The Virtus Effect

When everything starts working together.

Most people don't have one financial plan. They have investments, taxes, insurance, income, and an estate plan, with different decisions made at different times.

The Virtus Effect is what happens when those pieces start working together around one thing: the life you actually want to live.

The idea

Nothing about your money decides alone.

Your investment adviser manages the portfolio. Your insurance agent protects against risk. Your CPA looks at taxes. Your attorney handles the estate documents.

Each of them may be doing their job well. The problem is that a decision in one area can change what makes sense in another.

Someone needs to be looking at the whole picture.

It isn’t a bigger number. It’s knowing you’re going to be alright without having to check the spreadsheet again.

In practice

What coordination actually does.

The pieces of your financial life affect each other. Coordination means looking at what a decision changes before you make it.

Seen together

One decision can change a lot

A Roth conversion can affect your taxes today and your Medicare premiums later. When you claim Social Security changes your income for the rest of your life. Selling an investment can solve one problem and create a tax bill somewhere else.

We look at what else changes before making the decision.

Kept current

The plan changes when your life does

You retire. Tax laws change. Markets move. Your family changes. We keep coming back to all five Worlds to see what still makes sense and what needs to change.

Understood

You know why we're doing it

Every recommendation should make sense to you. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? What does it cost? What does it improve? And what would cause us to do something differently?

You should understand the plan, not just be told what to do.

What it looks like in a life

What this looks like in real life.

These aren’t actual clients. They’re common situations we’ve seen over the years, simplified to show what it looks like when the pieces of a financial life finally get looked at together.

Three advisers. Three different plans.

They had an investment adviser, an insurance agent, a CPA, and an estate attorney. Everyone was doing their job. The problem was that nobody was looking at what everyone else was doing.

So we put everything on the table together. The investments. The insurance. The taxes. The estate plan. Some things were working exactly as they should. Other things made less sense once we could see the whole picture.

The goal wasn't to replace everything they had. It was to finally have someone responsible for understanding how all of it worked together.

The business was sold. Now what?

For twenty years, the business paid the bills. Then it sold, a large amount of money landed in an account, and suddenly the question changed.

What does this money need to do now?

Before deciding how to invest it, we started with their life. What do they spend? What income do they need? What do they want to do over the next five, ten, or twenty years? What do they want to leave?

Once those questions had answers, it became much easier to decide what the money should actually do.

Everything was done. It just didn't match.

They had a will. They had beneficiaries listed on their accounts. They had powers of attorney and insurance policies.

The problem was that they had all been done at different times.

One beneficiary was from an earlier point in their life. A person named in one of the documents had died. Other pieces simply didn't line up anymore.

Nothing required some elaborate new estate plan. They needed someone to look at everything together, update what had changed, and make sure what was on paper still matched what they wanted.

These are illustrative composites for educational purposes, not actual client stories or a promise of any particular outcome.

What it is not

Plain language about what the Virtus Effect means.

Not a return

The Virtus Effect isn't an investment return or a number your portfolio is expected to reach. It describes what happens when the different parts of your financial life are planned together.

Not a guarantee

Markets will fall. Tax laws will change. Life won't always go according to plan. Good planning doesn't prevent those things. It helps you understand what they mean for you and what you would do next.

Not a product

There's nothing to buy called the Virtus Effect. It's simply what we call the result of bringing the Five Worlds together around your life.

· The Heard First Session

One hour. You do the talking.

Tell us what you've built, what's on your mind, and what you want the next part of your life to look like. We'll listen first and help you start seeing how the pieces fit together.

For those within five years of retirement or already there, with $1 million or more set aside. No cost. No obligation.

Book a Session What happens in the hour →