OUR STORY: Over 20 years ago, dissatisfied by the financial planning landscape of that time, David Carter, founder of Carter Capital Management, left a major Wall Street firm to start this venture with a vision and a conviction that there must be a better way to serve and help clients navigate their way toward retirement and financial independence.

This was a time when the financial services industry was facing significant turmoil and struggling to change from archaic high-fee, biased commissioned-based advice and conflicting investment banking relationships to more transparent and objective relationships with their clients. In many ways, over twenty years later, the struggle continues.

His vision was highly uncertain for the financial planning landscape of that time. Armed only with conviction, he set off to build a firm built of four fundamental changes to the financial planning relationship, all of which conflicted with the customary financial planning relationship of that time.

Over 20 years later, our firm persists providing independent and objective financial advice, fee-only transparency, fiduciary care and a focus on low-cost investing. What was once a question, has now been answered and we look forward to leading the industry in the future with the same conviction we started with.

 

 

 

AN INDEPENDENT FINANCIAL PLANNING FIRM: Your financial advisor should be independent of the custodian. The standard business model of investment custodians, then and today, requires the need for a house-employed advisor to drive and maintain the custodial relationship. Unfortunately, the myriad of investment options available to investors in today's complex investment environment are multifaceted and confusing, are so are the expenses and profitability those investments provide to the custodian. People need to know the financial advice they are receiving is objective and independent.

FEE-ONLY ADVISOR: The client/advisor compensation arrangement should be fee-only. "Fee-only" means that your advisor receives no other compensation other than the fee you pay them. Commission arrangements contribute to a clear and inherent conflict of interest. The fee-based arrangement, not to be confused with "fee-only," create conflicts due to its hybrid of commission and fee arrangement. We believe it's important to remove compensation, monetary or other, that might cloud the client/advisor relationship. When you are sitting across the table from a fee-only advisor, you should be comforted to know your advisor is free of material conflicts of interest.

FIDUCIARY CARE: Your advisor should provide you advice with a fiduciary standard of care. A fiduciary advisor gives advice with the client's best interest in mind. It is the highest level of care between the client and the advisor, compared to the suitability standard of your typical brokerage firm.

INDEX FUND-FOCUSED INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT: Investment expense is one of the most important drivers of investment performance. Using low-fee index funds to get exposure to investments has proven to be one of the most valuable and efficient ways to invest in the financial markets. The usage of index funds has exploded since it became integral to our investment philosophy over 20 years ago. It felt pioneering at the time when we chose to focus our investment philosophy behind the usage of index funds at a time when there were deep questions about incorporating their usage in the business models of financial planning firms back then. It turns out, incorporating index funds has become an integral part of thousands of financial planner's investment philosophies across the country today. We'd like to believe we were one of the first.