Team consists of CBRE, Chouteau Building Group, and Amie Corley Interiors

As we mentioned in a prior post, Hill Investment Group (in St. Louis, not Houston) is under construction. In both cities, we have chosen suites in centrally located, older office towers. The St. Louis tower was completed in 1964, so updates require talented people who understand the quirks of an older office space. We snapped the photo above during our weekly meeting so you can see the key members of our construction and design team in action. Well, maybe not in action, as much as in deep conversation about how to ensure our redesigned space is even more welcoming and functional than before.

Our building managers were kind enough to give us a suite in the neighboring building during construction, so we can closely monitor progress until our move-in day, April 13th.

We’re excited, and literally counting down the days with a construction paper “chain,” tearing off a link for every passing day until we return to our updated Suite 350. We’ve already been there for 14 years, and look forward to at least eight more, having renewed our lease through then.

Financial simplicity, like many goals, is as desirable as it is elusive.  

Or so it seems. 

If you took a sample of 100 investors and asked each one about the vital signs of their portfolios – their fees, returns, and allocations – you’d be hard-pressed to find many who could speak confidently and accurately about them.

This isn’t just a guess from left field. In 2016, MarketWatch cited a Prudential Investments retirement preparedness survey that  found more than 40% of Americans had no idea how their investments are allocated. We’ve seen similar stats from other surveys published since then. 

What’s most disappointing about this apparent collective bewilderment, is that the system seems designed to be this way. We work in an industry where thousands of “advisors” are not only encouraged to sow seeds of confusion, they’ve made millions of dollars doing so. 

When a broker pulls an investor out of their comfort zone and into the weeds, the investor becomes vulnerable. Accordingly, advice becomes a sales pitch, and costs become confusing –  a pattern we see time and again. 

We know investors deserve better, so we’re on a mission to make the complex simple, to make financial conversations comfortable, and ultimately to shed a liberating light into the dark corners where families have been harboring their greatest financial fears for years. 

As our friend Carl Richards has embodied in his Behavior Gap sketch above, an advisor’s job isn’t to prove how much they know. It’s about helping investors see the few, elegant, simple changes they can make to their plan, to make a huge impact over the long-term.  

There’s nothing more rewarding for us at Hill Investment Group than seeing someone’s reaction when the air finally clears for them, and they realize that simplicity wasn’t as elusive as they once thought. 

In the words of pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin, “Simplicity is the final achievement.” 

There are many aspects of wealth management we cannot control. Tax codes evolve. Global events come and go. The markets will go up and down. By carefully minimizing taxes due, we can exert an important degree of control over maximizing end returns – the kind you get to keep as your own.

It starts with our annual tax packets. Each year, we aggregate our clients’ Form 1099s from Schwab, and deliver them to their tax professionals for timely and efficient tax-filing.

That’s just one small thing. We are working all year round to help our clients keep a lid on their taxes due. Below are additional examples:

• Asset Location: Locating the most tax-efficient holdings in taxable accounts, and the least tax-efficient holdings in tax-deferred or tax-free accounts, to minimize a portfolio’s overall taxes due.
• Tax-Loss Harvesting: Acting on opportunities to reduce taxes through tax-loss harvesting when appropriate.
• Tax-Managed Funds: In taxable accounts, using tax-managed funds whenever possible, to reduce the capital gains and dividends that fund managers must pass on to shareholders.
• Tax-Favored Accounts: Helping clients establish tax-favored IRAs, 529 plan accounts, Healthcare Savings Accounts (HSAs) and similar accounts as appropriate.
• Charitable Giving: Helping clients shift their tax-wise charitable giving plans following the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. For example, implementing Donor Advised Funds and Qualified Charitable Distributions when appropriate.
• Estate Planning: Collaborating with clients’ estate planning and insurance professionals to consider advanced planning strategies for minimizing and covering taxes due upon estate transfer.

So, this spring – or any time of year – let us know if you’d like to explore how you might increase your overall wealth by decreasing your taxes due.