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Align Wealth Management (Align) is a federally registered investment advisory firm headquartered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma with a satellite office in St. Petersburg, Florida. Our advisors are Certified Financial Planners™ who can help you manage your investments, plan your retirement, reduce your taxes, minimize your risks, and leave a legacy to your loved ones. Recognized five years running as one of America's best by Wealth Manager Magazine, Align has developed a solid reputation for its strong client-focused culture.

Our sole mission is to help you make the most of your one financial life. We believe in straight talk, good old-fashioned common sense, intense research, hard work on your behalf, and complete transparency. Importantly, we serve one master – our valued clients. We don't work for (nor do we accept compensation from) any brokerage firm, insurance company, or financial company. We are a "fee-only" firm, and we never accept commissions or kickbacks of any kind. Every ounce of our allegiance flows toward our clientele, and every penny of our compensation flows from our clientele.

Our business model is designed for people who are serious about making smart choices about their money. Align clients enjoy the benefits of our ongoing efforts to implement the financial industry's best practices in an open and trustworthy environment. Our work is best suited for investors who are intelligent, with a conservative-to-moderate risk tolerance, desiring a fiduciary and conflict-free advisory relationship. Our clients tend to be delegators, leading busy lives, with investment assets of $400,000 to $20 million.

Our firm was established in 1994. Throughout our history, we have strived to help our clients across the country navigate a multitude of economic, political, and tax environments. The firm has enjoyed an average annual client retention rate exceeding 95%.

The safekeeping of your assets is of utmost importance to us. Accordingly, we have created a robust system of checks and balances to ensure the highest levels of security. First, we never take custody of your money. All accounts are maintained in your name with leading financial service firms, such as Fidelity and TD Ameritrade. Second, monthly account statements are delivered directly to you from Fidelity and TD Ameritrade and you receive a confirmation statement anytime activity occurs in your account. Third, you enjoy access to your accounts through Fidelity and TD Ameritrade websites and storefronts. Finally, all accounts are independently verified and valued, on a daily basis, by an independent third-party reconciliation agent.

Yes. Unlike most other financial advisors, we stand behind the value of our work with a no-questions-asked satisfaction guarantee. If you are not happy with our services, for any reason, you may request a full refund of all fees paid to us within 180 days of becoming a client. Moreover, we require no long-term commitments or contracts.

Yes. After all, it is your money. When you need it, you should be able to get it. We do not utilize or recommend investments that contain any surrender fees or exit penalties of any kind. All of our recommended investments are always 100% liquid and accessible.

Absolutely. We think we build the best and most well-diversified portfolios in the world. So, it only makes sense that we invest our own money in them. Frankly, we believe that all personal financial advisors should "eat their own cooking."

If this makes sense to you, when interviewing potential advisors ask them if they invest in the same investments that they recommend to you and ask to see a copy of their personal brokerage statements and retirement plan statements to confirm that this is true. For the record, the personal wealth (excluding our homes) of all Align partners is invested in the same portfolios as our clients, as is our company 401(k) retirement plan. We gladly produce our statements upon request to anyone becoming an Align client.

If you are comparison shopping among advisors, it is important to ask each of them the same questions. Request a financial planner interview questionnaire that will help you make the best choice.

Align Wealth Management is strictly a fee-only wealth management firm. We never accept commissions or kickbacks in any shape or form from investment, insurance, or other companies. Our revenues are derived solely from fully disclosed professional fees paid to us by our valued clients. And speaking of fees, you'll find that the total cost of our wealth management services are among the most competitive anywhere. We are committed to ensuring that our value far outweighs our fee.

All of our services are provided on a fee-only basis, and services are inclusive of all periodic client conferences, client meetings, performance reviews, portfolio reporting, tax reports, and cash flow projections. Our fees are billed on a quarterly basis and are calculated on the total portfolio value of the assets under management. Fees are calculated in accordance with the following annual rates:

¹ Katsen - "High transaction costs from portfolio turnover negatively affect 401(k) participants and increase plan sponsor fiduciary liability." Journal of Pension Benefits, 2008.

² Each Align Wealth Management portfolio has a different mix of funds. This is a weighted average of all portfolios fees.

³ Internal review of DFA's SAI documents.

There is no cost for our initial Discovery meeting. We feel it's time well spent to first get to know one another — before we establish a formal business relationship.

We typically meet in-person 2 - 4 times per year with our clients who live in the Oklahoma City and Tampa Bay areas, based upon each client's preference. For our clients who live outside of these areas, we suggest regular updates via email, phone, web-conferencing and in-person meetings as appropriate.

For taxable accounts, we take a number of steps that seek to maximize after-tax returns.

• During our investment screening process, we assess the tax efficiency of each potential holding. Our objective is to identify investments that will deliver solid after-tax returns.
  
• We consider carefully whether it makes sense to continue to hold investments that we might otherwise sell once they have built up large capital gains. Using our own proprietary portfolio trading software, we assess the opportunity cost of holding an existing position with a significant unrealized gain vs. selling and generating capital gain taxes. We review a variety of scenarios before making a final sell decision.
• When the markets are volatile on the downside, we look for opportunities to harvest capital losses by selling investments, or specific tax lots, that have unrealized losses that could be used to offset gains on a client's tax return.
  
• If we are planning on selling an investment position with a gain, we will first consider the holding period and if we are close to creating a long-term capital gain, (after a one year holding period), then we may consider holding the position for a few more days or weeks in order to allow the client to take advantage of lower tax rates on long-term capital gains.
• For our taxable accounts that include fixed income, municipal tax-free bonds are often used in lieu of taxable bonds.

Before any changes are made, we first analyze your existing portfolio and discuss our recommendations with you. Our overall goal is for your portfolio to make sense for you and your lifetime objectives, in the most cost effective manner. Ways we achieve this goal are to:

• Develop a firm understanding of your unique willingness, ability, and need to engage market risk via appropriate diversification
• Understand how all your assets will be used to meet your goals
  
• Minimize your investment expenses
  
• Manage for appropriate asset location between taxable and tax-sheltered accounts
  
• Eliminate any unnecessary complexity within your portfolio
  
• Minimize your taxes

We will accept securities into your managed account. However, most of them will not be retained unless they are the same securities currently being utilized in the target portfolio set forth in your investment policy statement. It is our professional and ethical duty to manage your portfolio to the best of our ability. This includes selecting and monitoring all securities held in your account. Of course, we will work with you to ensure that any transitions occur as smoothly and cost-effectively as possible.

Any investment that you currently own and desire to retain should be placed in a separate self-managed account. We can help you set-up a non-managed Fidelity or TD Ameritrade account. However, because of our fiduciary obligation to our clients, we cannot take responsibility for this type of self-directed account.

Align Wealth Management is pleased to be among a select group of financial advisory firms with direct access to DFA funds. We often utilize DFA funds as components of our managed portfolios. We have no affiliation with DFA and we receive no commissions, kickbacks, or compensation from DFA. DFA is not our exclusive fund sponsor, and whenever we feel there is a better investment option for your particular needs, we use it.

As you may know, DFA seeks to protect the reliability of its funds, and to keep shareholder expenses low by requiring investors to access DFA funds via a select group of financial advisory firms. You can learn more about DFA by visiting its web site at www.dfaus.com.

We believe two keys to achieving your long-term financial goals are: (1) building a portfolio of holdings mixed to reflect your unique goals and risk tolerance; and, (2) sticking with that planned mix over time. To achieve that second goal, you don't just buy and hold. You also have to periodically rebalance. Even as you stay firm with your investments, the market around you is always changing. For example, say you build a portfolio of half bonds and half stocks, balancing safety and expected wealth growth. After a while, if stocks outperform bonds, that "half" becomes more than half of your overall portfolio, and that's not what you planned. So we sell some of your stocks (selling high) and purchase enough bonds (buying low) until your mix is rebalanced to its intended 50/50 mix. Or sometimes we can use available cash flow to rebalance your portfolio by simply buying more of the underweighted asset.

Although we consider rebalancing to be an essential part of professional asset management, most investors rarely rebalance their investments on their own, and many advisors merely rebalance annually, without much regard to what's happening in between. We take a different approach. To be on the lookout for any opportunities, we monitor our model portfolios daily. We then rebalance your portfolio whenever we determine that the amount of cash in your account is too high or too low, or whenever any of the mix within your portfolio has drifted too far off from your stated goals. Because rebalancing incurs transaction costs and can generate taxable gains within taxable accounts, we monitor regularly for rebalancing opportunities, but we are judicious about acting only when we feel it will truly add value to your long-term investment experience.

We rebalance based on the unique investment objectives described in your Investment Policy Statement (IPS), so we also strongly encourage clients to let us know whenever their objectives change, in case we need to adjust their allocations, their IPS, and thus their rebalancing activities.

The short answer is no. We conduct your rebalancing automatically as part of our overall client-focused services. We feel this approach ensures that important rebalancing opportunities are not postponed or lost by requiring you to fit an approval process into your already busy life. Instead, you give us advance permission to rebalance on your behalf. This permission is very limited, permitting us only to conduct periodic rebalancing or to replace an investment with one we deem is superior, all in accordance with our written, customized, Investment Policy Statement to which we mutually agree.

Yes. Your custodian (Fidelity or TD Ameritrade) will notify you by mail or email each time we make a change in your portfolio. These confirmations will give you complete details of each trade in your account. All trades are conducted in accordance with your written Investment Policy Statement, but we encourage clients to be in contact with us whenever any questions arise. We feel this creates a good balance between keeping you informed and involved, while minimizing unnecessary interruptions to your busy life.

You can request the GIPS compliant performance data on our model portfolio strategies. Please keep in mind that past performance is no indication of future results. It is important to understand that Align builds and manages portfolios for clients on a case-by-case basis and that our model performance is an aggregate of all of our managed accounts net of all fees and expenses. For more on GIPS compliance and how this benefits you as an investor click here and here.

No. Align Wealth Management is not affiliated with Fidelity or TD Ameritrade, nor are we compensated by either of those companies in any manner. We receive no fees, commissions, or incentives from Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, or any other financial institution.

No. There is no reason to visit a Fidelity or TD Ameritrade office to open Fidelity or TD Ameritrade accounts yourself. When you are ready to become an Align client, we will send you Fidelity Institutional or TD Ameritrade Institutional paperwork for your signature. If there is a Fidelity or TD Ameritrade office nearby, you may deposit checks at those locations rather than mailing money to Fidelity or TD Ameritrade. That may reduce the time it takes to deposit checks into your account.

Fidelity and TD Ameritrade send monthly statements to all clients for all accounts. These statements show account balances, trades, cash flows, and unrealized gains. Statements are available in paper as well as through email. In addition, Align will send you a detailed performance report each quarter that compares your portfolio's performance to a series of relevant benchmarks.

Yes. At the end of each year, Fidelity and TD Ameritrade will send 1099s to you for each taxable account. In addition, a realized gain/loss statement is available on-line from Fidelity and TD Ameritrade, as well as from www.alignmywealth.com. Align also provides a detailed tax report to you (and to your CPA if desired) detailing interest, dividends, short-term capital gains, long-term capital gains, and a pro-forma 1040 Schedule D.

No, you can terminate the advisor/client relationship at any time for any reason (or for no reason at all). There are no termination charges or surrender fees. A final management fee will be drafted based on the number of days during the current quarter that your account was under our management.

Your assets are held in custody in your name at Fidelity or TD Ameritrade. Align Wealth Management is never in custody of any of your assets. Instead, we are granted limited power of attorney to do three things in your account: (1) trade securities, with discretion, in accordance with your Investment Policy Statement; (2) request that Fidelity/TD Ameritrade send a check to a client directly or to a client's bank; and, (3) be paid a quarterly management fee from the account based on our Investment Advisory Agreement. We have no other access or authority.

Yes. All accounts are insured on multiple levels. The coverage extended to you at both Fidelity and TD Ameritrade is extensive. For details on Fidelity's coverage, click here, and for details on TD Ameritrade's coverage, click here. Align Wealth Management also carries extensive Errors and Omissions insurance and a separate Fidelity Bond for retirement accounts and pension funds.

Your privacy is of utmost importance to us. Align Wealth Management complies with all privacy laws affecting financial institutions. Each year, our clients receive our Privacy Statement that outlines this responsibility in detail. Those standards are reviewed regularly to ensure they cover all forms of communication. Briefly, we will not release any information to any person who is not directly named on your account unless we have your permission to do so, with the exception of legal and regulatory authorities.

All personnel, including management personnel, are required to sign an Annual Ethics Statement that outlines our ethical standards. Everyone at Align Wealth Management adheres to that strict ethical code as part of our daily operations. In addition, our daily operations are governed by our policy and procedures manual, as well as by the Align Employee Handbook.

Simply fill out the form on the contact us page, send an email, or call our toll-free number at
800-401-6477.

No. There is no obligation to receive an investment proposal. We prefer that a person think long and hard about hiring our firm because it is a long-term relationship that allows the strategy to work and this also allows us to keep our management fees low.

We have no minimum portfolio size. However, there is a $990 quarterly minimum fee per relationship. As such, $400,000 is the minimum client relationship to receive our 0.99% annual rate. Relationships of lesser amounts pay a $990 quarterly flat fee in lieu of the 0.99% annual rate.

Simply contact us to schedule a complimentary consultation. The first step of our wealth management process is an initial one hour Discovery Meeting. This complimentary Discovery Meeting provides an opportunity for you to learn more about our firm and how we may be able to assist you.

If appropriate, we then take your information and create a draft investment plan to align your money with your goals and objectives. In our second meeting (the Investment Plan Meeting), we review your draft investment plan with you. During this Investment Plan Meeting, we walk you through your plan and highlight the investment strategies that we recommend to help you maximize the probability of achieving your goals.

At this point, we find that many people want to immediately move ahead. Instead, we typically ask that you set a time for a Mutual Commitment Meeting. This allows you to take your plan home so that you have plenty of time to review it. We do this because we are looking for lifelong relationships, not short-term transactions. At the Mutual Commitment Meeting, we answer any questions you have about your investment plan and discuss any fine-tuning adjustments. If we mutually agree that we have a strong basis for a continued working relationship, we then assist you in completing the documents needed to get your plan started.

With fee-only compensation, you, our client, pays us a fair and transparent fee for the services we provide you. Refusing commissions or other compensation from outside parties removes the conflicts and temptations that come along with them, and helps ensure we're focused on your interests.

Yes. Within six months of hire, Align Wealth Management advisors must have at least five years of industry experience and hold the CFP® professional financial planning designation or the CFA (chartered financial analyst) designation. In addition, each advisor is supported and supervised by Align's senior management team. Each advisor is required to comply with all of Align's practices and procedures.

A Fiduciary is a person who is responsible for managing the assets of another person and who stands in a special relationship of trust, confidence, and/or legal responsibility. As a Fiduciary, we have the legal responsibility to follow prudent investment practices, as well as to serve the client's best interests. The Align Wealth Management Client Agreement specifically identifies Align Wealth Management as your investment fiduciary. We also have designed our operations to reflect prudent practices and procedures.

No. Commission-based brokers are not generally required to be fiduciaries. They are transaction-based and are not held to a fiduciary standard. Some brokers/advisors try to wear two hats, suggesting that some activities should be held to a fiduciary standard and some should not. This creates confusion and a lack of clarity in the client/advisor relationship.

If we identify a need for insurance products or suggest that you shop for quotes to increase the value of existing insurance plans, you have options. You can go to the open market for competitive quotes, or we can refer you to an insurance specialist. Of course, you can also do both. Align does not sell insurance products, and Align does not receive compensation for recommending insurance products.

Yes. Align serves clients across the United States. If you do not live near one of our offices, we can utilize technology such as the telephone, email, and web conferencing to accommodate you.

As an established client, you can continue with our services and we can continue to service your needs remotely via telephone, email, and web conferencing.