Our Personalized Services

Comprehensive Financial Life Planning

Our financial planning process begins with you. We’ll organize your current financial situation and set expectations and goals unique to your perspectives and wishes. We create and implement a comprehensive financial life plan to help you reach your goals. Our planning is ongoing and regularly updated to reflect changes in your goals, financial resources, and external changes that affect your plan. Our goal is to help you make better decisions as you navigate life’s transitions and to guide you toward the life you envision. Our ongoing service includes:

Annual Goal Tracking & Projections
Ongoing Asset and Investment Management
Cash Flow, Income and Lifestyle Planning
Regular Tax Planning to optimize your current and future tax situation
Investment Real Estate Analysis
Guidance on Philanthropy
Financial Independence / Retirement Planning
Major Expense Planning
Business and Succession Planning
Trust & Estate Planning
Advising on Appropriate and Cost-Effective Insurance
Employee Benefits Maximization

Coordinated Investment & Portfolio Management

Coordinated Investment Management

Every investor has needs and priorities that change over the course of their lives. Your investments should align your money and personal aspirations to help you live the life you want to lead. To accomplish that, we take a different approach. We ensure your investment plan capitalizes on your unique strengths, interests, resources and values. We do not limit your investment plan to a pure traditional stock and bond portfolio. Disciplined investing and asset allocation is a core part of our offering. We construct low-cost, globally-diversified portfolios aligned to our client’s goals. Beyond that, we coordinate all investments from our clients’ alternative investments to stock options to employer retirement plans to ensure appropriate returns and diversification across all asset classes.

Ongoing Portfolio Management
Real Estate Investment
401(k) Allocation Advice
Stock Option Analysis and Planning
Alternative Investments
College Savings Plans
Self-Directed IRAs

Customized Employer Retirement Plans

We help business owners implement retirement plans to minimize taxes, improve employee retention and invest strategically. We guide plan sponsors through the myriad of activities associated with operating qualified and non-qualified retirement plans like plan design, fiduciary oversight, or evaluation and selection of administrative vendors and investment managers. Our goal for every client is the same: a flexible ERISA-compliant plan at below-market cost with best-in-class design and investment options. Ongoing Services include:

Plan Design & Compliance
Administrative Provider Search
Investment Selection
Employee Financial Education
Employee Communications
Advice on Regulatory Changes

Our Fee Structure

The fee for our advisory services is a fixed amount based on client complexity. This complexity is determined by your net worth, business entities, investment portfolio (traditional investments, real estate assets, alternative investments, etc.) and planning needs. The minimum fee for our advisory services is $1,500 per month.

Why A Flat Fee?

A Flat Fixed Fee

Our fee includes all financial life planning, investment management as well as unlimited and unbiased advice. There are no hidden fees, no surprises, and no hourly charges. We review the fee every two years to determine if any changes in the fee are appropriate.

Reduced Conflict of Interest

Withdrawing money from a portfolio, like when investing in a business or paying off debt, can also reduce an investment ﬁrm’s income when quarterly fees are based on assets they manage. This creates conﬂicts of interest for advisors who strive to provide objective advice. Our ﬂat fee avoids this conﬂict.

Holistic Life Planning

While portfolio management is key to a successful financial plan, many other elements impact one’s financial life, such as cash flow, retirement, estate, income tax planning, philanthropy, risk management, and outside investments such as 401(k) plans at work. Our ﬂat fee ensures guidance in all the areas that matter.

Risk Minimized Investing

We believe that clients should only experience a level of market volatility necessary to reach their goals. We have little incentive to increase risk, and care only to help clients intelligently plan all aspects of their financial lives.

How Advisors Should Be Paid

We do not ask for increased fees just because your investments may be doing well. We don’t control the market. We are compensated based on the factors we can control. Our concierge services do not change based on the market. It is our responsibility to design optimal strategies to grow wealth and live an incredible life.

Frequently Asked Questions

How will we work together with you as my advisor?

We work for you. More importantly, we work with you. At Illumination, you have the company’s comprehensive resources at your disposal. Once we commit to a partnership, we analyze your unique opportunities, values, challenges, and circumstances. We then work with you to identify personal goals and create a plan for achieving them. As we execute your plan, we work ongoing to proactively identify opportunities, assess progress and make adjustments as appropriate. We are available anytime to assist in key decisions and address concerns and life transitions. Throughout, we help implement your financial planning with sensible, well-aligned investment management. And as needed, we can coordinate resources like risk management or estate planning.

What’s different?

The information age is advancing the investment advisory business, making resources once difficult to access, including asset allocation modeling and fund selection, readily available to consumers and advisors alike. Illumination is committed to providing value through advice, without the distraction of variable compensation, product sales, or legacy solutions. We are transforming the advisory business as we focus on actionable planning to help our clients build wealth, not simply park what they’ve earned. Our advice encompasses each client’s entire financial life and net worth. Illumination is the advisor of tomorrow, committed to helping you realize your financial success.

What are the most important things to look for in an advisor?

Knowledge and objectivity are core elements of a successful advisory relationship. Too often, conflicts of interest, such as compensation, color the advice consumers receive. At Illumination, we don’t have proprietary funds, we don’t sell insurance, we aren’t compensated by anyone other than you and we are not limited to advice on paper assets like typical advisors who traditionally offer limited planning. We are fiduciaries, plain and simple. We put your interests first. And we have decades of experience working with extremely successful families.

How do you represent clients’ interests ﬁrst?

We actively minimize economic conflicts of interests to eliminate biases around our clients’ investments and financial life. We designed our compensation structure on a flat fee basis, not percentage of assets, commissions, soft dollars or 12b-1 fees, to ensure that our recommendations are based only on what we believe is best for clients.

Who is an ideal client for Illumination?

Our ideal clients are successful, busy people who desire a wonderful financial life now and for their future. They plan and pursue tangible wealth objectives and prefer not to manage their financial life and investments alone. Many clients are self-made, entrepreneurial and busy professionals who seek an integrated, guided approach to financial life management and investment expertise. They rely on us to ensure their financial and life decisions align with their financial plan, and desire a sounding board around opportunities and challenges and their potential impact. Our clients look to our disciplined guidance when financial markets fluctuate. Many of them lead “digital lives” and enjoy the real time efficiency of online reporting and impromptu virtual meetings. We also provide more traditional “paper” reporting and regularly scheduled reviews.

What does Illumination need to know about me?

We begin by building a roadmap for your life and wealth and seek to know as much about you as possible. It’s important that we understand your deepest values, beliefs and goals. We want to know your unique skills, resources and interests to ensure we incorporate them into your wealth plan. We will need to understand your earnings power and become familiar with your cash flow. We will survey your investments, review your tax and estate planning, understand your insurance coverage and note current debts. Having this background enables us to develop a personalized wealth plan that meets your needs.

How is Illumination different than a traditional RIA?

Illumination Wealth Management is a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA). Most of our peers sell investment advice, which you can find almost anywhere. Once you’ve narrowed the field to a group of competent advisors, pre-tax investment results shouldn’t vary much over time. But that’s where our similarities end. Illumination is raising the bar for the entire industry. We are upfront about strategies, offerings, and outlooks. We focus first on establishing your wealth plan, which includes developing a personalized wealth-building plan, cash flow planning, asset allocation, income tax minimization, insurance planning, and comprehensive financial oversight. We hold you accountable to your plan and coordinate the execution of all facets of your financial life, including implementation of your traditional investment plan.

Read Case Studies

A Concierge Experience for All-Encompassing Strategies

The Illumination Wealth Process