Diane Bell

Financial Planning Client Relations @Northwestern Mutual

Our team help clients – many of whom are executives at large public and privately held firms - accumulate wealth, protect against the unexpected and reduce tax liability by up to 6-7 figures.We find that many of our clients have done “planning” in the past and may have a combination of 401(k) & deferred comp plans, insurance policies, investments, etc, but lack a thoughtful, comprehensive strategic plan tailored for their preferences, values, lifestyle and financial story. Many others have or currently work with other advisors and many have several “plans,” which we find is rarely well coordinated and more often results in incongruent, misaligned, redundant, or worse, offsetting strategies applied independently to each specific area of expertise.We start by taking a full financial audit across products, services and strategies with the specific purpose of spotting both inefficiencies and deficiencies as well as opportunities and will make recommendations to correct the former and prioritize the latter. With familiarity and time, the client relationship usually evolves to include more than baseline risk planning and wealth accumulation strategies to include longer-term planning, and minimize common, and sometimes tremendous, inefficiencies in terms of taxes, costs, and balance sheet leakage.