A comfort level in investing, means different things to different people. That’s why we look at a baseline of important measurements that identify your financial status, then establish choices and recommendations. As your financial picture evolves, we update your information and work with you to match your selection of financial vehicles to your current situation. Things change. That’s expected. Our job is to have the right guidelines built and in place to accommodate the moves that you want to make. Model strategies and portfolios.

Investment Planning

• At RAM we view wealth planning from both sides of your balance sheet. Your assets of course, but also life's series of obligations or liabilities, including:
  • College education funding
  • Income tax planning
  • Retirement planning
  • Legacy or estate planning
• RAM works closely with you to create long-term investment plans to meet these obligations. Beginning with a written investment policy statement consisting of:
  • Portfolio structure
  • Investment benchmarks
  • Expected returns and volatility
  • Typical yearly range of results
• We do not attempt to define your maximum risk (or "pain") tolerance and then establish an investment plan that causes you to experience that pain.
• Rather, we prefer to define your life priorities and design a portfolio with a reduced risk tolerance that can meet those priorities.

It's About You

• Our advice process is designed to help you achieve your most important financial goals without needlessly sacrificing your lifestyle and while avoiding unnecessary investment risks.
• We work with you to define your most optimistic financial goals, without compromise, while seeking to avoid investment risk.
• Next, we identify acceptable compromises to your goals and your maximum tolerance for investment risk. The result asks the least from your portfolio while attempting to achieve the highest returns for the risk you find acceptable.
• From these two extremes we can identify your priorities and create a recommended plan for you that will:
  • Confidently achieve your most important financial goals.
  • Prevent undue sacrifices to your financial lifestyle.
  • Avoid unnecessary investment risk.

Investment Features

• Our portfolio structures typically consist of three core components:
  • Passive investments-which attempt to capture the returns of highly efficient investment classes.
  • Managed and multi-managed investments which attempt to add value in less efficient investment classes and, with multi-managed portfolios attempt to reduce the risk of under-performance by a single asset manager. Manager selection is performed through internal review and external independent third party selection.
  • Structured investments-commonly referred to as "enhanced indexing." The strategy attempts to capture incremental returns in highly efficient markets through the over or under weighting of certain securities within the index, while maintaining the essential profile of the index itself.

Any Resemblance to Institutional Investing is Purely Intentional

• Institutional investors:
  • invest as fiduciaries, they are concerned about true diversification.
  • utilize multiple managers, styles and active and passive investment management.
  • practice strategic asset allocation with balanced qualitative and quantitative information.
  • typically have written, flexible yet stable investment policies.
• Look at costs of investing continuously.
• Investors who follow these precepts are much less likely to chase performance than a counterpart. The process won’t allow it.

Investment Strategy

• Investment studies suggest that investment returns are the sum of the following: 94% asset allocation, 4% security selection, 2% market timing. *
• Therefore the most important step in the process is strategic asset class selection (stocks, bonds, real estate and cash) and the strategic re-balancing of each class.
• We employ disciplined implementation and trading of investments designed to reduce risk and capture incremental returns and manage taxes.
• We also develop specialized portfolios to meet the unique needs of customers, such as aggressive growth, high income or tax managed investment portfolios.
• We use Monte Carlo analysis--historical performance audits and wealth simulations of a portfolio, which can provide probability estimates of the success of a portfolio.

* Source: Brinson, Beebower and Sing.

Simplify

• One of the first steps we take in providing our service is to simplify your financial life. We prefer to choose one custodian and consolidate a client’s various holdings under this single custodian. This immediately simplifies our clients financial lives by eliminating multiple brokerage and mutual fund statements.
• One of the most important requirements we have of a custodian is that it not limit our flexibility in making investment choices.
• We are an independent fee-based provider. Although we are happy to use the asset custody services preferred by our clients, we generally use the services of the Vanguard® Group and Vanguard Brokerage Services®. Vanguard is known throughout the industry for its high level of service and low costs.

How It Works

• We work with you to arrange the deposit of cash, securities and brokerage or mutual fund accounts directly with the custodian. RAM never takes custody of customer assets.
• RAM directs investment sales and purchases of customer securities to investment vehicles consistent with the investment policy statement.
• Distributions from, and sales of, investment vehicles are swept into a money market investment
• Cash from money market sweep account is used to periodically rebalance investment vehicles according to customer’s investment policy statement. Or, if you require a monthly income, we arrange an automatic withdrawal plan, whereby a fixed payment is made directly to you.

Reporting

• No investment process is complete without objective monitoring of results.
• At RAM, we emphasize transparency, so clients can understand the characteristics of each investment.
• We make ourselves accountable for regular reporting, in person if possible, on how each investment and the total portfolio have performed relative to expectations, to comparable alternatives and to passive benchmarks.

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