The first step of our complete look-forward review of your tax return is to determine your current tax situation. We’ll identify things like phantom income, insufficient uses of taxable and tax-deferral strategies, as well as detect missed opportunities for offsetting gains and losses. This could be as simple as selling a losing stock to offset a capital gain on a mutual fund that you may have missed by waiting until it was too late. Our 3-Step Review can help you improve your strategy to lower your taxes.

The second step is an income analysis to determine if you are using your income sources suitably and in the most tax-efficient method. We’ll also determine if you have adequate income to meet your future needs and the ever-increasing cost of inflation. This may be different than general economic inflation rates as each person’s rate is different based on how you spend your money.

The third step is a risk analysis to make sure your investment risk exposure is one you are comfortable with and is in line with your asset allocation strategies. Research shows that people may make poor decisions, receive lower rates or incur more losses when they have more risk than that with which they are comfortable. A simple set of questions we use in our 3-Step Review will help assure you of what your risk comfort level is and help you avoid losses you are not prepared to handle or of which you were not aware.