The questions worth asking first.
If the answer you need is not here, ask us directly; the first conversation exists precisely so you can.
Most of what follows comes up in the first meeting anyway. Putting it here means you can decide whether we are worth a conversation before spending one.
Working together
- Are you a fiduciary?
- Other Side Asset Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser, and in that capacity we act in a fiduciary capacity to our advisory clients. Where insurance is discussed, it is offered through licensed insurance professionals rather than as an advisory service, and we say so on the page where it appears. Our disclosure page sets out how the firm is compensated and where conflicts can arise.
- What happens in the first conversation?
- It is a conversation, not a presentation. We ask what the money has to do, on what date, for how many people, and how much loss the plan could absorb without breaking. Nothing is recommended in that meeting, because a recommendation made before those answers exist is a guess. There is no cost and no obligation to continue.
- Do I have to move my accounts to work with you?
- No. A second opinion is a legitimate reason to talk to us, and plenty of those conversations end with us telling someone their current arrangement is sound and needs nothing from us. If the plan says the exposure is already covered, the honest recommendation is to leave it alone.
- What does the planning process look like?
- Three sessions: discovery, design, then verification and implementation. Discovery establishes the facts and the objectives, design produces the plan and the alternatives considered, and the third session is where the plan is stress-tested and only then put into effect. Our process page walks through each step in detail.
How we invest
- What is your investment philosophy?
- Capital preservation is an explicit objective rather than a side effect. Staying fully invested at all times is a choice, not a neutral state, and there are conditions under which we think the appropriate position is a defensive one. That approach will lag a strong, uninterrupted advance; it is a deliberate trade, made because the damage a deep drawdown does to a portfolio being withdrawn from is not symmetrical with the gain it gives up.
- What does Shoshin mean, and why is it on your website?
- Shoshin is a Zen concept usually translated as beginner's mind: approaching something with openness and without the assumption that you already know the answer. Applied to investing it is a discipline against conviction hardening into blind spots. Our philosophy page explains how it shapes the way we look at a position.
- Do you guarantee returns, or protect against loss?
- No. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal, and no strategy, including one built around capital preservation, can eliminate that. What a plan can do is size the risk against what the household is actually able to absorb, which is a different and more achievable objective.
- Do you sell insurance or annuities?
- Insurance products, where they are appropriate, are offered through licensed insurance professionals and are not investment advisory services. Product guarantees are subject to the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. Whether any product belongs in a plan is a question the plan answers, not the product.
Planning questions
- When should I start planning for retirement?
- The decisions that move the number most are concentrated in a narrow window around the retirement date: when to claim Social Security, whether Medicare was enrolled in on time, which account funds the first decade of spending. Several of those are irreversible or expensive to reverse, which is the argument for having the plan in place before the window opens rather than during it.
- I already have a will. Is my estate planning done?
- Not necessarily. Retirement accounts, life insurance and transfer-on-death registrations pass by beneficiary designation, outside the will entirely, and where the two disagree the designation wins. The review that catches this is unglamorous: pull every account, read every beneficiary line, compare it to the documents. It is the step most often skipped.
- Do you provide tax or legal advice?
- No. We do not draft legal documents and we do not provide tax advice. What we do is coordinate the financial plan with the work your attorney and CPA are doing, so that the accounts we can see actually match the documents they have drafted.
- What is the 25% philanthropy pledge?
- When an introduction or event results in a new advisory relationship, we donate 25% of the gross advisory fees we actually receive from that relationship during its first 12 months to a 501(c)(3) charity chosen by the person or organization who made the introduction. The donation comes from the firm, not from the client's account. It is how the firm gives; it is separate from charitable planning, which is the work of structuring your own giving efficiently.
Still open? The process page walks through what the three planning sessions involve, and the disclosure page covers how the firm is compensated.
Answers on this page are general and educational and are not investment, legal, or tax advice. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Other Side Asset Management provides investment advisory services and does not provide legal or tax advice; insurance products, where discussed, are offered through licensed insurance professionals and product guarantees are subject to the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. Whether anything described here is appropriate depends entirely on your circumstances.
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