Entrust Blog

Jeremy has been an entrepreneur since high school. His pride and joy is the restaurant he opened upon graduating and has built into a successful enterprise over the past two decades. When we met, he reported that he promised himself for the last five years that early retirement was just around the corner. He wants more time to spend with his beautiful family. Jeremy’s aspiration, what we at Entrust call making work optional, is lofty. It requires a finely-tuned financial ...

Rachel would tell you she likes to make money, not count it. However, what stands out when you meet her are her phenomenal entrepreneurial skills. In fact, Rachel’s relentless effort in her business endeavors, coupled with a superb instinct for calculated risk-taking, led to the accumulation of a nest egg of over $6 million saved (in cash). She accomplished this while living a lavish lifestyle including owning a home on each coast. Finally, at age 53, Rachel scheduled a meeting ...

You would not expect a business to succeed unless the owners established short and long-term goals, and took the time to track expenses and income. When it comes to couples and money, the same expectations hold true. Setting goals and tracking financials can make all the difference to a lifetime of financial success. But as you know, not all couples experience financial success. What stands in the way? First, couples are often unsure how to collaborate with one another ...

If you are like many of us, you believe your employer-sponsored 401(k) plan is “free.” After all, you do not receive a fee report outlining the calculation of your pricing. And perhaps with respect to your personal investing, you or others you know may also have reason to believe investment advice is virtually free. For instance, one commonly heard claim some advisors make to clients is: “You don’t pay me. My firm pays me.” No wonder such investors assume they ...

When we hear the word “recipe,” most of us think of food. And now that the summer season is here, foods with fresh ingredients are abundant–a welcome and nutritious change. But we can also apply the friendly term “recipe” to our portfolio asset allocation, recognizing that our portfolio ingredients are likely to be stocks, bonds and real estate. Fortunately, when we get the proportions right, these investment ingredients may deliver welcome results and keep us financially healthy. Sue’s experience provides ...

Bizzie, a thoughtful and practical woman who has carefully cultivated her legal consulting practice for decades, is married to a high school music teacher and has one son–a teenager soon to complete his senior year and head off to college. Our story begins when Bizzie inherits a substantial amount of money following the sudden death of her father. While the handling of the family finances was always her husband’s responsibility, upon receiving this inheritance–which felt like a windfall to Bizzie–she ...

Cyber-fraud is on everyone’s minds these days. For instance, we probably all know of someone who was scammed through their email. A common and all-too-effective ploy is for a hacker to send an urgent and alarming email of distress–from a loved one–requesting that money be sent immediately. A good friend of mine responded to one such request for help because ostensibly it came from his best friend; as a result, he lost thousands of dollars.At Entrust we are vigilant about ...

We spend most of our lives working and saving so that at some point we will have the financial freedom to step away from the grind and do something else.  Do you know if you are on track for financial security throughout retirement? Just posing this question reminds me of our clients Brent and Wanda. When we began working together in 2005, they were about forty years old. As small business owners, their demanding schedules prompted them to aspire to retire early–preferably ...

2017 is well underway and it is time to accelerate the implementation of your tax savings strategies, before spring arrives on Monday, March 20th. A key step for maximizing your savings this year is to take advantage of opportunities to reduce your taxable income in the months ahead. Whether you are a business owner or an employee, these money-saving tips for funding medical expenses and your retirement plan (assuming you are eligible) could enable you to trim thousands of dollars ...

When I established my holistic financial planning firm in 2000, I was advised by colleagues to avoid using the word “holistic” to describe Entrust Financial’s services. “It sounds too new age,” they said, “Like you are reading taro cards or something. It just doesn’t sound like you are offering rigorous financial and investment advice.” I admit I was puzzled by the strong negative reaction to the word holistic because to me, offering financial advice using a holistic process was the ...