Why should I hire a financial planner?  

A financial advisor can help increase your chances to meet your financial goals, through proper portfolio construction, financial planning and counseling.  Additionally, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNING PROFESSIONALS™, like myself, are well suited to handle the more complex financial situations one might face.  

What makes you different than other managers? 

Expertise:  In addition to being a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNING PROFESSIONAL™ with over ten years in the financial services industry, I’ve advised and worked with clients during some of the most challenging periods like The Great Recession.

Fee-only:  Our objective is to create long term relationships and in doing so, offer you advice that serves your best interest vs. commission-based products that may not fit your needs.

Transparency:  Our firm must file a Form ADV with the Securities and Exchanges Commission describing how we do business and how we are compensated.  

Third Party Custodian:  We house all of our clients' assets at a third party custodian.  This process increases checks and balances between our firm and the custodian.  We offer well recognized custodians with branch offices located across the country.  

Technology:  We leverage the newest technology to ensure ease of access to your information 24/7.

Do I need to have a minimum investment amount to work with you? 

No account minimums.  We believe everyone should have access to financial planning, not just a select few. 

How much do you cost? 

Our retainer model costs less than many gym memberships.  Please call for pricing details.   

If I'm ready to get started what is the process? 

The first step is to contact us, to begin the discovery part of the process. During this call we will explain what we do in more detail and schedule further discussions to better understand your dreams and aspirations.  Once you become a client we will start the organization phase, pulling all the relevant information together and review your goals and objectives.  Next we’ll move to the financial planning phase, where we will discuss the strategy and our findings.    

Life doesn't stop after the financial plan and neither do we.  We will continue to monitor the plan, check off milestones, and have follow up calls to discuss how you are tracking towards your goals.   

How do I know I can trust your firm and what credentials should I look for? 

Trust is earned over time and we want to make sure you are comfortable with the process.  If you are not ready to start with an ongoing engagement, you can start with just the comprehensive plan.  Then, once you are more comfortable you can move to ongoing planning or investment management.  

When working with a professional look for credentials specific to the service you require. CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNING PROFESSIONAL™ (CFP®) designation means the individual you are working with has a good foundation of coursework, experience and has passed a rigorous exam to test competency in financial planning. David Barson of Barson Financial Planning, is a designated CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNING PROFESSIONAL™.

How do you get compensated?

Since we are "fee-only" we do not earn commissions nor do we receive referral fees of any kind.  Because I don’t earn commissions or referral fees, it allows me to be more objective when recommending a particular investment, insurance policy, or CPA/estate lawyer. We get paid either a percent of the assets we manage or retainer for services rendered.  You can instruct us to pull fees from your account, pay with a credit card, or send us a check whichever you prefer.       

What is your investment philosophy?

We believe that markets are efficient at pricing in new information.  What this means is that it is very difficult to profit by making a trade today based on information you have recently seen or read.    

We believe market timing or looking for inefficiently priced securities has limited success.  A better strategy in our opinion is to build globally diversified, low cost, portfolios which are based on client's goals, objectives and risk profiles.