By taking the long view, controlling what we can control, and being in a position to focus solely on the best interests of our clients, we offer wealth management solutions that minimize unnecessary risk and offer greater peace of mind.
Fairway Wealth Management’s approach to investing is designed to achieve superior long-term, after-tax results at the client’s desired level of risk. This is what enables our clients to realize their goals. We focus our attention on controlling what we know we can control, providing access to the best investment managers and vehicles, wherever they may be, and creating highly customized investment portfolios.
Controlling What We Can Control
The talent of certain investment managers and the value of particular investment vehicles certainly can and do play parts in the development and implementation of an investment strategy. However, there is significant, real value to be gained over the long term in the less glamorous corners of wealth management, namely: asset allocation, tax management, and cost control. Fairway Wealth Management takes considerable care in the analysis and management of these disciplines.
- Asset Allocation: Selection of the appropriate strategic asset allocation using sophisticated inputs and tools – along with our own professional skill – minimizes volatility of returns. We identify an allocation across a variety of asset classes and segments to provide the optimum balance between anticipated risk and return for each client. In addition, we evaluate the best location and ownership alternatives for each asset among taxable, tax-deferred, and estate-oriented accounts.
- Active Tax Management: Substantial value – often in excess of the value gained through more traditional methods such as security selection – can be added with active tax management throughout the year. Techniques such as tax-loss harvesting, asset location, utilization of tax-efficient managers, and coordination and communication between managers, can generate significant after-tax value regardless of the direction of the markets.
- Costs: Costs reduce returns, and, too often, investors don’t understand all of the cost components involved in the management of their portfolio. All other things being relatively equal, we will lean towards the management solution with the lower cost.
Embracing Open Architecture
Fairway Wealth Management’s open-architecture structure enables us to give our clients access to virtually any active or passive investment manager and investment vehicle available in the marketplace, and at a very advantageous cost. It also opens the door to a constant supply of the best ideas, practices and products in our industry. Further, our fee-only structure means we are in a position to openly evaluate the merits of managers, investments and ideas, and make recommendations based solely on the best interest of each particular client.
Creating Highly Customized Investment Portfolios
Each client relationship presents an opportunity for us to create a wealth management strategy that then informs the development of a unique and elegant investment portfolio. Unique means that each client’s portfolio is a precise combination of various investment preferences, choices, and vehicles that, together, do everything we need them to do, and nothing more. Elegant means that each client’s portfolio is refined, concise and no more complicated than it needs to be. We recognize that the investment marketplace and popular press sell overly complicated portfolios and a mindset that they must be adjusted in reaction to every change in the wind. It is the absence of both unnecessary parts and excessive tactical maneuvering that make a portfolio truly elegant. Portfolios that are both unique and elegant work hard to achieve a particular client’s financial goals at the optimal cost, while instilling confidence in our clients that their portfolio remains true to their plan even in uncomfortable times.