When designing the client’s portfolio, our firm is free to consider all of the thousands of investment alternatives available today. There are no artificial limitations, or sales pressure on which investments to use or not use.

When building a client’s portfolio, we act as a 'fiduciary' by weigh the merits of one investment against another, recommending investments only because they will contribute to the success of the client’s investment strategy. There is no pressure, and no incentive, to sell proprietary products.

When assessing a client’s portfolio’s performance, we can use objective criteria to gauge the performance of each investment. We can help track the progress of the client’s portfolio toward the financial goals they’ve set, and advise them when it is appropriate to make changes and when it’s time to stay put.

Federal and state law requires that Registered Investment Advisors like us are held to a Fiduciary Standard. This law requires that an advisor act solely in the best interest of the client, even if that interest is in conflict with the advisor’s financial interest. Investment Advisors must disclose any conflict, or potential conflict, to the client prior to and throughout a business engagement. Investment Advisors must adopt a Code of Ethics and fully disclose how they are compensated.

Unfortunately, only a small proportion of “financial advisors” are federally or state-registered Investment Advisors. Most so-called financial advisors are considered “Broker-Dealers” by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). They are held to a lower standard of diligence on behalf of their clients. In fact, they are required by federal law to act in the best interest of their employer, not in the best interest of their clients.

Discretionary investment management is when you sign a limited power of attorney authorizing your Investment Advisor to buy and sell securities on your behalf in that account, based on a mutually agreed upon investment strategy. You will receive monthly statements and confirmation slips on all transactions, and you will always have access to your funds. By giving this limited power of attorney in the account that are under our management you will alleviate yourself from the emotional and time consuming decision making process.

Fee-based investment advice, as distinguished from commission-based sales, is advice delivered in exchange for a fee. Since the recommendations do not affect Investment Advisor`s compensation, the advice is objective and free from conflicts of interest. So there will be no sales pressure to buy and sell securities. You and your Investment Advisor will have the same goal in mind and that will be the growth of your assets. The following fee schedule is the firm's annual investment management fee which are paid quarterly.

Yes. The minimum asset amount for a fee-only investment advisory service is $100,000 per each household.

Yes, we offer financial planning services for an hourly fee of $100 an hour. The hourly rate will be for the time spent on gathering information, analyzing the data, and subsequently going over the findings. For simple plans this process usually takes about 3-5 hours, and for more comlicated plans it could take anywhere from 5-10 hours.

Traditionally many individual investors use a broad stock market index such as S&P 500 Index as their benchmark to measure the performance of their accounts.

Although this may be an appropriate method to evaluate a particular money manager who is investing in a sector or style that matches a particular index; but for most individuals it is not the best mean of evaluating their consolidated portfolio performance.

One reason is that most investors do not always have all their investments in one particular sector or investment style that will match a particular index. Although there are blended indexes such as Morningstar Target Risk Indexes but it can be argued that for an actively managed diversified portfolio most blended benchmarks will not be able to replicate the 'what if' performance of a comparable passively managed indexed portfolio.

Moreover, the most important reason is because for most individual investors the true benchmark that will show how well they are doing is one showing how close they are in meeting 'their' financial goals.

After all what good is in beating S&P by 2% every year for the last ten years but falling short of your financial goal(s)! Not to mention that by a singular or main focus to beat a particular index you may unnecessarily expose yourself to too much risk or in some cases the reverse too little..

The actual holdings in each brokerage account will be subject to the usual risks associated with investing in securities such as market volatility and the potential of losing money.

As a member of Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) should Scottrade is closed due to bankruptcy or other financial difficulties brokerage account(s) maintained with Scottrade are protected by SIPC up to $500,000 in account value (including $100,000 for claims for cash). Scottrade has also purchased additional protection from Aon Insurance for a total account protection of $25,000,000, including $1,000,000 in cash.

Scottrade has also developed a business continuity plan that is intended to permit them to continue critical business operations during natural disasters, power outages or other significant events.