors making up your financial life. 

We use this approach to help clients make financial plans that specify the steps they need to take to get their financial house in order and meet their financial objectives. We help our clients navigate today’s complex financial markets and steer a course towards managing their finances in a way that can help them live the life they want to live – now and in retirement.

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If you want to select the best financial advisor for you in Greeneville, you should consider hiring an independent advisory firm instead of a bank. An independent advisory firm, such as Sapiat Asset Management, is a fee-only fiduciary. Whereas advisors in a bank are not held to the same fiduciary standard, and often charge commissions on the products they sell.

Here are additional criteria to keep in mind:

• First, it is important to find an advisor who is familiar with the area. Business conditions such as the cost of living, taxes, and pensions plans are likely to be different in Greeneville, Tennessee than they are in other areas, so working with a financial planner who knows the area well is your best bet. 
• Another key factor to consider when selecting an advisor is how they are compensated. Advisors who are paid via commissions on investment transactions face a conflict of interest because they can increase their earnings from handling a client’s account by conducting additional transactions, whether or not the client profits from those transactions. Fee-only advisors, on the other hand, don’t face this conflict of interest. Sapiat Asset Management is the first fee-only advisor in Greene County.
• Also, when selecting an advisor, look for one who can offer comprehensive financial planning services. Given the complexity of most people’s financial situation in today’s world, working with an advisor who can help you with every step of the financial planning process, including investment portfolio management, planning for retirement, saving for goals such as a child’s education, analyzing insurance needs and more, is essential to improving your chances of achieving your financial goals.
• Another crucial quality to look for in a financial advisor is the expertise to help you manage your investments. Ask if the advisor can help you select investments based upon criteria such as your time horizon, investment goals and risk tolerance. Once your advisor has helped you select an investment portfolio, he or she should also be willing to help you track and monitor that portfolio’s performance and make sure that its allocation continues to be appropriate given your financial situation.

When selecting a financial advisor, it’s important to consider how they are compensated for their services because the type of compensation they receive can make a big difference in their approach. Unlike commission-based advisors, who make money every time they make a trade, a fee-only advisor’s compensation is not determined by the number of transactions that take place in your account. This is crucial to avoiding the potential conflict of interest that occurs when an advisor can increase his or her compensation by making more trades in your account.

Additionally, fee-only advisors are always considered fiduciaries when offering investment advice, meaning that they must put your best interests first when advising you. Non-fiduciary commission-based advisors, on the other hand, are only required to consider whether an investment recommendation is “suitable” for you, a lower standard that does not require them to put your best interests first.

To ensure that you are receiving advice that is as unbiased as possible, selecting an advisor whose compensation does not pose a conflict of interest in the way that commission-based trading does puts your advisor on the same side of the table as you. When your advisor charges fees, either on a per hour basis or as a percentage of the assets they are managing, your relationship with the advisor is better aligned to help you achieve your goals. 

For instance, rather than being incentivized to make more trades to boost their compensation, an advisor who earns fees based on the value of your account will be incentivized to increase the value of your assets to increase his or her compensation, which benefits both you and the advisor. 

At Sapiat Asset Management, our advisors are compensated strictly by fees when helping manage your investments to avoid the potential conflict of interest of earning commissions on transactions involving equity and fixed-income investments.

Given the extremely complicated financial issues and considerations facing many individuals today, it only makes sense to look for an advisor who has the necessary qualifications to provide you with advice across the full spectrum of financial issues. 

Becoming a CFP® (certified financial planner) indicates that an advisor has gone above and beyond meeting the purely regulatory requirements needed to offer financial advice by successfully completing the rigorous process of qualifying for this designation.

To be named a CFP®, an advisor must pass examinations proving their ability to master a wide variety of financial subjects and periodically undergo training and pass tests to ensure that he or she is up-to-date on the latest requirements in the field. Additionally, CFP®s are held to high ethical standards that require them to put their clients’ best interests first in all of the advice they offer.

In today’s world, planning for your financial future involves a wide variety of considerations, everything from budgeting to setting aside savings from current spending to calculating your insurance needs, funding a child’s college education and more. Retirement planning, especially, has become more complicated in recent years as companies have phased out pension plans offering monthly income in retirement in favor of 401(k) plans where employees choose both how they want to invest the funds in their plan and how much they will contribute to it.

To provide comprehensive planning services, your advisor needs to understand and be able to advise you across the full spectrum of issues related to successfully managing your finances. This includes help with budgeting priorities, insurance analysis, retirement income forecasting and managing your investments.

At Sapiat Asset Management we know there is more to life than investments. Your money is there to serve you, not the other way around. It’s important to enjoy life, but at the same time be smart about your spending and investing. 

To help you make that happen, we take a comprehensive approach to offering financial advice. We urge our clients to take into account work-life balance as they make their plans. 

While it’s important to save for the future, it’s also important to live for today. We make sure to stress being realistic in the planning process – if you try to put more than you can afford into your investment plan and fail to do so, it can be discouraging. In some cases, it may be better to start with a smaller but more realistic amount and work your way up from there.

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Budgeting is of crucial importance to any serious effort to implement financial plans. We work closely with our clients to help them examine their finances to see if there are areas where they can reduce spending without significantly impacting their lifestyle. Any savings generated in this way can be set aside to help them fulfill their financial objectives. 

We call this paying yourself first, meaning that when you set aside money for your future rather than spending it on non-essentials, you pay yourself rather than paying someone else – helping make your money work for you as effectively as possible.

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Investors today face a bewildering array of investment choices. From mutual funds to ETFs (exchange-traded funds) to stocks, bonds, money market instruments and more, wading through your choices and deciding on a portfolio allocation that meets your needs can be a daunting task. A financial advisor can provide you with the perspective and expertise you need to select the investment portfolio that is right for you.

Building such a portfolio involves examining both your financial objectives and your financial circumstances, including your risk profile, time horizon, and available funds. Your financial advisor should not only help you in the investment selection process, but also in monitoring your portfolio over time to ensure that it remains in line with your investment objectives and risk tolerance. 

This includes making adjustments to your portfolio allocation as you close in on and then enter into retirement – which generally calls for a more conservative investment posture than is the case when you are younger and focused on building retirement savings rather than starting to use your savings to generate retirement income. 

At Sapiat Asset Management, we perform extensive research to help our clients select investments that are right for them. We also help them monitor their investments on an ongoing basis and offer periodic client portfolio reviews. In addition, we focus on making sure our clients understand the key component of long-term investing: having the patience to ride out the market’s ups and downs without becoming overly pessimistic at market lows or overly optimistic at market highs. 

For over two decades, Sapiat Asset Management, has been helping people build financial independence and achieve their goals. Contact us today for a complimentary consultation.