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.