One-to-One, Fiduciary Relationships

We do things differently at Galileo Planning Group Inc., because everything we do is for the benefit of you, the client. From your financial and investment plans to the one-to-one relationship with your advisor, you receive planning and service customized for you.

Alongside that customization is a fiduciary obligation to act in your best interests. We have structured our firm and our fees to eliminate conflicts of interest. As a fee-only financial advisor, we do not receive commissions. Nor do we get paid for managing your assets, as many investment managers do. Instead, you pay a fixed-fee retainer for the financial and investment planning we do for you. This frees us to advise on all areas of your wealth, not just your investment portfolio.

Finally, because we believe informed clients are in the best position to optimize their wealth, we emphasize education. We want you to know why we make the recommendations that we do. By understanding your options, you can make knowledgeable decisions about your future.

Formulating a Long-Term Portfolio Strategy

Key to our services is the formulation of a long-term strategy that sets the stage for investment success. Taking into account your unique situation and goals, we develop long-term asset allocation targets that reflect reasonable expectations for future returns, standard deviations, and cross correlations among asset classes. Although these targets are intended to remain constant over relatively long periods of time (e.g., at least five years), earlier adjustments can make sense if:

• Your career or personal situation undergoes a significant change

• Congress enacts new, substantially different tax laws

• The economic or investment environment undergoes fundamental change
  

Estate Plan Strategy

1. We work with you to understand your goals for your estate in a manner that both:

   • Directs assets in a structure appropriate to your family members’ situations

   • Reduces the inheritance tax burden to the fullest extent possible
     

2. Our advice is sensitive to the need to balance tax savings at death against the great complexity that certain vehicles can cause during your lifetime.

Providing for Family Members

1. Education funding, both for children and grandchildren, is a topic we typically discuss—e.g., contrasting Section 529 plans with the UGMA alternative.

2. Providing assets for family members with special needs is sometimes a concern, requiring analysis of appropriate vehicles in light of a family’s goals.
   

3. We often offer advice on the financial situations of parents or children. Given our commitment to customized financial advice, we may suggest investment portfolios for them that are quite different from what is optimal for the client.
   

Alternative Investments Strategies

1. Where the market does not provide the optimal means to invest in an asset category (e.g., real estate, hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, and inflation hedges), we can provide that access through private investment vehicles.

2. Private investment vehicles typically have the disadvantages of being too specialized (creating concentrated risk), having unreasonably high fees and investment minimums, and offering little to no liquidity to investors.
   

3. We utilize private vehicles that avoid these disadvantages whenever possible. We do not charge for our costs in structuring and monitoring these investments but bear the costs ourselves as integral to the services we offer.
   

Retirement Strategies

1. We calculate what accumulation of investment assets is necessary to allow you to retire at your desired spending level, given your life expectancy. In short, we give you a definite target.

2. We identify the paths to that goal and estimate when it is likely that you can reasonably attain it.
   

3. Our advice also plans for the regular cash flow you would need in retirement to match your annual spending (e.g., by suggesting a bonus deferral or by erecting a bond ladder).
   

 Income Tax Strategies

1. We seek to minimize the drag of income taxes on your growth in net worth by:

   • Exploiting opportunities to shift income from your employment years, when it would bear the maximum tax burden, to retirement

   • Utilizing investments that offer intrinsic tax efficiency

   • Allocating investments sensibly between tax-deferred and taxable accounts
     

2. As part of this effort, we monitor your annual tax situation and suggest tactics to lighten the overall burden.
   

3. Where appropriate, we prepare a strategy for benefiting charity in a way that makes optimal use of tax benefits.
   

Treating Ad Hoc Financial Issues

We expect—and desire—to advise you on all your financial concerns such as:

1. Whether to mortgage or refinance a home
   

2. What second residence might be feasible to purchase
   

3. How much life and liability insurance to carry