No. We feel every investor should have access to sound, trustworthy investment advice. We understand every investor starts somewhere, our goal is to take them to the next level.

People react emotionally to market changes, and those reactions can prove to be the most costly of the journey to wealth. An investment adviser offers discipline and peace of mind, for you to free up your emotions for the other things in life.

Yes. Many clients we serve came to us during a job change in their life. When you leave your employer, your 401k becomes eligible for withdrawal to an Individual Retirement Account. We can help with that process.

We are a fee-only adviser. We get paid based on assets under management – a very transparent and affordable fee. This is beneficial because we are not commission driven, and therefore never conflicted to offer products. We always do what is best for the client.

One major difference is our access to Dimensional Fund Advisors – a portfolio of extremely low-cost mutual funds available through only a select group of advisers, with a focus on Academic Research and evidence to create parameters for higher expected returns. Another difference is our mission to serve all clients, regardless of their portfolio balance.

Where is my money held? We are an RIA that works with Charles Schwab, Inc as our clearinghouse. Charles Schwab is a registered broker dealer, that custodies all of our accounts under management.

How can you incorporate assets that you don’t manage? We have an awesome Client Portal that allows our clients to load accounts that we don’t manage into their portal. It’s in your best interest that we can see your entire portfolio of accounts when making investment allocation decisions. This portal allows us to do that and you can keep your stock account at the separate firm.

We have a thorough approach to accessing a client’s tolerance for risk. We incorporate a cutting-edge risk management tool that allows us to analyze your tolerance, and create expectations of returns based on your risk number.

At Park + Elm, we do not believe in the ability to pick a mispriced stock, and therefore we do not invest in individual stocks. We believe that prices are reflective of all information, and that to be rewarded, we should be invested in all markets, not just one stock. We use low-cost mutual funds made up of thousands of stocks, which drastically reduces the risk of losing.

Some firms use mutual funds that have high expense ratios – in other words, the managers of the funds are getting paid a lot to manage the fund. This is a hidden fee that the retail investor may never see, he/she just gets less for their money. We believe in adding portfolio value by keeping those internal expenses to an extreme low. We focus a lot of our efforts on keeping the portfolio’s experiences as low as possible. Over time, expense can erode your return significantly.

We are happy to help set up and manage a 529 College Savings Plan for your child. We also have extensive experience in other, less restrictive ways to save for children, such as a UTMA account, that can be used for a broad range of expenses.

We utilize a goals based program with a retirement probability calculator that creates a road map to your retirement, based upon the goals you want to achieve.

We are ALWAYS reviewing your plan, we communicate multiple times a year, and hope to get at least 1 face-to-face meeting with each client, to educate on the strategy again.