How We Work

Here’s what actually happens.

1. One conversation.
We ask about your income, what you’re saving, and when you’ll need the money. That’s it. No risk questionnaire, no 40-page intake.

Most firms open with how you’d feel about a 20% drop. We don’t, because the answer changes with the market and the number you need doesn’t. Risk tolerance is a mood. The return your money has to earn is arithmetic. And the money you’ll actually spend soon never sees a drop anyway — that’s what step 5 is for.

2. Your number becomes your mix.
We set the blend of SPY and QQQ that targets the return you need.

3. We show you what the average hides.
Your mix has an average return and a compounded return, and they’re not the same number. We show you the gap for your money, over your timeline, in dollars. Part of that gap is the market moving around, which nobody can remove. The rest is friction — fund costs, turnover, taxes — and that part we can. We’ll show you both, and how much of it is recoverable. If you can’t follow the math, we haven’t finished explaining it.

4. Then we leave it alone.
This is the part most people don’t expect. No quarterly reshuffle. No new fund every year. No “strategy update.” Your money compounds, and our job is mostly to stay out of its way.

5. We step in when your life calls for it, not when the market does.
About four years before you need a lump of money, we move it out of stocks, ideally near a high, into Treasuries that mature when you need them. About four years before you retire, we price an annuity to cover your income and put the rest back to work. That’s the plan. It doesn’t need a review meeting to stay true.

What you won’t get from us.
Meetings scheduled to justify a fee. A plan so thick you stop reading it. A portfolio that gets more complicated every year.

That’s the whole job.

Calibrate it. Build it. Leave it alone. Step in when your life changes. Anything more is someone else’s fee.

So what’s your average hiding?

Every portfolio has a gap between what it averages and what it actually compounds. Yours too. Let’s find out how big it is.