2024
Wealth Management Guide
Wealth Management for High-Income Earners and Business Owners
Preserve Your Wealth
Preserving your wealth involves taking steps to diversify your assets, lower your risk, and have a disciplined investment process that leaves fewer variables to chance.
Including lower-risk investments such as cash and fixed interest investments in your portfolio can help minimize losses during recessionary periods.
On the flip side, a more growth-oriented wealth strategy usually involves a more aggressive risk profile and a higher tolerance for market volatility in the hopes of realizing a higher return over the long run.
Where you are in your wealth journey will help inform which approach you should take.
What Does Wealth Management Mean?
Wealth management means growing your wealth, managing liability, and carefully planning to preserve your wealth so you can create a legacy or pass it on to your heirs.
It involves a comprehensive financial review and the development of a plan that includes investments, tax and estate planning, gifting, retirement planning, and legal services.
Wealth management tends to be most important when your needs shift from growth and accumulation to wealth preservation.
During this later phase of your wealth journey, the primary goal is to protect your wealth to meet your needs during retirement and enable you to pass it on to the next generation.
What Are the Benefits of Wealth Management?
Peace of Mind
The main benefit of wealth management is peace of mind.
It’s the confidence that you have a financial plan built around you, and assurance that you are doing the right thing for your family.
When you partner with a good wealth management team, you get a wealth plan formulated by experienced advisors that prepares you for retirement and other impactful financial events.
Through a planning and review process, you will have access to experts who work together on an integrated plan and frequently review it as circumstances change.
Wealth Management vs. Financial Planning
The biggest differences between wealth management and financial planning are the scope of what’s managed and the type of clients served.
Financial planners generally consider every aspect of your finances—from insurance to retirement savings to everyday expenses.
Wealth managers tend to focus on larger assets, investments, will and trust services, and estate planning for higher net worth individuals.
While anyone can work with a financial planner, the more wealth you have, the more you can benefit from a dedicated wealth management advisor that integrates all aspects of your wealth into a plan built around your goals.
Wealth Management vs. Portfolio Management
Wealth management and portfolio management differ in the range and scope of management services offered.
Wealth management takes a big picture approach to managing a client’s finances. It takes multiple factors into consideration including investments, tax and estate planning, charitable giving, and retirement planning.
Portfolio management focuses solely on managing and rebalancing a client’s investment assets to achieve their desired return goals.
Speak with a wealth management team to discuss your needs and decide which approach is best for you.
Wealth Management Strategies
A good wealth management team should deploy a range of time-tested wealth management strategies to synchronize every aspect your wealth to ensure you’re staying on track to realize your objectives, even when impactful financial events occur.
These strategies include:
Asset Allocation: An asset allocation and diversification strategy ensures your wealth is distributed across a wide range of investments to minimize risk and optimize return potential.
Retirement Planning: You should have a custom retirement plan that’s aligned with your personal, financial and retirement goals.
Risk Management: In addition to managing your exposure to market volatility, your wealth management team can help protect your wealth and your family with insurance solutions such as life, disability, home, auto and business.
Tax Planning: Your wealth management team should work closely with you and your CPA to implement tax-efficient strategies that limit your tax liability, so you can keep more of the wealth you’ve worked hard for.
Estate Planning: A good wealth management team should help you carry out your legacy and ensure your assets are passed on to your beneficiaries in an efficient, tax-advantageous manner.
Wealth Manager Credentials
In wealth management, there are wide range of certifications for different areas of expertise.
Ensuring you’ve got the right people with the right skillsets looking after your money is key to achieving your long goals.
Some credentials to look for include:
• Certified Investment Management Analyst® (CIMA)
• Certified Private Wealth Advisor® (CPWA)
• Certified Financial Planner® (CFP®)
• Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)
• Chartered Financial Consultant® (ChFC)
• Certified Trust and Financial Officer (CTFA)
Wealth Management & Wealth Planning
Understanding wealth management and wealth planning is critical to creating a more secure financial future.
Having a comprehensive wealth plan in place helps ensure your investments are managed in a risk-appropriate manner that’s aligned with your financial objectives.
It can also help to minimize your tax liability, provide estate planning guidance, and ensure you have a well-considered retirement plan in place that provides the financial independence you’re after.
Common Questions
Wealth management takes a comprehensive approach to managing your finances to achieve your long-term financial goals.
It incorporates a wide range of services including portfolio management, tax planning, estate planning, and retirement planning. It coordinates and synchronizes each of them with the goal of providing a comprehensive solution that’s built around your personal objectives.
What is wealth management?
For higher net worth individuals and families, wealth management is definitely worth it.
Having a team with a depth of experience and range of services can lead to significantly better long term financial returns than taking a less holistic approach that only uses portfolio management, for example.
Is wealth management worth it?
When you’re considering hiring a wealth management partner, it’s important to consider how your unique goals will influence factors like asset allocation, diversification, and risk management.
The number of services you may need will also vary depending on the size of your assets, your tolerance for risk and your long term goals for your money.
There are a dizzying number of firms out there to choose from.
We recommend meeting with several potential partners before entrusting your financial success to one. We’re happy to meet with you and provide a free consultation to discuss your needs and give you honest, unbiased answers to your questions.
What do I need to know about wealth management?
The amount of money needed for wealth management varies by individual firms and managers.
But generally a net worth ranging from $2 million to $5 million is the lower end of the threshold for where it makes sense to consider partnering with a wealth management advisor. Any lower than that and the fees required to provide services and manage investments may limit the long term performance of the assets.
How much money do you need for wealth management?
The more your wealth grows on your life journey, the more you stand to benefit from partnering with an experienced, trusted wealth manager.
It can help protect your money from volatile markets, limit your tax liability and grow your wealth over the long term to ensure you have a strong financial legacy to leave to your beneficiaries.
Is it worth paying a wealth manager?
Let’s take the hypothetical example of an investor who is 54 years and wants to retire by age 60.
When combining the value of her home, 401(k), savings and a recent inheritance, she has a net worth of $7 million.
She wants to have the freedom to travel in her retirement. She also wants to leave her estate to her two children and provide for her new granddaughter’s education. She’s frustrated by high taxes and doesn’t want to give the government any more than she has to.
She meets with her 360 Financial Wealth Mangement team. The team assesses her risk tolerance and creates a portfolio management plan with a moderate risk profile, given that she wants retire in six more years. They set up estate planning services to create a living trust. This will ensure that when she dies, her wishes are carried out and her estate passes to her children without being exposed to probate taxes.
Her wealth management team also collaborates with her CPA to implement a tax-efficient annual gifting strategy that lowers her tax liability while sharing her wealth with her kids and providing for her grandchild’s education. Her holistic plan takes all her goals into consideration and integrates them into one seamless plan.
What is an example of wealth management?
Plan for Financial Growth
A well-designed plan for financial growth starts with the wealth accumulation phase of your life.
The earlier you are in your financial journey, the more focused you should be on saving and investing. How much you invest and where you invest it depends on your personal preferences, your tolerance for risk and your long-term financial ambitions.
But every plan for financial growth should be built on basic investing principals like diversification and asset allocation.
It should also account for financial risks by including emergency savings, health/life insurance and other risk management strategies.
360 Financial's Wealth Management Services
• Meaning-of-life questions on life goals, money, and values alignment
• Comprehensive and long-range wealth management and financial planning
• Education planning and funding (college planning)
• Estate and estate tax planning
• Generational wealth
• Investment advice and management
• Philanthropic planning and charitable giving
• Retirement goals and planning
• Risk management
• Specialist referrals
• Tax planning and strategies
Cost of a Wealth Manager
The cost of a wealth manager usually varies based on the services provided, the assets managed, and the account balance.
Most wealth managers charge fees based on a percentage of assets under management. This can range from 0.5% to 2.00% of the total assets.
Fees tend to be lower the more money you have invested. Additional services like tax or estate planning may add additional fees. Some wealth managers have a minimum fee or account size threshold that clients must meet to receive services.