WHY EVERGREEN PRIVATE WEALTH?
Our team of experts came together to form Evergreen to help meet the needs of investors through a wholly transparent and sensible approach based on honesty and communication. We welcome any question, any time, and pledge to always be forthcoming and have complete transparency.
Evergreen is not your typical investment firm. We are a full-service financial planning firm made up of family and friends who came together to create meaningful relationships and do the right thing for our clients every time. And at Evergreen, because the client is the boss, there is no external pressure or influence, just honest investing.
A Fiduciary is legally bound to put their client’s best interest first and ahead of their own. Many financial firms and advisors phrase their words carefully to give the appearance of being a fiduciary, even when they are not. At Evergreen, this is one of our core principles – we are all fiduciaries for our clients.
There is only one way we get paid and that is through a transparent fee. We have nothing to hide, every client knows exactly what they are paying all of the time.
While only 25% of financial advisors are Certified Financial Planners (CFPs®), we have several CFPs® on our staff to help our clients in all manner of financial needs and complexities. CFPs® are trained in 8 principle subject areas covering 72 financial topics.
OUR SERVICES
We have processes in place that utilize both advanced data analytics as well as tried and true methods to find quality, long term stocks. We take a “top down” approach to finding these stocks. We first look at the overall market and determine which sectors of the economy we wish to invest in, then use our data and analytics to find what we feel are the most suitable companies in each of those sectors.
Each client’s portfolio allocations are matched up to their individual plan. There is no “one size fits all” – each client has a comprehensive plan that is used as the basis for their investment allocations.
For business owners, offering a company retirement plan can be the difference between hiring and retaining the best talent. Yet business retirement plans are numerous and can be confusing, with a lot of moving parts to take into consideration. We help you evaluate and decide which retirement plan works best for your unique situation and walk you through everything you need to get the plan up and running.
For employees, we help analyze your investment options to find the best investment choices for your situation.
For self-employed individuals without employees, we help set up a small-company retirement plan that maximizes retirement savings while minimizing taxes.
Establishing a solid business succession plan is a game-changer for business owners, providing peace of mind that the business will move forward as desired when changes occur. Some of those changes could include when an owner dies, retires, becomes disabled, gets divorced, or sells their ownership stake. Other changes include when new partners are brought on or the business is sold. We help you determine the optimal succession plan for your business and the tools you need to keep the plan running smoothly when those changes inevitably occur. We guide you on business valuation options and knowing when to sell based on your goals and needs.
What will bring you the most meaning and fulfillment in retirement? For some of our clients, retirement means having more time with family, friends, and loved ones and mentoring others. For others, it means being able to travel the world, laugh more, or learn new skills and hobbies. For you, it may be to work out in the garden or teach at the local community college, or be able to make charitable donations to causes that you believe in.
We help you determine what will bring the most meaning to you in retirement, then work with you to set a plan in place to make it happen! This plan includes determining cash flow needs and strategies to determine which accounts and assets to draw from and in which order to minimize what you pay in taxes, figuring out the best time and method of taking Social Security (including the Windfall Elimination Provision), evaluating options for Medicare, and maximizing your retirement saving and investment plans.
Life comes with many potential risks that could destroy your plans and savings: illness, disability, death of a loved one, accidents, inflation, market crashes, recession, interest rate fluctuations, and more. These risks can happen both inside and outside your investment portfolio. We help you determine the risks you face, whatever they are, and how to minimize the impact those risks may have.
This often includes evaluating the proper types and levels of insurance. At Evergreen, we do not sell insurance products to avoid conflicts of interest; however, insurance is a critical part of a comprehensive financial plan, so when additional insurance coverage is needed, we educate you on options and connect you to trusted partners to ensure you are covered.
What do you want to happen with your assets when you die? What plans do you have in place for dependents and who will take care of them? Whom do you want to take care of legal, financial, and family matters when you are incapacitated or have passed away? What type of medical care do you want to receive in circumstances when you are unable to express your wishes?
These are all important questions that we each need to answer and are part of a successful estate plan, no matter how much wealth a person has accumulated. And for those who don’t put a plan in place, the state will publicly make decisions on these financial questions as well as guardianship decisions for minor children, which may not be in accordance with your wishes.
We help you ask the questions necessary to put the correct estate plan in place, providing tools, resources, and trusted partners to ensure you have peace of mind that the people you love and the wishes you have are carried out when you become ill or pass away.
If you or a loved one intends to further your education, it is important to know what the best ways are to do this. We help you determine college investment accounts and plan for the future so that your education is truly an investment that pays off. We guide you with the following strategies and tools: savings calculators, state income tax savings projections, funding strategies, loan/grant strategies, the timing and order of which assets to use, and how to maximize financial aid eligibility.
Death and taxes – life’s only absolutes! We know that it isn’t as important how much you accumulate to cover your needs and dreams, it’s how much you keep! Because of this, we are very sensitive to tax-planning strategies and are always looking for ways to manage, reduce, and defer taxes so that you legally pay the lowest amount possible. We educate on and manage investment accounts with the most tax-efficient strategies. We provide ongoing tax analyses so that you can have confidence knowing various tax strategies available to you in your unique situation.
One of the greatest services that we provide is keeping our clients disciplined when it comes to their investments to help them get from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible. Emotional investing can ruin a financial plan, wiping out savings it took years to accumulate. For example, the average 30-year annual returns for the S&P 500 is 9.96%, whereas the average equity fund investor over that same 30-year time period achieves average annual returns of 5.04%. Many of the reasons this happens is because we, as humans, commonly make costly behavioral investment mistakes.
Knowing that the best advisors double as behavioral finance coaches who deliver long-term perspective and strategy that mitigates return-destroying behavior, we work closely with you to help you avoid common investor mistakes. Our goal is to help you earn more and keep more over time, so that you can find a better path forward!
Annual DALBAR study of the 30-year average compound rate of return of the S&P 500 index and the average return realized by the average equity mutual fund investor updated through 2019.
Here at Evergreen, we strive to set up our clients, and their friends and family, for success by educating them on principles that will benefit them throughout their lives. We do this by not simply telling our clients what to do but teaching our clients finance concepts and best practices. In the earliest process of onboarding a new client, we ask them to read a few select chapters from “Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth”, which we send free of charge to help them gain a better understanding of our investment philosophy. These chapters do a great job of outlining one of our most important philosophies: Over the long-term, stocks are less risky than bonds. Clients will not learn everything all at once, but we aim to help them learn more and more and slowly build up their overall financial acumen with each review we have with them. Many clients have told us that they have learned more working with us in a few short years then over their entire lifetime. We want our clients, and their loved ones, to feel empowered and educated so they can pass on their finance knowledge for generations to come.
Our philosophy is that stocks are less risky than bonds and have the best potential to outpace inflation over long periods of time. There will be times when financial markets drop significantly in value; we believe that temporary decline is not loss when a solid plan is in place to avoid common behavioral investment mistakes.
We have developed and refined a process to put all of the pieces of the financial puzzle together through quarterly-themed reviews primarily focused on tax planning, retirement planning, risk management, and investments.
We are commission-free wealth advisors who do our best work with those who have a “Triple A” status of the right Attitude, Assets, and will act as Advocates. We strive to delight our clients with exceptional service, and we do so by making sure we are a fit for you and you are a fit for us.
Fidelity provides the platform we use to manage your accounts by holding assets in your name and at arm’s length, with SIPC Coverage and additional Lloyd’s of London insurance
IFP provides back-office support, compliance, billing, and investment research