Hello to our wonderful clients! I hope your year is off to a great start!
It’s become a bit of a tradition to send a year end update, so without taking too much of your time, I’d like to share a few reflections and updates with you.
2022 Recap: In 2022, the planning practice continued to grow with Cyndi taking excellent care of all new clients as their lead planner. Many of Cyndi’s clients have reached out to let me know just how much they love working with her, and to share the incredible impact she’s having in their lives. And honestly, I read those emails over and over and over and smile until my face hurts. Cyndi’s client roster filled up quite quickly in 2022, but thankfully she has capacity to serve 12 additional families in 2023. And as we've said before, we will close the practice to new clients as needed to protect both your client experience and our commitment to a healthy work/life balance for ourselves (marathon not a sprint, marathon not a sprint, marathon not a sprint).
Cyndi and I spent over 100 hours continuing to expand our knowledge around equity compensation (there’s always more to know!) and I had the opportunity to help teach a course to other financial planners on equity compensation. We continued to refine our planning process and added areas of analysis. We took courses, read books, and poured over client cases to figure out where we could do more to support our clients. More than one personality test over the years has revealed that I am a refiner by design (blessing and a curse), always looking for ways to do better. 2022 was no exception. And that brings me to 2023…
2023 Update: Cyndi and I are SO EXCITED to work with all of you in 2023! And I’m stoked to share that we’ve added some key things to our planning process for all of our clients.
Direct Indexing Asset Management Solution: We’ve added a second investment offering, custodied at Schwab, that enables us to create custom portfolios that incorporate existing equity holdings, build around concentrated positions in company stock, apply robust screens and tilts to create a portfolio that is designed specifically for you, create income when needed, and harvest tax losses at the individual equity level. This option is still based on the fundamentals of low-cost investing, broad global diversification, tax management and consistent rebalancing, but it enables us to better serve clients with larger and/or more complex asset management needs.
Monarch Money: We will be providing access to MonarchMoney, a digital command central for your finances including budgeting capabilities, net worth tracking and more. (We’ll chat individually about Monarch during our first meeting of 2023, but if you want to get started sooner, let us know.)
Tax Return Reviews: Once you file your taxes, we’d be happy to review your tax return and provide feedback as appropriate. Your CPA is still the expert, but we’re happy to be a second set of eyes.
As I mentioned before, Cyndi has capacity for 12 new clients this year. Our sweet spot is working with mid-career professionals with equity compensation. If we can be of help to someone you know, we’d be happy to chat with them.
Personal Update: On a personal note, Wally (8) continues to love sports deep in his bones. He's now drafting neighborhood friends onto his football team and writing up contracts for them complete with performance bonuses and a liability waiver. He calls himself "Coach Taylor". Charlie (10) loves speedcubing, does a surprisingly good Australian accent, and is doing math proofs that make my head spin. My husband, Ryan, took most of 2022 consulting part-time for an early stage startup and figuring out the next step in his career. The shift in the market last year, especially in the tech world where companies slowed hiring and laid off employees, made his career respite a bit less comfortable than we anticipated. But we’re grateful for it, because it allowed us to refocus on what really matters – time together as a family, meaningful work alongside good humans, supporting our community, and focusing on our health. And for me, it felt good to be able to support the fam solo – a gift Ryan has given me a couple of times over the last decade since we became parents. I’m happy to report that Ryan landed with a phenomenal company called Super HiFi as Chief Commercial Officer and he’s really enjoying the team and the role. Wahoo!
I’ve also come to understand, at a much deeper level, that the financial planning work we do isn’t so much about achieving every goal exactly as planned – it’s about making great financial decisions over time that build resilience and flexibility so that no matter how things unfold, you feel empowered to handle whatever comes your way and can still make decisions based on what matters most to you.
Well that is quite enough about us for this year!
Cyndi and I both couldn’t wait to get back into the office after the holidays to do this work that we so deeply love. Here’s to a wonderful 2023!
Best,
Natalie & Cyndi