Our number 1 responsibility is to build a portfolio that gets you the best possible return for your given risk level.

Our second responsibility is to get you the best possible return, period.

There have been Nobel prizes won based on this concept known as the Efficient Frontier.

Yes, it is the cornerstone, but it is not the end. We differentiate ourselves from our peers in that we personalize all relationships and portfolios, which allows us to take this a significant step forward. And everything is done in the most cost effective and tax efficient manner.

One of our favorite sayings is that compared to peers mostly everyone else, costs too much, does too little or both.

The Efficient Frontier & Sector- and Style-Rotation

At this point and time, anyone in our industry should be able to do basic asset allocation. Most firms have made it pretty straight forward. Security selection takes more skill than what the majority of “advisors” are able to do. .

Investing in a tax efficient manner is something that very few advisors are able to do at the individual level, and many that say tax efficient are usually using a code word for high commission, low performing insurance product. It is a labor intensive process, that no single product on it’s own can accomplish.

Our view is that having a high level of personalization by client account and registration is the only way to manage accounts in a truly tax-efficient manner. Rob recognized by the mid 1990’s that Mutual Funds, while important in the history of personal finance, had been replaced by something that is more tax efficient and more cost effective: the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF).

We build the core of our portfolios using ETFs. This will be somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of an individual’s portfolio. The remaining will incorporate what we call “our best ideas” and will vary depending on market opportunities at that time.

Success as an investor is not always based upon what you own…it’s also important to know when to own it. The first rule of investing is buy low, sell high. We’re not going to buy a position after it’s had it’s gains and is expensive compared to it’s historical averages.

Through our proprietary Sector and Style Rotation strategies, we focus on three variables above all else: valuations, economic conditions and momentum.

Customized Fee Pricing

For this level of personalization, there needs to be a critical mass of money for someone to have to be able to utilize these strategies. If you have a portfolio of $500K or more, these strategies begin to make sense where we’re able to provide a superior level of service compared to our peer group. In addition, our management fee is inclusive of all planning and services that are required for a successful financial advisor relationship.

We’ve often found that banks, insurance companies, asset managers, and some of our peers want to “invest” your assets with the goal of bringing more of your money into their core products. Think of an insurance agent that is always talking about life insurance as a retirement asset, financial advisor that charges an additional 4 figure sum for any planning, mutual fund company that “manages” your money by charging you 1% to put your money into their proprietary funds. The list goes on, but none of that will ever happen at DLAK.

We exist to maintain an independent view with the sole mission in life is to be an advocate for our clients in a world filled with conflicts of interest.

Some of the topics that we explore with all of our clients are budgeting, charitable giving, cash flow planning, obligation planning, investment tax planning, estate planning, retirement planning and more. This is built into the management fee that we bill on a quarterly basis in addition to our core responsibility being a steward of your wealth and managing your assets. We don’t ever want our clients to miss out on a potentially important consideration for their financial plan. That is why we feel that having these conversations is critical to the level of personalization in someone’s financial plan and why we build the expectation to have these conversations with all of our clients.

 

_{There is no guarantee that these investment strategies will work under all market conditions. All investments contain risk and may love value. This material contains the current opinions of the author but not necessarily those of Guardian or its subsidiaries and such opinions are subject to change without notice. References to specific securities, asset classes and financial markets are for illustrative purposes only and do not constitute a solicitation, offer, or recommendation to purchase or sell a security. Although the information has been gathered from sources believed to be reliable, please note that individual situations can vary, and therefore, the information should be relied upon only when coordinated with individual professional advice.}

We offer a complimentary "Get Acquainted" meeting to describe our services, and to see if our services are right for you.

Perpetual Investment Management: Between Rob, our managing partners Jason and Matt and the rest of our staff, we have a century’s worth of experience. Drawing on our unique market insight, we’ve eliminated conflicts of interest that are found at most other institutions and have been able to provide operational efficiencies for our clients not found at the big firms. For a deeper dive, please see our Investment Philosophy page.

Proactive Relationship: We reach out to our clients on a proactive basis, generally three times a year but potentially more if there is a specific event happening (such as retirement, vesting schedule of employer benefits, tax season, etc.). During these meetings, we:

• Educate our clients on the different options they have and the theories underpinning our asset management
• Prompt discussions of planning ideas and why they would be advantageous to our clientele
• Address any client questions, It’s a wild world that is getting wilder every day. It’s natural to have questions and we want to make sure that we’re partners together as we go through life together. It’s fun when clients want to know more about individual positions or strategies

Integrated Financial Planning:

• Budgeting: Sounds simple but it’s one of the most crucial components of being able to ask the simple question: Do I have enough? If we don’t have this basic expectation set, it’s impossible to objectively analyze someone’s financial situation.
• Cash Flow Allocation: Building a savings and distribution plan that is diversified in taxation so we’re not tipping the government more than we need to.
• Obligation Planning (Retirement, College, wedding funds, etc.): Most people would like to be able to provide for children and grandchildren for specific life events. Wedding funds, first cars, college funding, family vacations…the sky is the limit. If there is something that you want to do, we want to make sure that you have what you need when you need it.
• Investment Tax Planning: All DLAK clients will go through a Registration Analysis to prioritize where to save hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lives. While we’re not accountants, this type of planning, we like to believe, will have a bigger impact on what you and your family pay over your life vs the work you do with your accountant.
  For those that are charitably inclined, the 2017 tax code gave powerful incentives where we can bundle multiple years of giving into a single grant and maximize the deduction. Simply said, most people that consistently gives to charity on a consistent basis are getting no tax benefit for it.
  This is in addition to tax loss harvesting, and idea other advisors often talk about but few advisors do it well.
• Wealth Transfer and Estate Planning: While we’re not attorneys, we will help our clients make sure that they have the ability to control who gets their money, how much and if there need to be any considerations around protecting heirs from bad decisions, bad relationships or bad influences.
• Debt Planning: Beyond the math, the idea of carrying debt is a personal choice. We help our clients get the lowest rate, borrow in a tax efficient manner and decide when it makes sense to carry the debt or simply pay it off.
• Protection Planning: The market alone can create a lot of stress. All clients get a full review of their insurances in case of the unexpected. Life happens and when it does we need to know if we’re going to pay for it out of savings or see if it makes sense to transfer the risk.

We offer a complimentary "Get Acquainted" meeting to describe our services, and to see if our services are right for you.

It’s tough to build and maintain wealth in this world. Tax changes, market uncertainty, health care costs, unknown political future…life. In a world of uncertainty and change, it’s critical to have a plan and a system in place to monitor, review and adjust along the way. The largest segment of our clientele are:

Thinking about a life without a paycheck is nerve racking for most people. If you’ve been in your career for 40 years, it’s a mind shift to think about not waking up each day and seeing your pay check hit your checking account every two weeks. What will replace that income source, when do we claim Social Security, what options should we look at for Medicare, ACA or COBRA. If you haven’t started planning yet, the five years before retirement are the most critical years to get a plan in place and to make sure that you understand what your income will look like. Working with a team that has helped thousands of people through the transition is invaluable.

Success doesn’t happen at once, it’s a series of individual decisions spread out over decades. For people earlier in their career, we help with the analysis of future taxable income and how to minimize your future tax burden while taking an appropriate level of risk and having a professional level of diversification around tax treatments and investments.

70% of wealthy families will lose their wealth by the second generation and 90% will lose it by the third. If you’ve created significant wealth or have family assets that will be passed onto the next generation, its important to know that your wishes will be respected and work for you even if you’re not around to monitor them. We’ve helped thousands of people create durable wealth transfer plans to help minimize taxes, have healthy relationships with money and incentivize the type of lives that are meaningful to our clients.

90% of start ups fail within five years. As a small business ourselves, we celebrate anyone that was willing to have the entrepreneurial drive to do things their own way. There are different ideas that need to be implemented at different stages of business development…and we’re here for it. We leverage our team to provide best in class ideas around employee retention, business succession planning, making sure that the business owner has an appropriate amount of liquidity and more. We value to work and effort that goes into creating and running a business, we want to help take the financial stress out.

We offer a complimentary "Get Acquainted" meeting to describe our services, and to see if our services are right for you.

Our story starts more than 25 years ago when Rob Koscik started working within the Financial Services Industry. Gaining 10 years of invaluable experience at Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab, he learned a lot about the industry—the good it can provide and, unfortunately, the conflicts of interest that abound. Such conflicts within our industry often create an environment in which the investment firms themselves are made the greatest benefactors from their relationships.

Think of the majority of the investment management industry as fitting into two categories:

• Discount Brokerage Firms who achieve low costs through scale, and
• Local, Full-Service Firms who are high-cost, but provide a greater depth of service to their clients.

When Rob developed our service delivery system, his intent was very specific: Incorporate the good of both business models while eliminating both the lack of personalization on the one hand, and the excessive fees that exist on the other hand. We have built our business on our shared passion to drive value through service to the local marketplace through a tailored relationship while providing top-tier Investment Management Services. In so doing, we also are committed to eliminating the multitude of hands in our clients' pockets that can often exist, while personalizing all investments accounts to make them as tax-efficient and cost-effective as possible.

Since teaming up with Park Avenue Securities, LLC (a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America) in 2005, we have enjoyed strong growth as a firm, as individuals and corporate clients have seen the value of our offering through introductions from our business partners. We are very proud of the business we have built, and continue to build a strong presence in our community.

A PERSONALIZED RELATIONSHIP

Based upon the foundation laid for our business, we believe that great value can be achieved for our clients. Our personal directives are to:

• Be there and be capable. We feel confident that regardless of your financial concern, we have a qualified resource ready to provide quality guidance.
• 24-Hour Rule. Under no circumstance should a client's request for help go more than 24 hours without a reply, and in most instances, without resolution to their question or concern.

We offer a complimentary "Get Acquainted" meeting to describe our services, and to see if our services are right for you.

Our team understands the different milestones of life, and the challenges they bring. We work to ease the stress of each transition using our years of experience, research, and resources alongside your values and desires, to design a successful plan of action.

We offer a complimentary "Get Acquainted" meeting to describe our services, and to see if our services are right for you.