• What Fiduciary Standards Are Your Advisors Required to Uphold?

    Altere Financial, LLC was founded by a practicing CFP® professional. Therefore, Investment Advisor Representatives who are affiliated with Altere Financial, LLC adhere to the CFP® Board’s fiduciary standards.  These standards require advisors to act in the best interest of the client when providing financial advice and financial planning. Altere Financial, LLC and all of its Investment Advisor Representatives have made a commitment to act as a fiduciary for all clients.

  • Do You Provide Documentation to Help Clients Understand Your Duties as a Financial Planner?

    Yes. We provide an acknowledgment form intended to assist all clients with their understanding of our obligation to the CFP® Board's Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct.

  • What Type of Topics are included in Financial Planning?

    Hourly and fee-based financial planning which covers many topics for review. There are several areas of focus which include, but are not limited to, the following:

    • Estate Planning (trust review, will review, multi-generational planning,additional collaboration with estate attorney)
    • Advanced Tax Planning (includes any collaboration with your CPA)
    • Retirement Income Planning (social security review, pension, annuity)
    • Asset Allocation Review (401k, taxable, tax-deferred accounts)
    • Portfolio Risk/Reward Analysis (third-party asset manager review)
    • Personal Financial Management (cash flow and budget planning)
    • Education Planning (529, pre-paid tuition)
    • Insurance Policy Review (property and casualty, health Insurance, life insurance, long-term care)
    • Corporate Benefits Review (employee compensation, deferred compensation)
  • How Exactly Do You Manage Assets?

    One of the benefits of our affiliation with LPL Financial as our custodian is to leverage independent research, enabling technology and access to some of the more prominent institutional money managers to implement our client's investment strategy recommended in their financial plan. We believe strongly that when acting with a fiduciary standard, implementation of an investment strategy should have several layers of ongoing due diligence and objectivity. We will be responsible for implementing a strategy tailored to your situation and not providing a predetermined investment model designed by a sales department looking to gain scale with retail investor assets. We are not paid a commission for implementing these strategies and base our fees as a percentage of assets under management. Our incentive is to make sure the strategy we recommend matches exactly with your desired outcome as outlined in your financial plan. We have access to several investment strategies that include:

    • Managed Mutual Funds
    • Managed ETF's
    • Separately Managed Accounts
    • Stocks, Bonds, REITS, ADRs
    • Alternative Strategies
    • Tax Loss Harvesting

    Most of the portfolios are managed on a discretionary basis, which means you are authorizing a financial advisor or a third-party money manager to make investment decisions and changes without your approval. Prior to this type of relationship, all your goals and objectives will be documented before and continually monitored during implementation of discretionary portfolio management. There are some occurrences, such as when we are managing the portfolio, that we would require authorization from the client prior to making a buy or sell transactions in the portfolio. This depends on the security type in the portfolio and is defined as non-discretionary portfolio management.

  • Does Your Annual Fee Schedule Include Expense Ratios and Additional Manager/Platform Fees?

    No. Depending on the type of strategy and investment holding, other expenses can increase costs that are not quoted in the advisory fee schedule. All-in costs will be fully disclosed prior to implementation of ongoing investment management.

  • Does Your Annual Advisory Fee Include Ongoing Monitoring Of The Financial Plan?

    Yes, ongoing maintenance and monitoring of the plan will typically include four (4) one-hour planning review meetings every three (3) months over a twelve (12) month period. The goal is usually to discuss and update the financial plan based on any material changes to finances or projections over the previous months.

  • Will You Provide Investment Management Services If There Is Not A Current Financial Plan in Place?

    Occasionally, we may feel comfortable that we fully understand a client's goals and objectives and will implement an investment strategy based on just a risk profile questionnaire. Normally, we do not recommend this strategy and prefer to have a recent plan in place (6 months or less) whether it was generated through me or at another firm.