What we do…

• Financial Planning
• Retirement Planning & Projections
• College Savings Projections & Plans
• Investment Management

How we do it…

Personalizing a Strategy – Once a prospective client understands the imperative of using a rational, reasoned approach to investing, the next step is how to implement that strategy within the personal context each investor brings to the table.  Individual investors have their own innate feelings about the capital markets, both U.S. and International, how much equity exposure they are comfortable with, the importance of safer fixed income investments, and especially, how much risk they are comfortable with.  In dealing with couples and their joint assets, we also find that their individual feelings on these issues are often different.  One may have more of an appetite for risk than the other; or one does not trust the International markets as much as the other.
Compass Investments thus realizes the first major step in helping investors is to personalize a strategic investment strategy to each individual situation through an appropriate portfolio structure and allocation.  The best, optimal portfolio of investments is going to fail if the individual or couple is not comfortable and at peace with it, simply because they will not stick with it.  The first difficult market will bring cause for them to bail, not just because of the market, but because they were never comfortable with the portfolio in the first place.  There is, in fact, significant research showing that most investors that bail out during a difficult market achieve a portfolio return that is much less than the average market return.  This is because they exit the market at various times, for various reasons, instead of sticking to their investment plan.

Free Personal Consultation - At Compass Investments, we believe this process of personalizing a strategy into a specific portfolio allocation is so important that we offer a free consultation to investors, to help them start this important step. We offer this whether they ever become clients of Compass Investments, or not.  The sole purpose of this consultation is to assist investors put together a personal strategy and portfolio so they might realize their financial goals and achieve their own financial security.  Our passion is simply to educate and help. To take advantage of this free consultation, simply fill out the form below and you will contacted by a Compass Invetsment representitive.

Getting Started – If you decide to work with Compass Investments, after attending one of our public workshops or a free consultation, the process of setting up an account is very simple.  Once a personalized strategy and portfolio allocation is determined, a custodial account is set up for the client at Charles Schwab Institutional.  Assets are moved into the new account either by check to Charles Schwab or by electronic transfer from a current brokerage firm or custodian.  All paperwork for the new account and any asset transfer are completed by us.  Once this paperwork has been reviewed and signed by the new client, we send it onto to Charles Schwab and within two to four weeks everything has been completed and assets have been invested in the new portfolio.

Knowing Where You Stand – As a fiduciary to our clients and as we seek to do what is always in the client’s best interest, nothing is more important to us than making sure you are well informed and know where you and your accounts stand. 

We seek to achieve this in various ways: 

1. Clients receive a monthly statement from Charles Schwab showing the current portfolio balance, gain or loss during the past month, any fees that have been charged to the account, and specific, individual investment holdings and their current value;
2. Clients also receive a detailed quarterly report from Compass Investments showing portfolio balance, gain/loss during the quarter, individual investment holdings and their current value and percentage of the whole portfolio, quarterly rate of return, net of all fees, with a comparison to the major market benchmarks for the quarter and year-to-date;
3. Regular review meetings with your advisor that focus on reviewing portfolio performance, rebalancing the portfolio as needed, review of changing personal circumstances that may impact one’s overall strategy or portfolio allocation, and constant review of financial goals and progress toward those goals;
4. Periodic discussions with your advisor addressing specific topics, concerns, or item of interest.
   

Through these means, we believe there is never an excuse for our clients to feel they are not in control of and at peace with their investments, their investment strategy, and their overall progress toward their financial security.  Anything less than this is unacceptable  and should be to our clients and to all investors.  As we stress in our public workshops, you have very few chances to get your overall investment strategy and retirement investing ‘right’.  Knowing where you stand and being at peace with that is critical to ‘getting it right’.