A strategy session is your opportunity to share what matters most — your big-
picture questions, retirement goals, and what you’re looking for from an advisor.
We’ll take a high-level look at your current financial situation and explore
whether we’re the right fit to help you get there.
We believe optimal retirement strategies are coordinated with tax and estate
plans. This requires ongoing personalized guidance which is often time intensive.
For this reason, we only accept a limited number of new clients each year.
Have some questions about how we work? Check out the Frequently Asked
Questions Section below.
Income Planning | Investment Planning | Tax Planning
We specialize in retirement planning for people that are very close to or already in it. We emphasize that effective planning goes beyond an investment portfolio. Our advice is designed to coordinate all the key elements of a retirement plan. This includes a strategy to generate sustainable income, tax planning, Social Security timing decisions, pension elections and estate planning. The typical client profile of our firm is individuals or couples age 55+ that have accumulated $1 million+ of savings and are seeking to work with a professional on an ongoing basis.
Our focus is retirement planning for people 55+. For individuals in the early part of their career, we suggest working with a firm that specializes in these demographics. Additionally, we are not stockbrokers. Our firm is not in the business of providing one-off investment tips or singular transactions. Finally, our firm would not be a good fit for do-it-yourself investors. Our advice model and fees are consistent with a full-service advisory firm. The clients of our firm hire us to manage their portfolio in conjunction with a retirement and tax plan.
Although tax planning is a MAJOR emphasis of our firm, we do not offer it as a standalone service.
Norris Lake Retirement Planning is structured as a traditional advisory firm charging a fee on money being managed. The firm’s maximum fee for new clients is 1.25% with lower tiers at 0.75% and 0.30%. We do not offer flat-fee or hourly advice. If you need assistance finding an advisor who does, please contact us and we will provide you with some resources.
The overwhelming majority of people that hire us do not want to manage their own portfolio. However, we recognize some people enjoy investing. We try to accommodate those that may want to maintain self-management of a portion of their portfolio. That said, when we’re doing tax planning, accounts outside the firm’s purview that are generating capital gains and interest can cause issues. The bottom line is we evaluate this on a case-by-case basis.
We have chosen Fidelity as the primary custodian of our accounts. This simply means that when we are managing investments for clients, the money is held within a Fidelity account. Clients have access to their accounts at www.fidelity.com.
Our portfolios are comprised of a mix of mutual funds, ETFs, and to a lesser degree, individual stocks and bonds. We utilize both actively managed and low cost passive funds.
Most of the industry tries to be all things to all people…we don’t. We specialize in retirement planning with an emphasis on tax planning. We’ve chosen to focus on tax efficient retirement planning to provide better advice and service to a narrower group of clients.
We’re independent. Our firm is not affiliated with any banks or insurance companies. We are in the business of providing advice, NOT selling financial products.
We’re credentialed. Our founder, Ted Erhart, holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and the industry gold standard CFP® – CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ designation.
Fee-only fiduciary. Plain and simple, we do not charge commissions and as a fiduciary, we not only have the moral duty to put our client’s interests first, but a legal one.
We practice what we preach. Many of the financial strategies or investments we recommend are things we implement personally.