HOW WE INVEST
At One-Up Financial, our investment philosophy is simple. Whether it's how we explain the investments we recommend for our clients, the investments themselves or the strategies we've chosen, we favor simplicity over complexity.
As a potential investor of ours, we think it’s important to understand how we manage your money—what’s important to us (because it’s best for our investors), why we offer what we offer, and what you can expect from us should you choose to become our client.
QUALITY PRODUCTS
The marketplace for investment products is vast. New securities are introduced daily making it hard for investors to determine which investments are right for them, and which they should avoid.
Too often we've seen investment statements from prospective clients riddled with overly complex products and securities that are expensive, tax-inefficient and rarely perform as they're intended. In the end, these types of investments work better to serve the institution offering the products rather than the individual investing in them. More importantly, they're often recommended simply because they’re better financially for the financial institution with the investor never realizing there were better options.
With One-Up Financial, we carefully screen all available investment offerings and limit ours to only those offered by some of the financial industry's most respected institutions including Vanguard, J.P. Morgan, BlackRock and State Street Global, focusing on ones most likely to enhance returns, minimize risk, and provide a steady and reliable stream of income for our clients.
ATTENTION TO CRAFTING SIMPLIFIED PLANS
In our experience managing more than $300 million for individuals and families, we've found investors are better positioned to achieve long-term financial success when they follow a simple, disciplined, globally diversified investment strategy which we monitor consistently and meticulously to remain in line with their goals, time horizon and tolerance for risk.
You may be thinking, "That sounds great, but what does it all mean?"
HOW RISKY CAN I GET?
What would you do if the value of your IRA dropped $500,000 in one day? When do you plan to take money from your investments to fund retirement expenses? How much do you need to earn in the stock market to live the lifestyle you've become accustomed to?
These are just some of the questions we'll ask before we formulate our recommendations and establish an "asset allocation," or optimal balance between risk and reward that's best for you. Your answers will help us decide how much to invest in stocks and bonds. Once established, this asset allocation is memorialized in an Investment Policy Statement which is an agreement between you and One-Up Financial dictating how we will manage your money going forward until such time you notify us that something in your financial life has changed.
LET THE INVESTING BEGIN
Next, we invest your money according to your established asset allocation.
At One-Up Financial, we believe in the Efficient Market Hypothesis, or the theory that the financial markets quickly and accurately reflect all available information about a given security making it difficult to outperform the market. As such, we prefer low-cost index funds and ETFs (Exchanged Traded Funds) which serve to mirror the returns of an index rather than try to outperform it, which we feel will better position our clients' investments for optimal long-term performance.
Once your account is invested, it is our responsibility to consistently monitor and rebalance your investments to ensure your money remains in-line with your asset allocation, regardless of the inevitable ebbs and flows of the stock market.
WHAT'S NEXT?
We understand investing can be a confusing topic for many people. That's why we make it a point to schedule throughout the year at least three meetings with our clients to update them on how their investments have performed, changes we've made or plan to make and to see if anything has changed in their financial lives that would require an adjustment to their investment strategy.
During these meetings, we make a promise to speak in a language our clients can understand. At One-Up Financial, we believe it's more important for investors to feel comfortable and confident about how their money is being managed rather than to try and impress them with fancy terminology.
If the One-Up Financial investment philosophy and process sounds like it could work for you, call or email us to get started.