Services

Services offered by Ascend Financial Planning include
detailed one time or as-needed advice for the following:

• Insurance needs analysis-How to best provide for your family in the event of a death or disability.
• Cash management and budgetary services -
  We’ll help you reduce debt and/or increase savings for the future.
• Educational funding analysis– Determine how to best save for
  your child’s college or graduate school education.
• Retirement planning and projections - Develop a strategy and savings plan
  to help you realize your vision of retirement.
• Investment asset allocation and security selection.
• Long term care planning - We’ll help you evaluate options to preserve your assets
  and obtain quality care should you require long term care.
• Estate planning - Determine the effect of estate taxes on your wealth and
  refer you to respected legal and accounting professionals.
• Second opinions on your current investment portfolio.
• Periodic review to ensure you are on target.
• Plan updates in response to substantial changes in your life or your finances.
• Specific step by step guidelines for easy implementation.
• Assistance with implementation.

Our Investment Philosophy

The approach of Ascend Financial Planning is to first determine your risk tolerance based on your feedback to our risk assessment survey and discussions during our meetings. An appropriate asset allocation is determined based on this feedback. Our primary focus is on asset allocation since research suggests that it is responsible for up to 91% of an investor’s return. Once the asset allocation is proposed and agreed to by the client, an appropriate mix of equities, bonds, and cash is recommended. Most funds are passive index funds or exchange trade funds but active funds are added where it is determined that they add value and incremental risk-adjusted return.

Our Fees

Our fees are determined based on the complexity and scope of your engagement. Our first complimentary Get Acquainted meeting is generally 45 minutes long and allows us to discuss your goals and objectives and enables us to better gauge the scope of your particular project. During this meeting a fee range will be quoted based on the areas of your financial life you would like us to explore. This upper end of this fee range will never be exceeded regardless of the actual amount of time spent.

The average cost of a typical full comprehensive financial planning project is approximately $1500-$2500 but can be done all at once or spread out by completing the plan in stages. We often find that as a result of our analysis we are able to produce cost savings for you to help offset this fee. Furthermore, hourly planning advice can be far more cost effective in the long run when compared with brokerage accounts with high load products or with paying a fee as a percentage of assets managed.