In a world driven by alpha—bullish investors continue to be on the uptick even after a mid-March market sell-off—senior partner Ryan Burklo of Quantified Wealth Advisors believes in a different approach: preparation, education, and protecting income.

Burklo believes the investment industry as a whole has been focused on the wrong thing.

“The topic that is out there is purely on rate of return,” he said. “From a client perspective that is probably the appealing thing to talk about, but the focus should really be on the return of our money, not just a return on our money.”

While investing is essential, understanding how to save and developing ways to protect income are more important than chasing yields.
“In actuality, your savings rate will always trump rate of return,” Burklo said.

Burklo and his partner, Alex Collins, met as co-workers and decided to start Quantified Wealth Advisors with a new philosophy, one places personal service, integrity, transparency and protecting client income over old school strategies.

“It’s very important to us to integrate everything around protection, investments, cash flow—how the money is going on the balance sheet and the efficiency of that—and taxes,” Burklo said.
The basis of all planning, he explained, begins with trust. To earn client trust, Burklo strives to educate clients both on the how and why of their planning decisions. This, he said, not only helps them understand the impact of today’s decisions but also lays the groundwork for future conversations.

With the amount of information available, along with new financial apps and tools, most people are inundated with information. They need professional assistance to discern the accurate from inaccurate, and to get a complete picture of how to use that information with their own unique circumstances. 

“The concern about robo-adivsors is that they are pre-programmed to ask certain questions,” Burklo said.

While he agreed that tech tools are great to get people ready for an open conversation about their finances, they fall short because they don’t ask the “what if” questions that could alter a person’s strategy. And, Burklo added, the information people plug into the tool is only as good as their understanding of the questions. 

When it comes to assessing popular investment trends, Burklo advises clients to evaluate how those options align with their own ideas.

“I’m very much on the conservative side and work with clients to make the plan more distinctive to their philosophy,” he said.

While great products and investments are available, such as the 401k, Burklo wants clients to have a full understanding of how things like taxes and plan fees will affect them financially, both now and in the future.

This falls in line with Quantified’s primary mission of ensuring clients clearly understand that by protecting their income they are becoming better prepared to protect their family—lifelong security is always the underlying and ultimate objective.

“Tying it all together, the integration, is what we do,” Burklo said.

FOr more information visit: www.quantifiedwealthadvisors.com

2017-39354 Exp. 4/2019