Leveraging the Right Tools During the Wealth Planning Process
The process of wealth planning involves far more than managing assets, particularly for successful, affluent individuals with large aspirations. At its core, we consider wealth planning to encompass the decisions and strategies that help align your wealth with your values and goals.
While historical data and market trends provide valuable insights, they don’t necessarily define what success looks like for you. For example, you may be working hard toward a work-optional lifestyle, preparing for a business transition, or structuring your estate for future generations. To make those goals a reality, you and your advisor need the right tools to gain a forward-looking perspective.
At Edwards Asset Management, we incorporate several advanced investment planning resources into our practice. These enable us to deliver tailored strategies that help address your cash flow, tax planning, investment allocation, wealth transfer goals, and more. Let’s take a closer look at how these tools benefit our clients and elevate our wealth planning offerings even further.
The Power of Strategic and Proactive Planning
Traditional (or perhaps, “old school”) investment planning often focuses on looking backward—analyzing historical performance, tracking past spending, and reviewing prior tax returns. While these insights are valuable, they don’t always help you prepare for what’s ahead.
Instead, we believe true wealth planning is about taking a proactive approach and using dynamic financial tools to model different scenarios, anticipate challenges, and evaluate the impact of your decisions before you make them.
The tools our team uses take into account external factors (like market trends and economic indicators) and personalized data points to create a strategy tailored to your specific goals.
Because we provide detailed planning for high-net-worth individuals, having access to such sophisticated and state-of-the-art planning tools makes a meaningful difference in our ability to navigate even the most complex financial decisions with our clients. Through our affiliation with Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, we have access to industry-leading resources that help enable us to provide tailored solutions that align with your financial and lifestyle goals.
Our Top Tools for Wealth Planning
Below are two tools we utilize to deliver tailored strategies and solutions for our high-net-worth clients.
LifeSync®
LifeSync is an interactive advice and investment planning experience designed to help you sync your wealth with your values and aspirations. It provides a structured approach to making informed financial decisions by analyzing:
Current and future cash flow needs: Using probability analysis and “what-if” scenarios to model different financial outcomes.
Wealth transfer and estate planning strategies: These include charitable gifting, trust structuring, and tax-efficient wealth transfer planning.
Risk management solutions: This includes asset titling, insurance strategies, and income replacement plans.
Business transition planning: Determining your business’s next stage post-exit, whether you choose to keep it in the family, sell to an outside buyer, or offer employees the opportunity to own.
Executive compensation planning: This includes managing concentrated stock positions and structuring equity compensation plans.
Tax implications of wealth planning decisions: Helping you assess the impact of income, estate, and transfer taxes.
By incorporating LifeSync into our wealth planning process, we help our clients understand how their financial choices impact their broader wealth strategy. In doing so, they’re better able to align their wealth with their long-term goals.
eMoney®
Effective financial decision-making starts with a clear understanding of where you stand today. eMoney is a powerful investment planning tool that our team uses to consolidate the various segments of your financial life and track the progress you’re making toward your goals.
What we really love about eMoney is how it can enable investors and clients to more effectively visualize the long-term impact of their decisions. Often, this is what’s needed to understand the true power of small, yet meaningful actions taken over time.
With eMoney, we’re able to:
Aggregate all of your financial accounts in one place for a comprehensive view of your wealth.
Model different financial scenarios to evaluate the potential impact of investment decisions, tax strategies, and major life events.
Track and adjust your goals over time to help ensure your financial strategy remains aligned with your evolving priorities.
What Else Can We Help You Accomplish?
Beyond comprehensive wealth planning services, we help our clients with more specific concerns, including succession planning for their businesses and generational wealth planning.
Business Succession Planning
If you’re a business owner, succession planning is a critical part of your long-term wealth strategy. Even if you’re years away from leaving work behind for good, it’s never too early to start thinking about your eventual exit.
We work closely with business owners to identify and implement transition strategies that align with their goals while helping ensure continuity for employees and stakeholders.
Through our business advisory services, we can help you determine the best course of action for your business—whether that’s keeping it in the family, selling to an external buyer, or structuring an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).
We can also help you proactively address and plan for the common challenges that come with transitioning out of a leadership position within your business. These may include concerns over retaining key employees through a transition, navigating challenging family dynamics, and addressing the potential tax liability of selling a business.
Legacy Planning
Beyond numbers on a balance sheet, your focus is on preserving the meaning and purpose behind your wealth. We can help you navigate the personal and emotional aspects of accumulating, preserving, and transferring wealth. In doing so, our goal is to ensure our financial strategies align with your deeply held values and priorities.
Through our legacy planning offerings, we help families:
Define their wealth philosophy and values.
Implement strategies for multi-generational wealth transfer.
Educate and prepare heirs for financial responsibility.
Balance financial security with philanthropic and impact-driven initiatives.
By combining technical expertise with a thoughtful approach to legacy planning, we help families create wealth strategies that endure for generations.
Making the Most of Your Wealth Journey
Our team leverages some of today’s most sophisticated wealth planning tools and software to deliver intentional strategies tailored to your specific needs and goals.
To learn more about how our wealth planning process is designed to address the specific concerns of Florida’s high-net-worth individuals and families, we invite you to request an introductory conversation with our team today. Let’s create a strategy that positions you for success.
Rob Edwards is a Managing Director and Senior PIM® Portfolio Manager at Edwards Asset Management. Rob is a nationally recognized advisor who helps millionaire families navigate the complexities of their wealth. Edwards Asset Management has offices in Naples, Florida and Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
LifeSync is available on the smartphone versions of the Wells Fargo Mobile app. Additional device availability may vary. Availability may be affected by your mobile carrier’s coverage area. Your mobile carrier’s message and data rates may apply.
The projections or other information generated by eMoney regarding the likelihood of various investment outcomes are hypothetical in nature, do not reflect actual investment results and are not guarantees of future results. Results may vary with each use and over time.
Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network does not provide legal or tax advice.
