services
Wealth Management
We begin with a clean sheet.
Perhaps nowhere in our practice is a detailed understanding of your long-term financial goals more important to successful planning. And so we bring along no suppositions toward particular financial products or services.
Back in Wichita, please count on us for a Kansas work ethic, continuing attention in an open and easy relationship, and customized advice. As you might imagine, all of our long-time clients have become our friends.
The details of our shared planning will emerge in directed conversations where your precise needs, your exact ambitions guide us toward those investments most in line with your goals. We’ll keep a careful eye toward the effects of taxation on our plan. Of course, we’ll work with your accountant and your attorney in a seamless approach to managing and preserving your wealth. We’ll deliver over-arching experience in building your legacy, in planning for your estate, in working toward your wishes for charitable giving.
We strive to create value. Enduring face-to-face value.
*Investing involves risk including the potential loss of principal. No investment strategy can guarantee a profit or protect against loss.
Stocks, Bonds, and Mutual Funds
Thomas Financial practices discipline. The stock and bond markets gyrate on a day-to-day basis. Together, we will plan for the long haul, with disciplined buy-and-hold strategies that strive to generate competitive returns. We recognize risk, but we manage it toward an opportunity for you. We do not speculate. And we most certainly do not follow the crowd.
Thomas Financial will help you assemble a varied portfolio of stocks, bonds, and funds selected for their potential in managing your precise objectives – all the while factoring in your tolerance for risk. Again, we’re disciplined in our thinking, disciplined in our buy/sell strategies, disciplined in the guidance we offer you. Always, we are studying, looking to capitalize on any changes in the markets where your investments are at work.
Over time, you’ll recognize a blueprint. Comprehensive. Itemized in the diversification we seek, a diversification with your age as a strong, if not determining, factor. This blueprint will demonstrate, in both the short and the long term, our shared progress toward your financial confidence.
We’re with you. And time is on our side.
*Investing involves risk including the potential loss of principal. No investment strategy can guarantee a profit or protect against loss. There is no guarantee that a diversified portfolio will outperform a non-diversified portfolio; it is a method used to help manage portfolio volatility.
Tax-Free Municipal Bonds
All of us at Thomas Financial keep municipal bonds top of mind. Most especially for our clients in the higher tax brackets, these bonds can achieve some satisfying tax-free compounding of income. Federal taxes go away, and often state taxes as well.
We also look for bonds that improve the quality of life for Kansas communities, improvements such new roads, new hospitals, new water and sewage systems – the necessary infrastructure of daily life all made possible by what are called “general obligation” bonds. These bonds are considered low in risk, but it is true that lower yields inevitably accompany GO bonds.
You’re probably familiar with the computation for taxable-equivalent yields; that is, the tax advantages accruing to the bond often makes it a better investment than a corporate bond yielding a higher rate. Because municipal bond prices respond to changes in interest rates, we routinely counsel our clients toward certain bonds and their reduced vulnerability to volatile interest rates.
We monitor our clients’ bond investments constantly, ensuring that holdings are aligned with your goals and risk tolerance.
Call us anytime for a discussion of tax-free bonds and their place in your investment plan, their dynamic balance of potential growth and stability.
Municipal bonds are subject to availability and change in price. They are subject to market and interest rate risk if sold before maturity. Bond values will decline as interest rates rise. Interest income may be subject to the alternative minimum tax. Municipal bonds are federally tax-free but other state and local taxes may apply. If sold before maturity, capital gains tax could apply.
*Investing involves risk including the potential loss of principal. No investment strategy can guarantee a profit or protect against loss. There is no guarantee that a diversified portfolio will outperform a non-diversified portfolio; it is a method used to help manage portfolio volatility.
401(k) Reviews
We’ve found that our 401(k) reviews have surprised some clients, have complimented still others, and have helped all of them in some way. Lingering questions surround 401(k)s, and they persist throughout the investment’s life, as markets fluctuate, as clients age, as their needs grow and change. We believe the four most important questions for you to consider are:
- How much should I contribute to my 401(k)?
- How do I know if my contributions will be sufficient to my retirement goals?
- What is my tolerance for risk and, accordingly, which 401(k) investments should I consider?
- How do I take all best advantage of my employer’s matching contributions?
Our reviews will address all of these concerns head-on. We’ll be watching fees, in particular, fees often hidden, fees taken right off the top of your returns. We’ll seek means of keeping all the costs associated with the 401(k) plan as reasonable as possible. We’ll recommend funds appropriate to your goals. And because diversification becomes so critical as retirement draws nearer, we’ll have researched possibilities aimed at distributing risk and maximizing returns across your entire portfolio.
*Investing involves risk including the potential loss of principal. No investment strategy can guarantee a profit or protect against loss. There is no guarantee that a diversified portfolio will outperform a non-diversified portfolio; it is a method used to help manage portfolio volatility.
Life Insurance
Life insurance too often comes along as an afterthought in the compilation of a comprehensive financial plan. Fact is, life insurance stands as a pillar of sound planning, a management tool whose importance increases as you age.
But let’s look past even a life policy’s funding for any large expenses that might loom over your family: a mortgage, funeral costs, college tuition, perhaps care of aging parents or a special-needs child. Here at Thomas Financial we look at these protections as the very beginning of long-term thinking. Then, your basic needs covered, we move on to using life insurance as a means of reducing tax liabilities, both income and transfer. We’ll investigate the best possible investment opportunities for the cash values accruing in your policies. Sometimes, we’ll bring term insurance into play, using the difference in its costs verses comparable cash-value costs as funds for immediate application in other parts of your plan. At bare minimum, we look upon the policies’ premiums as enforced savings for investment, more than just a ready source of cash.
A beyond broad selection of policy-types awaits our use – graded premium life, interest-sensitive whole life, endowment policies, universal life, modified endowment contracts, hybrid family protection policies, variable life, and on. And on.
One last thought, we frequently use life insurance for the funding of small business buy/sell agreements.
Come see us. Let’s explore some opportunities.
Long-Term Care Insurance
Never has there been a more difficult component of a financial plan than long-term-care insurance (LTCI). Difficult in the uncomfortable feelings that almost always accompany serious thought about aging and the loss of your health. Difficult in determining the exact role that LTCI should play in your financial strategies. Difficult in the bewildering possibilities of the LTCI policies themselves.
When you come to Thomas Financial, however, you may rest assured of some deeply personalized, quite tactical answers. Answers arrived at, of course, together.
We’ll discuss in detail the way that LTCI can protect your assets and your estate, should you need residential or in-home care in your senior years. We’ll also ensure that, if you decide to purchase LTCI, all tax advantages thereto are achieved accurately and completely. As you make your decision, Thomas Financial will be looking at premium increases over time, exclusions, waiting periods, elimination periods and all the other variables of LTCI.
*This material contains only general descriptions and is not a solicitation to sell any insurance product or security, nor is it intended as any financial or tax advice.
*Riders are additional guarantee options that are available to an annuity or life insurance contract holder. While some riders are part of an existing contract, many others may carry additional fees, charges, and restrictions, and the policyholder should review their contract carefully before purchasing. Guarantees are based on the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company
*Long-term care insurance policies contain exclusions and limitations. Eligibility for long-term care insurance, additional policy benefits and qualification for benefits is determined on a case-by-case basis.
When Money Moves, Think of Us
Speak with a registered representative now about your financial future.