Relax in Retirement

RELAX IN

RETIREMENT

How a Virtual Family Office Can Help You Relax in Retirement.

Having a strong understanding of your Personal Financial situation is the first step towards a relaxing and drama free retirement. Do you think about retirement? Do you wonder if your nest egg will last? Do your retirement savings support your current quality of life? To truly understand your financial picture the first step is to know: what wealth you have, where is your money and how’s it performing. This is known as personal financial data. But perhaps you can’t crunch those numbers (or don’t want to.) You may want to consider a Virtual Family Office (VFO).

What is a Virtual Family Office (VFO)?

Family offices have been around since the Rockefellers first employed a team of professionals to help track their finances. From that point forward, family offices have been known to serve ultra-high-net-worth families. Single Family Offices (SFO) include staffs of financial investment advisors, wealth management specialists, tax accountants, and personal bookkeepers under one roof. These employees managed the family’s wealth, but also provided estate planning advice, private wealth management, and family governance services. Then came Multi Family Offices (MFO) whose

employees serve several families. MFO’s provided a menu of services families could pick and choose from depending on their needs. Today’s MFO’s traditionally focus on investment management and tax preparation.

With the advancement of technology, the Virtual Family Office (VFO) was born and is the latest evolution of the family office. VFOs offer a wide range of both traditional family office services as well as assistance with bill-pay, trust compliance and real estate management. VFO’s often are more flexible with both their client base and willingness to work with a family’s long time trusted advisors. And with no geographical barriers clients can work with a VFO anywhere! Accounting firms have been quick to leverage the model and cater to families seeking relief from having to manage their own financial affairs or gathering documents at tax time.

Is a Virtual Family Office right for you?

Do you find it tedious trying to keep a close eye on all of your income streams, expenses, and accounts? Hiring a Virtual Family Office means support with your financial life and portfolio without having to deal with the overhead or expense of employees and high fees.

A good VFO will know how to use financial tools to keep track of your portfolio. They should also work collaboratively to coordinate your existing financial team and act as your advocate and fiduciary with no conflicts of interest.

Prefer a Do-it-yourself approach?

A VFO’s secret sauce is its use of technology. If you want to take action now, but aren’t ready for a Virtual Family Office, the power of technology can help. Some of the best ways you can keep an eye on where your money is – and understand how you are spending it – is by using Personal Financial Software (PFS). Let’s take a quick look at some of the most popular platforms:

Simplifi Simplifi from the makers of Quicken is a new mobile-ready application that enables you to create a personalized spending plan, monitor your bills, project cash flow, and set goals. As its name suggests it’s easy to use, but limited in functionality.

Mint Mint by Intuit is a free app that helps you keep track of your expenses so that you can budget more efficiently. Mint can link your bank accounts, credit cards and brokerage accounts. This will give you a better understanding of your overall net worth, and if you are reaching your targets.

TillerHQ If you like spreadsheets, this exciting new product automates your bank feeds and produces beautiful and highly customizable reports. However, it’s still lacking investment activity support. eMoney eMoney is a financial planning app many financial advisors (FA) offer their clients free of charge to streamline the estate planning experience. This tool lets you combine all your accounts and securely store important files such as wills, insurance policies and more to safeguard your financial future and collaborate with your financial advisor. Ask your FA if they offer eMoney.

Personal Capital Personal Capital allows you to see your complete financial picture on one single platform including Brokerage Balances. It can help you stay on top of your financial and

retirement objectives and provide good reporting on Investment performance and allocations . It’s free and Personal Capital is available should you need help with your wealth management.

QuickBooks Quickbooks is one of the most popular financial programs but it’s tailored to businesses. While it can be manipulated to work for individuals but does not support investments and is not intended to work as a Personal Financial program. Quicken Formerly Intuit’s flagship product until divested in 2016, Quicken (for PC) has been around since the DOS days. Quicken’s advantage is that its head start has made it feature and functionality rich beyond most of its competitors (and even its Quicken for Mac sister product) for less than $100/year. But disadvantages include: lacks true mobile functionality, still retains a dated user interface and can be confusing to use.

Moving Forward

Knowing your options can empower you to make the right choices in preparation and in retirement. You’ve worked hard for your money and you deserve to enjoy the fruits of your labor. So whether you turn to a VFO for support, leverage the latest technology yourself, or combine the two, one thing is clear:

You have the power to make your golden years all the more golden. The question is, are you ready to find out where your money is and what it’s doing?

This article was written by Stephen M.Smith CPA Founder of SundialVFO. Smith is a Personal Financial Software guru, Quicken© Expert and a Top 100 QuickBooks ProAdvisor. Reachable at Stephen@SundialVFO.com