Business Planning

Whether you’re thinking about launching a new business or hoping to expand an existing one, we can help you create, grow and protect your business’s value with comprehensive business planning services.

We’ll work with you to develop a personalized financial plan with solutions designed to meet the unique needs of your business, with strategies to:

• Integrate all aspects of financial planning for your business and your personal life to ensure success on both fronts.
• Minimize risk by being prepared for the unexpected.
• Safeguard your business with coverage to help offset the loss of cash flow if you become sick or hurt.
• Recruit and retain employees with competitive benefits programs.
• Enhance your benefits programs to reward employees who are key to the success of your business.
• Transition your business smoothly with a properly designed and funded business succession plan.

Executive Benefits Planning

We can help you design an executive benefits package that provides additional compensation to selected employees, which may include:

• A supplemental executive retirement plan that allows you to promise to pay additional income to yourself or your key employees at a later date, which is usually retirement.

• An executive deferred compensation plan that allows you or your key employees to forgo receipt of a portion of current income until a later date, which is usually retirement.

• Bonus plans that provide you or your key employees with additional income that can be used to purchase insurance, annuity or investment products.

Financial Planning

If you live for it, we’ll help you plan for it.

Our version of financial planning isn’t just a plan for your money, it’s a plan for your life. That’s because my team and I start with you—your life, your family, and your priorities. Then we tailor your unique plan from a range of financial options using multiple strategies designed specifically to help you reach your goals.

What you get with a plan from Northwestern Mutual

Financial strategies tailored to your life

You’ll have multiple strategies within your plan, built from financial options specifically selected to help you reach the goals you have for right now and later on.

A wide range of financial options

Get access to more financial options designed to reinforce each other so your plan can work its hardest for you, including investments for growth, insurance for protection, and annuities for help with income in retirement.

Your go-to financial expert to guide you

Your advisor listens to what’s important for you to do today and down the road and designs a plan, with personalized recommendations tailored to your life, to help make it happen.

The flexibility to pivot as your priorities change

When your priorities shift throughout your life, we’ll work with you to shift the strategies in your plan. So your plan stays flexible, and you stay on track to meet goal after goal.

A real-time digital plan personalized to you

You’ll see where you are today and how you’re doing over time, tracking your goals to reveal the progress you’ve made, any gaps you might have, and any opportunities we find.

The confidence to know you can live the life you’ve always wanted

Because your financial plan is based on your priorities, it’s uniquely designed to help you do the things you’ve been dreaming of. So you’ll always know you can.

Employee Benefits Planning

One of the biggest challenges faced by business owners today is the need to recruit, retain and reward talented employees. Good benefits planning can help you get the top talent.

Employee Benefits

We can help you design a quality, affordable benefit plan that may include features such as:

• Group health insurance
• Group life insurance
• Group disability income insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Flexible spending accounts
• Qualified retirement plans such as SEP IRA or 401(k) plans

Group health services are offered through an independently owned and operated company, which offers access to comprehensive employee benefit services and is not affiliated with, nor a subsidiary of The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company.

Risk Management Solutions

When your financial plan includes wealth protection and risk management, you'll be helping to ensure your family — and your vision for the future — is secure.

We'll work with you to develop strategies to:

• Provide for your family in the event of death.

  Life insurance policies can be designed with different needs in mind. They can provide temporary protection, cash accumulation or may be utilized as part of an estate plan. Through our association with Northwestern Mutual, we have access to Northwestern Mutual's high-quality, competitively priced life insurance products, including permanent, term, combination and variable policies.

• Provide for you and your family in the event of a disability.

  Disability income insurance helps to protect your most valuable asset, your ability to earn an income. But what if the unexpected happened and you suddenly weren’t able to earn a living because of illness or injury? Not only would you have the stress of meeting everyday living expenses, but you might also have to put other goals, like saving for a child's college or for retirement, on hold.

• Provide for long-term care.

  Long-term Care events can have a significant impact on your financial security. Planning for long-term care events can help provide options on how to fund and receive care, should you need it.

Qualified Planning

• Qualified Benchmarking

  Understanding how your retirement plan compares to industry benchmarks for expenses, performance and design is not only a good business practice, it is becoming a regulatory expectation. Based on our experience and industry resources, we will provide you with comparative data to document a sound due diligence process.

• Qualified Design Assistance

  Sponsoring a qualified plan is a critically important step toward achieving retirement security for you and your employees. Choosing the right plan design elements will allow you to balance your goals for tax deferred wealth accumulation with the cost and complexity involved. Together with our plan specialists, we will help you to evaluate multiple plan design options and understand the impact they will have on you, your employees and the bottom line.

• Qualified Employee Education

  Qualified plan benefits are most effective when they are thoroughly understood and properly utilized by plan participants. Quality benefits education is not a one-time event but rather a long term program to build awareness, understanding and appreciation. we will work with you to develop and deliver a comprehensive education plan across multiple media to help produce positive results.

• Qualified Fiduciary Education

  As a retirement plan sponsor you face a sometimes bewildering array of regulations and responsibilities. It is important to find a source of trustworthy information to help you to manage your responsibilities and mitigate the associated risks. Let us help you to understand your options to develop an approach that works for you and your plan.

Estate Planning

Most people associate the phrase "estate planning" with having a will – a legal document that names your beneficiaries and spells out who gets what when you die. And while the transfer of your assets is an important part of estate planning, a will or a trust is just one aspect of a broader estate planning strategy to ensure your wishes are known, honored and carried out as efficiently as possible when you're no longer able to articulate them.

We work with a team of estate planning experts at Northwestern Mutual. Together, we can help you develop an estate planning strategy that may include the following:

• A strategy to help reduce or eliminate gift/estate taxes for your heirs
• A plan to protect your estate from mismanagement or from claims of creditors or ex-spouses

 

In addition to the expertise our team can offer, you'll want to work with an estate-planning attorney to establish:

• Health care directives and a living will that specify the extent to which you want health care professionals to treat you if you become ill or incapacitated.
• Powers of attorney that grant people you trust the legal authority to act on your behalf in case of sudden accident or illness.
• A will or trust to ensure your assets are transferred according to your wishes. And Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company can serve as trustee, co-trustee or successor trustee in a wide range of situations.
• The naming of a legal guardian for children under the age of 18.

Long-Term Care Planning

Most people hope to enjoy a long and healthy life as long as it’s on their own terms, which likely includes the desire to live as independently as possible. But life doesn’t always happen according to plan.

An unexpected accident, illness or injury can profoundly change your life — sometimes suddenly. And if it does, you may find yourself needing help with the tasks of everyday living.

Long-term care planning may be one of the most important steps you can take to ensure the future financial security of you and your family.