Life unfolds in stages. Each stage brings new opportunities and new financial complexities.
In early adulthood, your focus may be on growing your income and building assets. As you gain momentum, your priorities shift toward protecting your wealth and planning for what’s ahead.
Eventually, distribution becomes a focus: ensuring your resources support your retirement, your values, and future generations.
Navigating these transitions requires more than just smart investing. It takes a strategic, structured, and personalized approach—a comprehensive wealth management strategy.
For high-net-worth individuals, wealth management integrates every aspect of your financial situation, from investment planning and tax strategies to estate planning, business succession, and philanthropic giving.
The right advisor helps you translate your financial goals into a clear actionable plan, and provides the guidance and execution needed to move from intention to impact.
In this article, we’ll walk through:
Whether you’re seeking support for your next major financial decision or you want a long-term partner to help you manage complexity, this guide will help you understand what a professional wealth management firm brings to the table—and how the process works from start to finish.
Any strong wealth management strategy should be designed around three core goals: accumulation, preservation, and distribution. These are the cornerstones of comprehensive financial planning and help ensure your unique financial goals remain front and center as your life evolves.
The first step in building wealth is growing it. During this phase, you’re often in your peak earning years—building businesses, receiving equity compensation, or investing in growth opportunities.
A financial advisor or wealth manager can help you develop an investment strategy aligned with your timeline and risk tolerance, often emphasizing growth-oriented investments, diversified holdings, and tax-efficient strategies.
This phase focuses on:
As your assets grow, so does the need to protect them. The preservation phase involves mitigating risks and shielding your wealth from volatility, taxes, and inflation.
Your wealth management plan at this stage may include:
This is often a time when estate planning and business transition planning become more relevant, as you start to think about what comes next for yourself and your family.
Eventually, your focus shifts to utilizing and transferring wealth. Whether that means funding your retirement, supporting charitable causes, or passing assets to family, a trusted financial professional ensures your legacy is executed exactly as intended.
Your advisor will help you:
Now that we’ve established the goals, let’s walk through the six stages of a comprehensive wealth management strategy, and what you can expect from a top-tier wealth management firm.
This is the foundation of the relationship. During your initial meeting, your advisor will get to know you—your financial goals, values, and any existing strategies already in place. You’ll also review your:
At Plancorp, this initial conversation is offered as a complimentary private strategy session. It’s a two-way discovery: we determine if we’re the right fit for your financial needs, and you determine if we’re the right partner to help you pursue your financial goals.
This is where we define what success looks like. Together, we outline your short-term and long-term goals, which may include:
Understanding your values and vision helps your advisor tailor a strategy that serves not only your financial interests but your life goals as well. The more clarity you provide, the better your plan will reflect your real-world priorities.
Don’t be worried if you can’t clearly articulate a goal up front, or if they don’t fit neatly into a box like one of the bullets above. Goals can be more nebulous like being able to support children as they get established, ability to make larger charitable donations each year, or a goal to take a larger vacation every year. The important thing is to share more about your vision for where you’d like to go with your wealth, not just an amount you’d like to save.
Once your financial picture is clear, your team will analyze how your existing investment portfolio and broader strategy measure up. This includes:
This deep dive ensures that your current holdings aren’t just “performing,” but performing with purpose. It also sets the stage for any necessary adjustments or reallocation.
Here’s where everything comes together. Your wealth management team will develop a clear, customized financial plan designed to move you from where you are to where you want to be.
This plan may include:
You’ll also have the opportunity to ask questions, refine the strategy, and ensure every recommendation aligns with your goals. This is not a one-size-fits-all plan—it’s built specifically for your current financial situation and future goals. It’s also fluid, growing and changing with you.
Next, the execution phase begins. Your advisor will coordinate with in-house specialists as well as outside help—estate attorneys, CPAs, insurance providers—to bring your plan to life. Implementation may involve:
Throughout this process, your advisor serves as the quarterback—overseeing execution and ensuring every step is taken with precision, transparency, and timeliness.
Pro tip: if your advisor is simply recommending these strategies and ideas but doesn’t have the ability to execute them for you, that’s a sign you’ve outgrown your advisor and should consider a switch.
At Plancorp, we have a deep bench of expertise to pull in when complexities arise, and we proactively partner with our clients’ other pros, like CPAs and attorneys, to bring together and execute a holistic strategy.
The planning process doesn’t end once your plan is implemented. Ongoing monitoring ensures your strategy evolves as your life changes. Your advisor will:
This is where a true fiduciary partner adds lasting value—proactively managing your plan, identifying opportunities, and serving as a long-term sounding board for your most important financial decisions.
As your plan evolves, is your advisor reactive and seemingly making trades just to look busy, or are they setting and sticking to a long-term strategy they can back up with data?
With your financial plan in place and implementation underway, the final piece of the puzzle is understanding how your ongoing relationship with a wealth management firm will function.
A formal agreement outlines the services, expectations, and support you’ll receive—ensuring transparency, accountability, and alignment as your financial journey continues. Here’s what you can expect from a professional wealth management agreement.
For an inside look at what it’s like to work with Plancorp, download our New Client Guide. Inside, you can take a no-obligation look into our integrated services, highly rated client experience, and trusted fee-only model that puts you first.
If you’ve accumulated significant assets, or your financial life has become too complex to manage confidently on your own, it may be time to bring in a trusted wealth manager.
The right wealth management team can provide peace of mind, clarity, and a disciplined approach to growing and protecting your wealth.
You may benefit from working with a wealth manager if:
Your financial future deserves more than a reactive or transactional approach. At Plancorp, we’ve been helping high-net-worth individuals navigate the full spectrum of financial services for more than 40 years.
If you’re ready to take the first step in the wealth management process, schedule a strategy session with our team.
Not quite ready to talk? Take our 2-minute financial analysis to uncover opportunities you may be missing.