Integrated 360˚Personal & Business Planning
Turn Your Life's Work into Your Legacy
You’re a business owner who has everything on the line with your business. You’ve sacrificed family time, loads of money, and plenty of sleep for the promise of financial freedom and security for you and your loved ones.
It’s your dream to build a legacy you can put your name on, and to extract maximum value for your efforts. You want your business and people to thrive, and to define your succession plan so you can exit feeling proud of your life’s work.
If you want to turn your dream into a plan, let’s talk about how we can help you.
Our advisors have helped business owners balance their business and personal goals over many years. As business owners ourselves, we bring our own financial and business experience to helping you and yours.
We understand that time is never on your side: you want answers you can trust, guidance that fits your schedule, and a financial partner to help shoulder the load.
We also understand that a large proportion of your personal wealth is tied to your business’ performance and this risk must be mitigated.
Many business owners come to us seeking answers to these questions:
- What is my business worth?
- How do I go about funding it?
- Am I maximizing the tax mitigation opportunities?
- How should I attract, retain and incentivize my employees?
- How will the sale of my business affect my retirement?
- What’s my succession plan if something unexpected happens to me?
- Who can I trust to guide me through all the layers?
Integrated 360˚Personal & Business Planning for Today & Tomorrow
It’s generally best to divide your financial planning into business and personal plans. That way, you can rest easy, knowing your business and personal interests are aligned, and you have a holistic plan that spans all aspects of your financial life.
WestStar Advisors provide for your long-term success through a holistic financial planning framework that aligns your business and personal financial plans and includes regular strategy sessions, close mentoring, monitoring and blended advice.
We do the groundwork and help you gain clarity on your goals and options, plus real confidence and assuredness in your decisions.
Your 360° integrated personal and business plans come together in a dynamic Navigator Roadmap that brings your overall prosperity into focus: personal planning, business planning, investment planning, savings, Social Security, pension, health savings, retirement and more.
The dashboard makes progress toward your goals transparent. Beneath it lies a simulator that can measure your probability of success and create scenarios that show you your trajectory based on our recommendations.
Your Navigator 360° Roadmap incorporates your personal and business goals, pinpoints your priorities, and maps the journey ahead. It also serves as a communication tool that articulates our strategic thinking in a clear and actionable way.
With Navigator we can target your goals with maximum efficiency and the highest level of certainty.
Personal Financial Planning For Business Owners
Your business is a key asset in your individual financial plan. Understanding what happens to it when you’re gone is essential both to meeting your financial goals and building your confidence.
We help you to determine an accurate valuation of your business, and incorporate it into your personalized financial plan.
While your business plays a major part in your life, planning for your own retirement ─ and things like saving for your kids’ education, and minimizing taxes ─ are all brought into play.
Investment Planning
Most of our business owner clients have self-financed their businesses and when they have extra capital to invest, they often choose to invest in the business.
But far-sighted financial planning requires diversification to offset the concentrated risks that business owners take.
We evaluate and select outside assets for your personal portfolio, which may be protected from bankruptcy and creditors, and so all your eggs aren’t in one basket.
Investment Strategies
In developing a plan that fits your needs, we will discuss any appropriate strategies, as well as your goals and risk tolerance.
Our open architecture affords us access to an extremely broad spectrum of professional money managers and funds.
Once we’ve agreed on your priorities and milestones, we develop and employ the most appropriate investment strategies.
We provide top tools and technology to make your investment strategy dynamic and transparent.
Investment Portfolio Management
When developing your investment strategy, we focus on your unique circumstances, goals and values.
Among many questions we’ll look to answer are:
- What goals do you want your funds to accomplish?
- What time horizons will govern their deployment?
- What expectations do you have for risk and reward?
- How do you want your portfolio to be balanced?
- Are your funds qualified for tax deferral?
Your goals and priorities will change over time and your WestStar Advisor will review progress with you and evaluate your portfolio to keep you on track towards your goals.
Proactive Tax Planning
Business ownership affords many tax-advantaged ways to save for retirement, along with the option to put aside amounts far larger than those allowable to non-business owners. Astute planning can save you taxes and provide more money to invest in your company and personal plans.
When many business owners first come to us, we find they’ve taken practically no tax deductions against their incomes.
Others haven’t optimized their Retirement Plan for the largest pre-tax contributions, and are missing out on larger tax deductions and a lower overall tax bill.
We also provide a deep analysis of your tax advantaged investment and Social Security options.
We will provide retirement income planning strategies, help you decide the best time to take benefits, and show you how to stay within tax brackets.
We’ve helped many business owners benefit by amending their existing 401(k) plan to ensure they can make the maximum contribution each year.
Retirement Planning for Business Owners
Like us, our business owner clients get a real kick out of what they do. They often assume they’ll never retire, and they view their business as an adequate retirement plan if they do. These assumptions need testing.
We find that business owners are likely to need more retirement planning, not less.
It’s crucial to prepare for a time when you’re either no longer able to (or no longer wish to) work, or the business can no longer provide for your financial needs.
Estate Planning For Business Owners
When your business grows to become a valuable asset in your estate, simple wills or family trusts may not be adequate.
More sophisticated financial planning techniques may be necessary to ensure aspects like business continuity after death, the reduction of estate taxes assessed for the business, and provision of liquidity to your heirs to pay those taxes.
WestStar is here to make sure your business transfers smoothly.
We consider the pivotal roles of insurance and charitable trusts; we reorganize the business when necessary to create alternative types of ownership for family members.
We also make full use of IRS-approved discounts in valuing the business for purposes of gift and estate taxes.
Buy & Sell Agreements
Your business continuity is important, especially when multiple partners or equity holders are involved in running it.
Buy and Sell Agreements are commonly used by sole proprietorships, partnerships and LLCs to effect transitions in ownership when a partner dies, retires, or exits the business.
Buy and Sell Agreements stipulate how a partner’s share may be transferred in the event of a partner’s death or departure. They may also establish the method agreed for determining the value of the business.
The most common agreements are cross-purchase agreements (allowing remaining owners to buy the interests), or entity-purchase agreements (requiring the business entity to buy the interests).
Some agreements combine the two.
Many WestStar Advisors have great experience in helping owners buy, sell and exit their businesses. We assess business succession funding and estate planning aspects, seeking to structure income tax and estate tax free vehicles.
Business Risk Management
While it’s important to focus on how to grow and secure your business’ future, it’s just as crucial to put protections in place from the risks that could impair your financial situation.
As a business owner, your risks escalate to include the interruption of your business due to the death or disability of those who are essential to its success, or due to a natural disaster.
We provide Group Life & Disability Insurance, Business Insurance, and Cybersecurity Insurance.
Personal Risk Management
We all need to plan for the financial risks of early death, disability, illness, and long-term care.
Life Insurance: We assess business succession funding and estate planning as potential income tax and estate tax free vehicles.
Disability Insurance: We look to protect your income should you become unable to work.
Long-Term Care: We evaluate financial support should you require adult care, respite care, or assisted living.
Knowledge and Networking
As business owners ourselves, our insight and experience make us valuable sounding boards for clients who wonder if they’re making the best decisions.
We also connect our clients with other professionals, as well as groups like Vistage, YPO, and EO, to give them perspective and grow their knowledge beyond what we offer as their financial mentors.
According to your needs, we develop and implement a 360° Financial Plan that can also include the following planning essentials:
Relationships Built on Trust
At WestStar we believe that trust is earned. Our relationships are real, honest and candid. We say what we do, and we do what we say.
Our personal touch and care is evident in all of our relationships, many of which have served business owners and their families’ best interests for decades.
If that sounds like a relationship worth pursuing, then we would be delighted to partner with you in turning your life’s work into your legacy.
Disclosures
All investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. There is no assurance that any investment strategy will be successful.
A diversified portfolio does not assure a profit or protect against loss in a declining market.
Business Owner Financial Planning Frequently Asked Questions
Many small business owners face unique challenges since their personal and business finances are closely aligned. This often provides synergies that may lead to investment, tax, and retirement opportunities that only small business owners enjoy.
However, many business owners see their businesses as their retirement plan, and this can be a costly mistake if it absorbs all their time and if their business fails or underperforms.
Financial planning for you and your business is essential in managing the growth and stability of your business and your personal finances. After all, the two are closely related.
For effective financial planning both personally and for your business, you must start by setting clear personal and business goals, assessing your current situation, budgeting, and investing for both short and long-term needs, while also considering debt management and insurance.
What are the benefits of doing so?
- Sustainable Growth: Planning helps ensure that financial resources are allocated effectively to support your business’ growth and expansion.
- Risk Management: Planning identifies and mitigates personal and business financial risks and helps prevent those risks from becoming major problems.
- Profitability & Efficiency: Planning improves cost control and can maximize the profitability of your business.
- Strategic Decision-Making: Planning provides data-driven insights to enable better financial and operational decision making and aligns your business decisions with your personal goals.
- Investor & Stakeholder Confidence: Planning in your business builds trust by maintaining financial transparency.
Overall, we can see that financial planning is essential for achieving financial success, whether for personal or business goals.
As a small business owner, you can make the mistake of putting most of your time and energy into providing for your employees, meeting your customers’ needs, and making your business a success. But what about your personal financial situation?
Many small business owners find themselves putting all their energy (and money) into their business, but this is a mistake. How do you prevent yourself from doing so?
It’s generally best to divide your financial planning into business and personal plans. That way, you can rest easy, knowing your business and personal interests are aligned, and you have a holistic plan that spans all aspects of your financial life.
6 Key Personal Financial Planning Imperatives
- Set Financial Goals: Define what you want to achieve financially, whether it’s the sale of your business, succession planning, your retirement, paying off your house, or paying off debt.
- Assess Your Current Situation: Evaluate your income, expenses, assets, and debts.
- Create a Budget: Track your income and expenses to understand where your money is going and identify areas for savings.
- Invest for the Future: Consider different investment options to help you reach your long-term goals, such as retirement planning.
- Manage Debt: Develop a plan to pay off high-interest debts and avoid accumulating more debt.
- Ensure Adequate Insurance Coverage: Protect yourself and your family with appropriate insurance coverage, such as health, life, and property insurance.
Analyze Your Financial Situation: Review your business’s income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement to understand your current financial position.
Create a Business Plan: Develop a comprehensive business plan that outlines your business goals, strategies, and financial projections.
Set Financial Goals for Your Business: Define specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) financial goals.
Forecast Future Financial Needs: Forecast your business’s future revenues, expenses, and cash flow to prepare for potential challenges and opportunities.
Develop a Budget: Create a budget against which to track income and expenses and ensure you’re spending within your means.
Manage Debt: Develop a plan to manage your business’s debt, including loans.
Invest in Your Business: Allocate capital to investments that will help your business grow and achieve its goals.
Consider Insurance: Protect your business with appropriate insurance coverage, such as liability, property, and business interruption insurance.
A financial health check is always useful for any small business owner.
These are the key questions to ask yourself when conducting your check.
- Are your revenues, costs, profits, and profit margins healthy?
- Have you recently done a strategic business assessment?
- Are you tracking expenses, payroll, and tax obligations efficiently?
- Where can you gain access to capital to help you grow your business?
- What are your retirement and business succession options?
- Is your business adequately insured to cover all risks?
- How much liquidity do you have or need?
There are many mistakes that small business owners make and these are largely the result of time pressure, the desire to curtail costs in the business and the assumption that nothing can go wrong because the business is succeeding.
These are the ten most common mistakes:
- Paying yourself more than you need
- Using your business account for personal expenses
- Not taking advantage of low interest rates and depreciation, when available
- Not having the correct corporate structure
- Not having a succession and tax plan in place
- Using liquid funds to make illiquid purchases
- Not having the appropriateretirement plan or any retirement plan.
- Not having adequate professional back office and professional financial support
- Not hiring a financial advisor to help carry the load
- Not having appropriate personal and business insurance plans