Welcome to Equilibrium Wealth Advisors

Hi, my name is Matt Blocki, CEO and founder of Equilibrium Wealth Advisors. We welcome you with open arms to our firm and can’t wait to serve you for many years. This firm was started as an RAA about four years ago, and we started this firm to best serve all of our clients from a financial planning and holistic advice capacity. We operate as fiduciaries directly overseen by the SEC. That just simply means that we never take commissions. We charge a flat, transparent fee, and all of our advice, from a legal standpoint, has to be in our clients best interest at all times. Let’s jump into the first ten steps. As an EWA client, the first step is just to get an agreed list of recommendations. This oftentimes gets calibrated. So what accounts are we consolidating? There may be Roth conversions, move tax implications, et cetera.

Your advisor will be very clear and make sure to be extra communicative in what we’re doing upfront, and then what we’re going to discuss in the future. The second step is calling or sending you a secure link to our e money vault. This info that we need is going to be everything from date of birth, Social Security numbers, everything that we need to open accounts at the custodian of either fidelity or Charles Schwab, at which point our team will then be able to prepare everything in one streamlined docusign system. Third step is sending you the transfer paperwork and the consolidation paperwork to get all the accounts open. This will be through a docusign. Typically, this is going to be one set per spouse. And just remember, when you are going into the docusign, there’s going to be a couple of security questions.

Don’t overthink those. There’s going to be a multiple choice just to verify your security. Did you own this car? If you didn’t, just say none of the above. A lot of times we see people get tripped up because they overthink these. Just trust your gut and go. That’ll get you right in. After these are signed, we’re required to send disclosures we sent within 30 days of you onboarding. As a new client, we send these right away. The disclosures are what’s referred to as an AdV. This is also accessible straight through the SEC website. This gives you the background of our firm, fee structure, et cetera. This also will give you backgrounds on all control persons of EWA as well. So the SEC does extreme due diligence on every ra that exists.

That’s why legally, we’re held to a fiduciary standard, keeping our clients best interest at all times that we’re in operations. The fifth thing is the accounts are now open. Let’s just use Fidelity as a sample. The fifth call will be your advisor to go in and get you accustomed to two platforms. One will be Fidelity’s platform. This is where the money is actually held. As an example, it could be Charles Schwab as well. We’ll go in and nickname the accounts. We’ll sign a householding form. So if you’re married, you’re able to see your spouse’s accounts, and your spouse is able to see your accounts. We’ll get everything categorized into retirement, what’s a brokerage account, what’s for college, et cetera. So when you log in, it’s a very clear picture.

We will also elect into settings such as paperless settings, and then we’ll also get you set up with our Emoney platform. And Emoney is a financial planning software we’ll use that you’ll get very accustomed to during our financial planning reviews. Outside accounts will be able to aggregate in, so we’ll create an entire balance sheet for you which will include all assets, such as your houses, 401 ks, which may not be held at EWA, et cetera. This is also a live linking system and where we can securely share information in the future as well. Every quarter, you do have the option of asking us to turn the fidelity performance reporting on. We have a very good technology that we’ve invested in that we can run a performance report of every account that you hold.

It’s able to aggregate in outside 401 ks accounts that we hold directly at Fidelity. If you have accounts at other platforms as well, and that we will run that report every quarter, along with give you detailed market commentary every quarter as well. Because of that, our default setting is to have the fidelity performance off, and this is the most accurate rate of return calculation always net of fees. So your true rate of return, net of fees, will be part of this report and sent to you on a quarterly basis. This is also available to you at any time. So you can email us asking us for this report, and we’ll email it right back to you. Also in there, your advisor will ask for your preferences just as a client as well.

How often do you want communicated to and how can we best serve you? The 6th step will be receiving a welcome box. So in this welcome box, highly recommend. Read. It’s a book called Simple Wealth, Inevitable wealth. It really outlines the core principles of investment philosophy that EWA follows. Definitely a must read if you have the time, highly recommend it. The 7th thing, while this is all happening, everything that we transfer it by now, the consolidation process will be well on track and everything will transfer in kind. If you have iras or brokerage accounts, the reason for that is we want to evaluate any tax ramifications in a brokerage account, for example, any fees we’ll fully cover if there is a fee, to transfer accounts from a different custodian.

And then typically if you have old money in a we’re rolling over, that’s that check that will be mailed to you or directly to us, and then we need to get that into the account within 60 days, ideally as quickly as possible. The 8th step is just simply our promise to you. We have the slogan of our three c’s, one being a catalyst. So we believe that the only non renewable resource I mentioned is your time. So we want to be a catalyst into making sure you have the best use of your time and your money is simply a support system for you to live your life. By design, that’ll mean ongoing tough discussions of making sure that at any point you look back at life without regret or minimizing regret.

So we’re making sure that you are maximizing life decisions and financial security in the future. The second thing is CFO, so we believe you’re the CEO. Ultimately you’re going to call the shots to save your time. Delegating to our team is going to be the importance. We want to take all the tasks that we can off your plate. From a financial planning perspective, that’s going to be everything from actual trading your portfolio, rebalancing, tax loss harvesting, to executing if it’s paying your kids college tuition, if it’s sending you a paycheck every month, if you’re retired, whatever that is. That’s our job as a CFO. And then also part of our job is reporting to you as the CEO as your life changes, making sure that we’re calibrating your financial plan to accommodate your life changes and your goals.

And then the third thing is our standard is concierge service. If you text us, if you call us, if you email us, just expect a very quick and thoughtful response within 48 hours. We have the highest standards. We want to provide you with the best experience possible on an ongoing basis. So those are the three C’s that we promise to you as a client, and welcome your feedback if you ever feel that anything needs improved. We are huge believers in feedback and welcome it with open arms. The 9th step is communication. So we are very proactive in how we communicate. We’ll put you on our weekly newsletter. In this newsletter, we film an educational podcast, typically tackling advanced topics. Sometimes it’s interviewing existing clients as well as we can all learn from each other’s perspective.

Also in this weekly newsletter, there will be a market commentary and some other useful resources as well. On a quarterly basis, we run the performance reports, and we also will give you detailed rationale of investment moves that we’re making, rebalancing, tactical allocations, et cetera. So look forward to seeing those in your email. The 10th step is just to know that we’ll be reaching out to you at least twice a year to do a very thorough financial planning review just to update life changes. What do we need to address from a money perspective? But please know I found that the best value we can provide you as a client is to be there when something pops up. So if something ever pops up in between these financial planning reviews, reach out to us.

Our job is to reduce your decision fatigue and a lot of times just affirm big decisions. We’re that sounding board. If you’re making a huge life decision, or if we’re veering paths in any way, we’re happy to provide our insights, expertise, and just education on pros and cons of what the outcomes of the decision may be. So reach out anytime and know you are never on the clock with us.