Services

We serve a range of clients, from the creators and stewards of significant wealth to those who are in the earlier stages of building their wealth. Our services and fees are geared to the complexity of each client’s situation.

They include comprehensive financial planning, in which we evaluate your overall financial situation and craft a plan for achieving your long-term goals. And they include investment management that is geared specifically toward the achievement of your goals. We design and manage portfolios with the goal of producing the best possible returns consistent with your level of risk tolerance, with the smallest tax impact.

The more complex your needs, the more proactive we are. We meet twice a year to identify challenges and opportunities; rather than waiting and reacting to questions, we identify the questions and work on the solutions. Our high-end wealth management services include:

• Wealth enhancement. We develop and implement strategies to produce the best possible after-tax investment returns consistent with your level of risk tolerance. We also work towards implementing savings for retirement, college funding, and any other savings goals—or we implement retirement withdrawal strategies, depending on your situation. We implement tax strategies designed to minimize taxes legally. And we help you build your net worth.
• Wealth transfer. We identify and facilitate the most beneficial and tax-efficient strategies to pass assets to succeeding generations in a way that meets your wishes, and we help you put your decisions in writing while you are healthy. This way, you will have taken care of all the big things that matter without putting your loved ones through undue stress and anxiety.
• Wealth protection. We help ensure that your wealth is protected against potential creditors, litigants, and children’s future spouses—and that you are protected against catastrophic loss.
• Charitable planning. We help you fulfill your charitable goals in a way that provides the maximum tax benefit to both you and the recipient of your giving.

No single advisor can effectively provide all the elements of true wealth management. To ensure a comprehensive range of solutions, we have developed a network of trusted financial professionals to address specific client needs. Over the years, we’ve cultivated these relationships to establish a truly collaborative approach to serving our clients by providing access to high levels of specialized expertise and care.

In addition, we regularly work hand-in-hand with our clients’ other professional advisors, such as attorneys and accountants. Our goal is to serve as your “orchestra conductor,” ensuring that the best solutions for your needs are identified and implemented in a seamless fashion.

Others can make investment decisions based on hunches, trends, or the whims of Wall Street. At Alliant Wealth Advisors, we are dedicated to a responsible, disciplined approach based on clear evidence of how gains are maximized and risks are minimized.

Householding is a strategy that involves managing and coordinating assets across various investment accounts at the household level, optimizing for risk, and minimizing taxes. This includes outside accounts such as employer-held 401(k) accounts. While every account has different investments, it’s important to design your portfolio and base your planning on the complete household overview.

Tax-loss harvesting is a strategy that involves the practice of selling an investment for a loss, intentionally. When an investor realizes or harvests a loss, it can offset their taxes on gains and income, often serving as a useful approach to handling specific situations. Before attending tax-harvesting, it’s key that you understand when it may be an effective strategy to use.

Academic studies, borne out by plentiful experience, make the foundations of successful investing clear. They include:

1. Global diversification: Portfolios composed of a diverse mix of asset types have historically produced higher returns for a given level of risk than undiversified portfolios. At Alliant Wealth Advisors, we also heed the evidence that shows a global investment approach improves a portfolio’s risk/return profile. Rarely does a single country economy consistently perform among the best—which is why it makes sense to remain patiently diversified across a number of countries.
2. Broad asset allocation: The greatest determining factor of comparative investment performance is asset allocation—how your money is divided among different major asset categories such as stocks, bonds, cash, and real estate. Your broad asset allocation will explain over 90% of your investment return over time. So it is critical to not only design an effective asset allocation but also to maintain it. This requires a patient, disciplined approach that most “active” investors do not embrace.
3. Sub asset allocation: Reducing portfolio volatility is critical to investment success. Volatility is reduced by expertly mixing different asset classes such as large company stocks, small company stocks, U.S. and foreign investments, developed and emerging economies, growth and value styles of investing, U.S. treasuries, corporate bonds, high-yield bonds, treasury inflation protected securities, etc. Each asset class takes a turn being at the top, then the bottom, of the performance ladder. Combined, their ups and downs offset one another and therefore reduce overall portfolio volatility.
4. Effective implementation: Once a portfolio is designed, it’s important to populate it with funds that accurately and consistently express that design. And because after-fee returns are paramount, low-cost funds are important. We use the most effective, lowest-fee investments from respected names such as Vanguard, BlackRock (the company behind iShares ETFs), Dimensional Fund Advisors, JPMorgan, and others.
5. Strategic rebalancing: Rebalancing an investment portfolio involves selling defined portions of the asset classes that have performed best and buying those that have underperformed. This restores a portfolio’s original balance and ensures that it will remain in line with an investor’s tolerance for risk. Proper rebalancing will also create a “return premium” by regularly selling high and buying low.

Lower portfolio volatility doesn’t just help you sleep better at night—it leads to superior returns. It’s a mathematical fact that of two portfolios with the same average annual return, the one with less volatility will have a greater compound rate of return.

We focus on designing portfolios with the least possible volatility for the risk profile. Why? Because lower volatility leads to better real returns—and real returns are the key to reaching your financial goals.

Especially in muted markets, it’s essential to minimize both fees and taxes. Doing so can boost real returns significantly over time. For example: Suppose you invest $100,000, earn 6% returns each year, and faithfully re-invest those returns. After 30 years, if your investment costs were 0.9%, your account would be worth about $439,000. But if your costs were 0.25%, your balance would be approximately $533,000. That’s a difference of more than 21%.

Along with using low-cost investments, we also focus on tax-efficient investing. We minimize trading within taxable accounts where it can trigger significant tax consequences. We avoid high tax short-term capital gains and limit gains to lower tax long-term capital gains. And we use tax-loss harvesting to neutralize the taxes from realized gains. We also guide investors in taking distributions from their tax-advantaged accounts in order to minimize tax impact and keep money growing as long as possible.

At Alliant Wealth Advisors, we custom-design portfolios based directly on our clients’ goals, comfort level with risk, and timeline for achieving their objectives. And we invest with patience, discipline, and a willingness to heed the lessons of the market. Your wealth is too important to invest any other way.