• Lawrence, Kansas
  • Serving clients coast to coast
Client Login
Contact
Begin Your Journey

Evidence-based, and personal

We don't predict markets. We build plans that don't need us to.

Our investment philosophy is deliberately unexciting. The excitement should be in your life, not your portfolio.

The premise

A portfolio is not a strategy. It's an instrument of one.

The right portfolio is the least amount of risk required to accomplish what your plan says you need to accomplish. Nothing about that is a market call.
Most investors take too much risk in pursuit of returns they don’t need, or too little in avoidance of volatility they could have absorbed. Both errors come from the same place: investing without a plan to measure it against. So we start with your plan — the cash flows, the timelines, the obligations, the things you said mattered in the Vision Clarifier — and let the portfolio follow from that. It’s a less exciting conversation than picking winners, and a far more useful one.

Why human guidance matters more now than ever

What we believe, and act on

The plan sets the portfolio

Risk is a function of what your life requires, not a score from a questionnaire. Change the plan and we change the portfolio — not the other way around.

Cost is the only certainty

Future returns are unknowable. Expense ratios, trading costs, and tax drag are knowable today — so those are what we manage first and hardest.

Diversify broadly, deliberately

Thousands of holdings across geographies and asset classes, each position sized on purpose rather than inherited from whoever managed the money before us.

Tax location matters as much as allocation

The same allocation held in the wrong accounts costs real money every year. We manage across every account you own as a single portfolio.

Rules beat instincts

Rebalancing bands, tax-loss harvesting triggers, and cash-flow policies are decided in calm weather so nobody has to improvise in a storm.

Behavior is where advice earns its keep

The best portfolio you abandon in March is worse than a good one you hold for thirty years. A large part of our job is being the reason you hold.

Just as important

What we don't do

A philosophy is defined as much by its exclusions as its inclusions. These are ours, and we’ll tell you the same thing in person.

Make market forecasts, or manage money around them
Nobody has demonstrated they can do this reliably, including us.
Sell proprietary products
We have nothing of our own to place in your portfolio.
Chase performance, or last year’s best idea
Buying what just went up is a strategy for feeling good, briefly.
Confuse complexity with sophistication
If we can’t explain a holding to you in two minutes, it doesn’t belong there.
Charge for activity
Trading isn’t progress. Our compensation isn’t tied to how often we act.

In practice

How a portfolio actually gets built here

Four stages, and a written investment policy statement at the end of them so the reasoning is on the record.

STAGE 01

Required return

What the plan actually needs the money to do, in real terms, after tax.
STAGE 02

Capacity for loss

What a bad year does to your plan — not just how it makes you feel.
STAGE 03

Allocation & location

The mix, then which account each piece of it should live inside.
STAGE 04

Rules, then review

Rebalancing bands, harvesting triggers, and a scheduled annual re-test.

All investing involves risk, including potential loss of principal. Diversification and asset allocation do not guarantee a profit or protect against loss in declining markets. Tax-loss harvesting and asset location strategies depend on individual circumstances; we do not provide tax or legal advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results.