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Financial Planning

At LIFE, we pride ourselves on crafting unique, customized insurance and financial services solutions based on your individual needs – we’ll never pressure you into a pre-packaged approach that doesn’t suit your family’s situation or promise an unreasonable hypothetical rate of return. To best serve your needs, we’ll first delve into your current financial situation and desires to develop a picture of your current and future needs, and your tolerance for risk.

We are proud to offer the insurance industries top rated companies, as well as securities offered through Madison Avenue Securities.

Personal Wealth Accumulation

Is the American Dream still alive and achievable?

Defining The Dream:

It is important to set realistic objectives and goals to succeed in the Greatest Nation on Earth. People can find wealth and success through determination, hard work and the belief in the American Dream.

The Dream Today:

At LIFE Financial, we believe the dream is alive and well. Increasing wealth is achieved by finding the right opportunities and having determination and guidance to follow them through.

The materials and methods for accumulating wealth has changed, however the opportunities are greater today than any other time. One simply needs to be educated on these opportunities and methods during this phase of retirement.

Dealing With Fear and Uncertainty:

The events of 9/11, volatility in the stock market, and questions about social security concern us all. Fear can make you want to maintain status quo and not take chances, thus falling victim to fear.

The opportunity is there for the taking, but you must be prepared to leave your comfort zone, summon up your strength and determination and set a course towards accumulating your personal wealth. You only have today and the lessons you have learned from your past. You can take charge of today’s reality and make it sing with tomorrow’s dreams.

Retirement Analysis

Your personalized retirement analysis is completed through a process of careful consideration of some of the best options available in the management of your financial resources. We will help you understand how to allocate your assets among various types of investments and better determine if your investment strategy is on track. Our goal is that you never have to worry about running out of money during your retirement years. A sound retirement strategy requires careful planning.

How does it work?

  • We provide a comfortable environment for discussion about your financial situation
  • We spend time getting to know you and gain knowledge of your interests, goals and concerns before putting together our recommendations.
  • We take time to envision how you would like to spend your retirement years and work to accomplish all your goals.
  • We spend as much time as needed to make sure our recommendations are clearly understood and the reasoning behind each recommendation for your retirement portfolio.

Personal Financial Organizer (PFO)

Are your personal and financial records in order? What documents do you need to keep? How long? Are your records easy to find? What if you had a serious accident tomorrow? Could someone you trust step in and temporarily handle your financial affairs, even if it’s just to pay your bills?

We have prepared a personal financial organizer to help answer those questions. These organizers, or PFO’s, are comprehensive, yet concise and easy to use. This organizer is one of our client’s favorite services we offer. We want to make the job easier for someone to settle or manage your affairs when there is a need. More importantly, your PFO can help you by organizing your own affairs, giving you a road map to guide you through retirement.

Business Exit Planning

Strategic Business Partners helps customize a step-by-step plan that even the busiest business owner can master. This customized plan leads straight to a sound exit strategy: reaping top dollar when you sell or transfer your business.

Tax Reduction Strategies

Tax Reduction Strategies can help you decide which investments can give you and your family the best return on the dollar after taxes now, at your retirement and in the event that something should happen to you.

A little planning can go a long way to keep your taxes as low as possible before and after retirement. In order to plan ahead properly, you’ll need to understand how your retirement income will taxed. Becoming educated, you can choose effective strategies to keep your tax bill as low as possible.

People often receive income from a variety of sources, including social security benefits, pension benefits, annuities, IRAs and other retirement plans. We can help you to understand how income from various retirement plans are taxed, and help you with basic tax strategies to help maximize your retirement dollars.

Business Wealth Accumulation

By designing a retirement plan that fits your needs Strategic Business Partners helps you organize your wealth. This may be a plan that discriminates in favor of you as the owner or specific key employees: or may be a plan that covers all employees.

Qualified Retirement Plans

Defined Benefit Plans

The employer contributes an actuarially-determined amount sufficient to pay each participant a fixed or defined benefit at his or her retirement. Methods of defining the benefit may be based on a flat percentage of compensation, a percentage which increases with years of service, a percentage which changes at certain compensation levels, etc.

This type of plan generally favors older employees, because more of the employer’s contributions must go into his or her account to make certain that there will be enough to pay the promised (or defined) benefit at retirement age.

Defined Contribution Plans

There are several variations of defined contribution plans. Some of the more common ones include the following:

  • Money purchase pension: The employer contributes a specified percentage of the participating employee’s salary each year. Whatever that fund grows to is what the retiring employee receives.
  • Target benefit pension plan: The target benefit plan has elements of both the defined benefit and defined contribution plans. The benefits are determined as if the plan were a defined benefit plan, while the defined contribution plan annual contribution percentage and dollar amount limitations apply to the actual contributions.
  • Traditional profit sharing plan: Similar to the money purchase pension, except that contributions do not need to be a specific percentage and they do not need to be made every year, as long as they are substantial and recurring.
  • Age-weighted money purchase and profit sharing plans: Money purchase and profit sharing plans in which employer contributions are allocated to provide an assumed equivalent retirement benefit at normal retirement age.
  • Cross-tested or super-integrated money purchase and profit sharing plans: These plans establish groups of participants to which are allocated specified allocation percentages. They must satisfy very complicated discriminatory requirements under Reg. 1,401(a)(4).
  • Stock bonus plan: Similar to the traditional profit sharing plan. The plan may, but is not required to, invest primarily in the employer’s stock.
  • ESOP – Employee stock ownership plan: Like a stock bonus plan, to which the employer can contribute company stock instead of cash. The plan must be primarily invested in company stock.
  • IRC Sec. 401(k) plan: Also called a cash or deferred plan, this plan is any stock bonus plan or profit sharing plan which meets certain participation requirements of IRC Sec. 401(k). An employee can agree to a salary reduction or to defer a bonus which he or she has coming.
  • SIMPLE plans: SIMPLE stands for Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees. SIMPLE plans can be in either IRA format or a 401(k) format.
  • SEP: This stands for Simplified Employee Plan. A SEP is a group of individual IRAs established for employees to which the employer and employees may contribute more than an individual employee could contribute to a traditional IRA or ROTH IRA

Business Protection

By using insurance products to cover your Group Health, Life, Disability, and Long-Term Care needs, we can tailor a package that fits your unique situation.

Group Health /Group Disability Insurance

A plan designed to fit your company’s unique circumstances.

Group LTC

Coverage that provides nursing-home care, home-health care, personal or adult day care.

Key Person Life Insurance

Protect Against The Unexpected

The untimely death of a key person – such as an owner, partner or majority shareholder – often has a significant impact on a closely held business. Replacing the expertise and knowledge of an essential individual can take time and money – and may even jeopardize the continuity of the business. You’ll also need to assure creditors and customers that everything is fine. A key person life insurance policy can help the transition.

Buy Sell Agreement

Surviving owners generally want to ensure a continuity of ownership and management without having the departing owner’s successor thrust upon them. Nor do they want to unduly compromise the liquidity needs of the business by funding a significant buyout. Disabled or deceased owners would want their families compensated fairly for their share of the business. A properly drafted buy-sell agreement can achieve all of these goals.