Est. 2011
Fiercely Independent Fiduciary Financial Advice™
2013 PlanPlus Global Financial Planning Awards Finalist
Detroit SmartVestor Pro
Welcome
Clear Financial Advisors is a proud supporter of Dave Ramsey's financial teachings. As a SmartVestor Pro, we believe the path to prosperity is laid out in expert fashion in the Baby Steps.
Whether you are new or experienced listener, reader, or watcher of Dave's material, you have done your homework and started (or been on) a unique and important path to financial security.
Our role as SmartVestor financial advisors is to help you take the next steps and make your plan personal across all of your investment opportunities while creating a holistic plan for taxes and protection planning.
We invite you to look around and evaluate our credentials and message.
As a certified Fiduciary, we take our responsibilty to serve your best interests - rather than those of Wall Street - seriously.
As a Fee-Only advisor, we are only compensated from and work for our clients.
We hope to speak with you about your financial goals soon!
Answers to the 5 Interview Questions to Ask Your SmartVestor Pro
#1 What is your experience as an investing professional?
Please see our experience at the About Us tab above. Our founder's past experience has included experience in all aspects of investing / finance / tax, teaching economics / tax / courses for CFP® certification, speaking to military members and the public on finances, and blogging for our blog and national publications like US News & World Report & Forbes.
#2 How will you help me minimize risk in my investment portfolio?
The philosophy we teach matches Dave's overall mix of investments. We call it G/P/S Investing™ which stands for Growth / Preservation of Purchasing Power / Stability.
We implement considering tax opportunities, across all accounts (even those at your employer), and include mutual fund investments where performance may not correlate with the broad market and financial assets like stocks and bonds.
The strategy is an 'all-weather' approach to investing, seeking to maximize our returns while reducing volatility and holding investments that should do well in any economy.
We cover this strategy in our first meeting where we provide a copy of our book, Clear Investing, Intentional Investing.
#3 How will you help me understand why you recommend certain investments for my specific situation?
We pride ourselves as having the heart of a teacher.
Through our book, initial client education, and ongoing meetings and emails, we help provide the evidence and academics behind our approach to investing.
#4 How do you get paid?
As a Fee-Only advisor (opposed to Fee-Based), we are only compensated from our clients and not any mutual fund, insurance company, brokerage firm, or other financial company.
You will see and know all fees that you pay and can be confident that there are no conflicts with our advice that exist with traditional advisors and brokers (Fee-Based) and has never been since our founding.
We work with two types of clients - those that prefer a Consulting relationship (Hourly fees) and those that prefer a traditional investment management experience (Wealth Management) - and have fee schedules for both that are listed for each service at the Our Services tab above.
#5 What fees are associated with investing?
With all advisors (even those that claim there are NO fees!) there are fees to invest.
Those include:
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Advisor fees. Ours are listed at the Our Services tab.
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Mutual fund or investment fund fees. We use the highest quality funds that fit within our investment strategy, which tend to be among the lowest fee funds.
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Custodian fees. We use top-tier custodians without annual fees and will explain any fee that may come about, but in general we use no-fee custodians and most of our investment funds do not have a fee unless we determine one is worth paying. Typically these periodic buy / sell fees for the custodian are no more than $10 and apply to portfolios above $100,000, and most are due to the relationship the low-cost mutual fund firms that we use do not share fees with the custodian. The periodic fee is far less than a "no-fee fund" transaction where you may pay a percentage of the investment on an ongoing basis to cover transactions.
Unlike Fee-Based advisors, we do not have commissions for selling products, load fees, contingent sales fees, etc. You can leave us and keep your funds, transfer them to other advisors, and not have to worry about losing a significant percentage of your portfolio to do so.
How We Help
Fee-Only, Fiduciary Advice
As an independent fiduciary we work only on our clients’ behalf. Clear Financial Advisors is a nationally recognized expert in financial planning, retirement strategies, and investing.
Holistic Wealth Management
Wealth management is about more than managing investments. We work with clients to protect our plans against risk, and minimize the impact of taxes, both today and in the future.
Evidence-Based Investing
Like Dave, everything we do is based upon what works. Our plans seek to maximize return for a desired amount of risk. We diversify broadly into an investment plan for any economy.
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