My client was concerned about the fees they were paying for their third-party administrator (TPA) on their retirement plan, which is a defined benefit, 401k with profit sharing.  We originally designed this plan to enable the business owner to tax-defer than the $46,000 allowed by traditional profit sharing plans.

His primary concerns now were:

• What are all the fees that I'm paying?
• This is adding up to a thousands of dollars per year - are these fees reasonable?
• Is my TPA competitive on pricing?
• How do the invoices I received reconcile against the expenses?

After reconciling the invoices against the fee schedule I was able to sort out all of the expenses.  At the same time, I obtained quotes from other TPA's so I could benchmark the fees.  Another reputable TPA was significanly lower in price so I scheduled a site visit to conduct due diligence.

We found that not only was this TPA lower in price, but they have a well-run operation.  The client decided to move to this new TPA, offering the same services at significantly lower cost.

A new client was referred to us by an estate planning attorney because he inherited some money and had many concerns.  Step 1 in our financial planning process is our Discovery Meeting where we identify the client's most meaningful priorities.  Those priorities were:

• I need to fund college educations for my two children.
• Can I afford to keep my second home in Lake Tahoe? 
• Will I have enough to retire in two years?

As we started to gather facts in our Discovery Meeting, other questions came up.

• Should I pay off the mortgage on my second home?  If so, when?
• My 401k account value was hit hard last year so I switched to conservative investments.  What should I do now?
• What is the best way to invest?
• What are the proper beneficiary designations and titling requirements for my trust accounts.

After a few weeks of number crunching we presented the results of the analysis to the client.  It showed that based on the assumptions today it looked like he indeed could pay for the college educations of his children while keeping the second home at Lake Tahoe.

We then setup his personal website so he could track his progress toward his goals and view his personal financial statements with updated account values online.