FAQ’s

As the company was being formed, the seemingly impossible concept of advisors being in “total alignment” with clients kept repeating itself as an underlying theme. With clients now in a starting position of control as to what the ideal family wealth advisor’s structure would entail, concepts of full transparency, independent oversight, comprehensive viewpoint, reciprocal support, superior intelligence, avoidance of common conflicts of interests and a strict prohibition on commission-based sales all started circulating around this “total alignment” theme. After much diligence and design, the founding clients and advisors set about to achieve the otherwise unattainable and resolved to name the company “Total Alignment Wealth Advisors” (or sometimes affectionately referred to as just “TAWA”).

Much of what is different ties back to our firm being founded by clients and being owned and controlled exclusively by clients and advisors. If we had been founded and controlled by unrelated third party profit-seekers, we do not believe that the same independent fee-only transparency and pro-client safeguards would have been incorporated in our structure. In addition to the unusual degree of independence that our business model allows, the fact that we focus our entire business on financial organization, scenario analysis, independent oversight and research services is unique for the financial services industry.

Clients hire us when they are looking for independent analysis and unbiased research for informed decision-making, consolidated reporting that includes spending activity and forward-looking cash flow projections that other advisors typically do not cover, and time savings through single-source coordination with their existing advisors and action items tracking.

Often, the prompt is when a major life event has just occurred.  Such major life events typically include retirement, the sale of a business, the onset of a disability or severe illness, the purchase and/or sale of a home, divorce, birth or adoption of a child, marriage, death, employment changes, or a change in a key advisor.  For these clients, we help to organize their new financial situations and evaluate their various financial alternatives going forward, taking them through each viable scenario and revealing the end impact of each decision choice.

Other clients hire us after a more generalized realization that their financial situation has become complex, that their available time and desire to track and analyze financial activity and documents has become limited, that traditional advisors with whom they have worked often have specialized knowledge with limited viewpoints and varying incentives, and that it is more efficient for them to work with a single advisor who has broad knowledge and resources to address all financial areas than it is to work with multiple individual advisors who only have expertise and viewpoints as to one financial area.

For clients who have growing financial complexity, their primary focus tends to be on saving time.  To address this need, we provide continuous single-source reporting and document management to help track all financial activity and action items.  This is especially helpful for clients who hold assets at multiple institutions and who would otherwise need continuous contact with multiple traditional advisors.  With such a high level of complexity, an independent generalist advisor is often necessary to help organize financial activity, triage and prioritize issues with an unbiased eye, and coordinate with existing specialist advisors for implementation.

Finally, clients who have growing financial complexity and are focused on time savings also often appreciate the services of their existing accountant, attorney, investment manager, and/or insurance representative, and often are not interested in working with yet another advisor who will present a conflict with such existing advisors’ roles.  By designing our business model to work collaboratively (instead of competitively) with such traditional advisors, we empower clients to make informed financial decisions that incorporates all areas of their financial lives while allowing clients to keep their existing advisors if doing so is in their best interests and ultimately still save time, money, and worry going forward.

“Fee-only” means that we are only paid by our clients and not by third parties.  This also means that what we are paid is fully transparent to you at all times, and that the advice we provide to you is based on maximizing the chances of you achieving your financial objectives.  Receiving commissions or selling any financial products to an existing client is strictly prohibited by our company’s operating agreement and is reinforced by a termination “for cause” provision for any of our advisors so doing.  We have no flexibility to change this structure without our founding clients’ approval.

The similarities are that both platforms begin with financial organization, an independent evaluation, research, and an overall assessment of financial strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats identified.  For both platforms, we will first retrieve, review, and synthesize all of your documents and financial information.  This involves a review of your tax returns, wills insurance policies, incapacity planning documents, bank and investment statements or data links, employment benefits, and any trust agreements.  The results of our review, construction of financial models, scenario tests, and research reveal any identified problems along with recommended solutions on ways to solve those identified problems.

The differences become relevant after the comprehensive wealth review is delivered and the resulting action items list is created.  If the Personal CFO service is elected, periodic reviews are conducted at certain intervals thereafter.  If the more involved Private Family Office service is elected, our wealth advisors and strategists will make themselves available as often as weekly and custom consolidated reporting (which includes a comprehensive action items list) is provided as often as monthly and may extend, at the client’s discretion, to lineal family members of the Client.  To ensure that we have capacity work with Private Family Office clients, their other advisors, and, where applicable, their family members, a maximum 20-to-1 client-to-advisor ratio is imposed on the Firm.

Overall, the differences between the Personal CFO and the Private Family Office relate to the level of involvement that your financial situation requires. That level of involvement is often correlated with net worth levels, but may also relates to other factors such as complexity, financial sophistication, job demands, amount of free time, and interest in being involved in financial matters and coordinating with advisors.  As an example, a client who runs a local business with ten employees, owns two homes, has a spouse and two young kids, has one or two investment managers, set up one trust, and has a middle to high six-digit income may be an appropriate fit for our Personal CFO service. In contrast, a client who serves as a CFO of a Fortune 500 company, owns five homes, uses four investment managers, holds several accounts overseas, pays alimony to an ex-spouse, has two children in college, has three trusts and four LLCs, serves on several boards, holds both non-qualified deferred compensation and vested and unvested company options, and has a seven or eight-digit income will likely be a more appropriate fit for our Private Family Office service.

You may provide as little time as you are able and willing to provide that still will allow your goals to be accomplished.  For example, after the initial consultation meeting to determine how we might be able to assist you, you might determine that the fastest way for us to retrieve needed documents such as tax returns, wills, insurance policies, and other documents would be to request such documents from your other advisors.  This is common and we have a general letter of authorization form that you may sign in order to effectuate that process. After we retrieve such documents from your outside advisors (who may or may not reach out to you to verify your authorization), we will then schedule a 30-minute confirmation call with you to confirm with you the financial reports we constructed based upon the documentation retrieved.  In the aggregate, the time commitments from you before the Comprehensive Wealth Review sums to approximately 30 minutes in this situation plus whatever amount of time was required for the consultation meeting.  As for the Comprehensive Wealth Review itself, that meeting will require anywhere from two to four hours of meeting time, depending on complexity.  Since that meeting involves a discussion of all aspects of your financial life, it is typically the longest single meeting we will have.

After the Comprehensive Wealth Review meeting, the amount of time required by you will depend on what ongoing service was elected. For the Personal CFO service, our wealth advisors and strategists commit to making themselves available for scheduled update calls or meetings as often as monthly.  For our more involved Private Family Office service, our wealth advisors and strategists commit to making themselves available for 30-minute recurring scheduled update calls as often as weekly or in-person meetings as often as monthly.

This process can take anywhere from three to five weeks. The greater the extent of assets and information, the longer the process typically takes.

Once financial documents and information are retrieved and reviewed, we will construct basic financial reports and schedule a 30-minute call with you to confirm that no material information appears to be missing and that our basic financial reports appear to have been constructed and synthesized properly.  Before scheduling the Comprehensive Wealth Review meeting, we also ask any qualitative questions, such as those related to your risk tolerance and overall financial planning objectives, and clarify any discrepancies in the information or documents obtained.  After this 30-minute confirmation call, we then begin to analyze your situation by constructing various “what if” scenarios and financial models, researching opportunities, and writing our recommendations.  The Comprehensive Wealth Review meeting is typically scheduled for two to three weeks after the basic financial reports are confirmed.

We do not have a minimum net worth size; however, our periodic Comprehensive Wealth Review and related Personal CFO packages begin to make sense around three million in net worth, whereas our ongoing Private Family Office service begin to make sense around thirty million in net worth.

Yes.  We currently have clients in several states across the United States, from the east coast to the west coast.  We travel frequently.

We advise on any area that can impact our clients’ financial lives. This includes, but is not limited to: taxes, estate planning, insurance and personal risk management, privacy matters, college planning, executive compensation, business succession planning, advisor evaluations, retirement planning, charitable giving strategies, investments, marriage planning, divorce planning, exercising stock options, buying or selling real estate, cash flow planning, and financing and credit matters.

To avoid conflicts with our clients’ existing specialist advisors, we do not provide services that most of our clients’ existing specialist advisors already provide.  This includes active discretionary investment management services, complex legal document drafting, contentious matter legal representation, insurance placement, or tax return preparation services.  We believe that most of our clients either already have advisors to provide these services or are able to quickly source them.  To the extent that a client requests our assistance in sourcing new advisors or in evaluating existing advisors for these services, we can provide defensible, merit-based evaluations and referrals to such advisors and we will not accept additional monetary fees from those advisors in so doing.  For particular situations where a client’s active investment manager is not able to deliver value in excess of that manager’s fees and applicable index benchmark(s), or where a client’s investment manager is unable to provide sufficient charitable expertise to deliver value on the management of charitable assets, or where a client simply needs to have an investment management solution during some limited period of transition, that client may elect to have assets managed on a cost-effective, passive basis in one of a set of low-cost, model exchange-trade fund (ETF) portfolios or to have charitable assets managed for impact purposes through TAWA’s subsidiary investment entity, TA Capital Management, LLC (“TA Capital”).  For rare situations where a client believes that our subsidiary’s offering of passive and charitable investment management services at TA Capital diminishes our ability to evaluate that client’s active investment manager on an independent basis, that client may completely eradicate any perceived conflict by electing into our Private Family Office platform.  Our Private Family Office platform assesses a low fee on the entire investable asset base in exchange for consolidated performance reporting, comparative analytics, certain private investment reviews, and the ability to manage any, all or no assets at TA Capital for no additional fee.  Because neither TA Capital nor TAWA benefits any more or any less if assets are placed at TA Capital, we believe our independence and ability to provide objective evaluations continues to be preserved.

Yes. Our technology is a non-transactional aggregation system that pulls in information that is already online. It uses 256-bit encryption and secured socket layer protection, among other security features. For a full review of the security measures in place, please see our 2-minute security video here.

Our Private Family Office platform provides monthly overview reports that show clients various financial reports that are important to them.  This may include, for example, relevant progress on action items for the month, upcoming reminders, categorized cash inflows and outflows for the month, net worth as of the end of the month, changes in net worth that occurred during the month and the causes of those changes in net worth broken down by cash flow changes versus market value changes.  Analytics and Consolidated Reporting is a corollary service that provides more in-depth analysis on investments – including consolidated monthly performance reports, quarterly comparative fee and performance insights and certain private alternative investment reviews.

Simply put, no.  We acknowledge that advisors who serve as private bankers, investment managers, accountants, insurance representatives, or attorneys provide valuable services.  For that reason, we encourage our clients to keep advisors in those roles.  However, we have found that in most cases those advisors are compensated differently, such as by increasing assets under management (“AUM”), selling an insurance policy, lending money, drafting a will, or preparing a tax return.  Rarely if ever are these advisors specifically compensated for reviewing your entire financial situation, preparing scenario analysis, and identifying opportunities or issues where those advisors would also not stand to directly benefit from whether or not you moved forward with that advisor’s recommendation.  In addition, we have found that typically none of those advisors are able to see your “big picture” at any given time. For example, typically none of those advisors could tell you with any precision what your total net worth was as of yesterday, nor what your expected cash flows will be ten years into the future assuming you made certain decisions.  This inability to consider all aspects of your financial life can present problems, particularly as changes that you make in one area of your financial life can have a significant impact to another area of your financial life.  This integrated, holistic approach by independent wealth advisors who are trained in identifying issues in these various areas is the core value that we provide.  And when you consider the wealth advisor’s ability to identify savings in taxes, insurance costs, fees, portfolio risk/return inefficiencies, combined with the time savings, independent viewpoint, and overall peace of mind achieved, delivery of value well in excess of our fees has not been a challenge for us.

We are pleased that you are interested in exploring a relationship with us.  As a next step, we encourage you to call us at 212-913-9110 to set up an appointment to speak with us.  You may also e-mail us at inquiries@totalalignmentwealth.com.