Our goals-based strategies aim to avoid emotion-driven investing and provide a balanced, yet flexible, structure for investors to accumulate, preserve, and distribute their wealth and pursue the financial independence they need to live life on their own terms. We consult with Horizon Investments on the ongoing implementation of our approach. Horizon Investments is a goals-based investment manager and think tank that constructs goals-based investment strategies and conducts investment research that empowers financial advisors to help their clients work toward their individual, real world financial goals.

What is Goals Based Investing?

To us, taking a goals-based approach can help investors position their wealth to support the key financial results they seek throughout three distinct stages in their lives: Accumulate, Preserve and Distribute.

Accumulate Stage

Investors in this stage are typically those that have the necessary time to withstand market drawdowns. As such, the main risk during this stage is volatility and investors should be allocated according to their appropriate risk tolerance level to match appropriate return and volatility expectations. Each portfolio in this stage is designed to grow wealth through flexible investment strategies to support and enhance your most important life goals.

Preserve Stage

During this stage investors are focused on preserving the wealth they’ve worked to accumulate in order to later realize their distribution needs. While volatility is still a risk for these clients, portfolios in this stage have insufficient “time to recover” from potential investment losses and should be optimized to protect against absolute loss (which is the more prevalent risk for these investors). Each of these portfolios includes active risk mitigation techniques to seek a smoother path to your goal with less participation in both good and bad markets.

Distribute Stage

In this stage investors are focused on making sure their portfolios will generate income and support their needed distributions over an extended time horizon. The primary risk for clients is longevity and that portfolios should be optimized to reduce the prospect of a client running out of money prior to the end of their distribution phase. Each of these portfolios seek to strike the ideal balance between the income that investors need and the asset longevity they require aiming to ensure that their portfolios endure through what may be lengthy and active golden years.

All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.