Did you know many Americans spend more time planning their vacations than they do planning for their long-term financial future? It's no wonder they're surprised at their financial situation when they get close to retirement.

The purpose of financial planning is to create a road map with a specific plan of action to ensure you have the resources to do what you want to do within the lifestyle you desire. A strategically developed and well executed financial plan helps you make the right financial decisions, at the right time.

We can help you with decisions such as; when to buy a home and how much you can afford, how to save for vacations or major purchases, disciplines for paying and managing debt and methods for providing education support and other needs for your family. HFA helps you assess your current situation, clarify your future goals and develop a financial plan to help you meet your retirement goals.

When do you want to retire? Where do you want to live? What kind of lifestyle do you dream of enjoying? How can you be sure it will happen? These are the classic questions that need to be answered in developing a sound retirement plan. Whereas a financial plan outlines how you want to live during the working years, a retirement plan describes how you want to live during retirement.

It sounds simple, but here are some things you might not know. For example, you will not reduce spending during the first two years of retirement, you will travel more in the first ten years than in the second ten, you will become more concerned about finances as time progresses—wondering if you "have enough".

HFA's expertise in this area helps develop a plan that will adapt to the realities of retirement and provides a framework designed to make it all work for you.

Determining the correct strategy is one of the most important contributions HFA provides in executing your financial plan. With sixteen investment strategies, plus a money market account to choose from, together we can develop the most effective plan to meet your specific needs.

After discussing and assessing your financial situation, we help you select the strategy most suitable to your needs. Whether your assessment requires a conservative, moderate, or aggressive growth strategic plan, in collaboration with our primary sub-advisor, Quantitative Advantage (QA), we have the resources and investment vehicles to meet your unique personal requirements.

The accurate determination of your investment strategies is critical to meeting your financial stability and growth requirements. We are committed to helping you meet your short and long-term investment goals.

Our sub-advisor, QA, is an experienced investment management firm utilizing quantitative and active management principals. They utilize Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and other appropriate investment vehicles to create effective investment strategies. Primarily there are two basic styles of stocks – growth and value. Most investments are predominately one or the other, or diversified across both.

Investments rotate in and out of favor on a regular basis. These fluctuations are driven by varying changes in global economic, financial and political climates and have a significant impact on investment returns. The key to this approach is identifying the style choice that is "in favor" with the current market situation. Essentially it's all about the ability to recognize the "leaders and losers" and properly allocating your portfolio to capitalize on these facts (this approach is also utilized when selecting various sectors, inter-national regions, fixed income and alternative investments).

While rotation occurs in all investment categories, US equity styles can be used to illustrate the point. As the charts demonstrate, not only do the various styles rotate from year to year but the gap in annual returns between the "leaders and losers" is frequently large. So owning the right style at the right time is critical to a portfolio's performance.

With all the various investment choices available, how do you know where to most effectively allocate your portfolio? Market styles, sectors, international regions and other investments frequently "rotate" – meaning that at times they will be in favor ("leaders") and at times they will fall out of favor ("losers"). The key to successful portfolio management is to identify and capitalize on these proven trends.

According to Nobel prize-winning economist William F. Sharpe, how you allocate your assets among the various investment styles may determine up to 90% of your portfolio's performance*. So we believe the best way to manage risk and return and maximize your portfolio potential is to keep allocations current with the market trends RATHER than trying to pick a single winning stock or sell at the highest price.

Through HFA and our relationship with QA, your account is actively managed in a highly disciplined and data-driven process which seeks to capture optimal shifts in the market to maximize your portfolio's potential growth.

*Asset Allocation: Management Style and Performance Measurement, William F. Sharpe, The Journal of Portfolio Management, Winter 1992