Investment Management
Our investment portfolios are carefully designed to help retirement investors reduce risk, improve returns, and create a reliable income stream.
Here are 3 Keys to help you protect your money:
-
Reduce Fees
According to Morningstar, the cost of your underlying investments is one of the best predictors of future returns.
In other words, low-cost investments, historically, have outperformed high-cost investments.
For that reason, we build our retirement portfolios using low-cost index funds. This helps to improve the success rate of our client's retirement plans and reduce unnecessary risk.
Every time an investment is bought or sold (i.e., "turned over"), costs are incurred. Not just obvious costs like transaction fees and taxes, but hidden costs like bid-ask spreads.
These costs eat away at your investment returns. So, to optimize investment returns and mitigate taxes, we intentionally own investments with low turnover.
Stillwater Financial doesn't earn commissions on trades.
2. Own the Right Investments
Not all investments are created equal.
Just because you can invest your money into something (e.g., gold), does not mean you should!
We only invest in asset classes that:
-
Are positively supported by peer-reviewed, academic research
-
Work well when invested together in a diversified portfolio (e.g., low and/or negative correlation to each other)
For example, corporate bonds are often considered "safe" investments, but during major market downturns they can decline alongside stocks — reducing or eliminating the diversification benefit an investor expects. For someone in retirement who cannot afford significant losses, this kind of hidden correlation can be particularly harmful.
Stillwater Financial doesn't earn commissions on investment products.
3. Stick to the Plan
As a fiduciary, our job is to make investment decisions that are in your best interest. This means ignoring the daily headlines and sticking with evidence-based solutions.
There is always a reason to panic, but we don't have to.
We stick to the plan because we know the market will recover.
