When is your retirement savings out of your financial advisor’s reach? When it’s in an employer-sponsored retirement savings plan, like a 401(k) or 403(b). But not anymore! Northstar can now directly manage all of your investment accounts, including those in employer plans, to provide comprehensive portfolio management.
Before I was an advisor for Northstar Financial Management, I was a client. I was an avid saver and started contributing to my 401(k) on day one of my first job, so by the time I was mid-career I had a good deal saved that could benefit from closer management. But by this point in my career, I also had two young children. All of my time went to doing my job well and learning the names of all Thomas the Tank Engine’s friends.
One thing that being a working mom made me a pro at – delegating. I hired a nanny, I used a virtual assistant, I hired someone for all home repairs. I outsourced everything that wasn’t as important as making time for my family and continuing to grow in my profession, so I could maximize my income during my biggest earning years.
I hired a financial advisor but found I couldn’t fully delegate the management of my retirement savings to him because he couldn’t directly manage my 401(k) account, or my husband’s, where all of our retirement savings was invested. We worked out a system that Northstar still uses with clients in a similar situation today: I shared our 401(k) account balances and investments with my advisor once a year and he used that information to give us advice on how to allocate the money in our 401(k) accounts in a way that reflected our risk tolerance and investment horizon. But, of course, over the course of the year it drifted from our ideal investment strategy.
As an advisor, I would love to be a one-stop financial advisor for working parents – to be the partner in financial management that allows them to focus more time on their families and careers. But I have run into the same barrier because I can’t directly manage the retirement accounts they have with their employer.
Which is why I am especially excited that Northstar can now manage any retirement account, including employer-sponsored retirement savings plans. For clients who want us to directly manage all accounts we have the tools to securely do that. This means we can balance, adjust, and report on your full portfolio anytime, regardless of where each account is held.
Your retirement accounts are often the largest and most important asset that works for you, which is why it’s so important it be managed to perform as well as it can. The value of having a trusted advisor manage my entire investment portfolio was clear to me as a working parent, but as an advisor I have learned that it’s also quantifiable. This study shows that professionally managed 401(k)’s outperform self-directed by 3.32%.*
We’re excited to talk more about how Northstar can actively manage your retirement accounts to create a truly holistic wealth planning strategy. If you’re interested, contact us to learn more.
* We dug into the details of the study to make sure that we agreed with the conclusions they drew from the data. If you’re interested in hearing more, we’d love to nerd out and discuss the details with you.