4 Ways a Fee-Only Advisor in New Haven Can Help Build Wealth

You’ve spent years accumulating personal wealth so that you may have over $1 million in retirement and non-retirement savings today. After four decades of work, your retirement date is finally getting close. Maybe it’s two years away. Maybe five. Either way, you’re starting to think seriously about how your different sources of retirement income will support you when the paychecks stop.

Then, without much warning, the stock market suddenly plunges steeply. Who knows how long the decline will last or how long it will take to recover? This is unsettling because your retirement date is so close. All of your retirement plans are up in the air until you have a better idea of how this event will impact your plans for a comfortable, secure retirement. 

This is when many higher-net-worth individuals and couples reevaluate whether they have been getting during periods of stock market volatility: 

• Is your retirement plan built to handle volatility?
• How resilient is your current plan? 
• Is your current strategy tax-efficient?
• Is your advisor providing proactive advice or just reacting after the fact? 

That’s where working with a fee-only financial advisor in New Haven can make a significant difference. A fiduciary advisor, who doesn’t sell investment products to generate commissions, can help you focus on pursuing your long-term financial goals and provide you with strategies that help you accumulate and preserve retirement assets more efficiently.

Your biggest financial risk is not the stock market’s volatility. It’s failing to pursue your long-term financial goals, such as a secure retirement for the rest of your life.

Here are four key ways they help build and protect wealth in rising, falling, and flat securities markets:

1. Designing tax-efficient strategies that make the most of both up and down markets
2. Adjusting your portfolio to fit your retirement timeline and risk tolerance
3. Building a financial plan that helps you adjust to life and market changes
4. Providing objective, commission-free advice focused on your long-term success.

When market volatility tests your retirement plan, having the right advisor can help you stay grounded and keep your wealth working for you in various market conditions.

1. Tax-Smart Investment Strategies for Up and Down Markets

Using tax-efficient investment strategies is one of the most overlooked ways to boost your net returns in volatile markets. Here are four of the top tax-efficient investment strategies that can help protect your principal, especially important for high-net-worth investors nearing or recently retired:

Municipal Bonds (Munis):

• Why it protects principal: High-quality municipal bonds, especially those issued by stable state or local governments, tend to be relatively low-risk.
• Tax benefit: Interest income is typically exempt from federal taxes, and often from state and local taxes if you live in the issuing state. This makes munis attractive for preserving capital while generating tax-free income. 

Tax-Managed Funds and ETFs:

• Why it protects principal: These funds are designed for lower turnover and improved tax efficiency, which reduces your exposure to capital gains taxes.
• Tax benefit: These funds aim to minimize distributions, meaning fewer taxable events occur each year, so more of your principal stays invested and working for you.

Asset Location Strategy:

• Why it protects principal: Properly placing income-generating or tax-inefficient investments inside tax-advantaged accounts (like IRAs) can help reduce your annual tax liabilities.
• Tax benefit: Keeping high-growth or higher-tax investments in accounts sheltered from current taxation helps improve long-term returns. Meanwhile, placing tax-efficient investments (like index funds or ETFs) in taxable accounts can help improve returns by reducing taxable events.

Tax-Loss Harvesting:

• Why it protects principal: While it doesn’t prevent losses, tax-loss harvesting helps you make those losses work for you by strategically capturing them and using them to offset gains on the sale of appreciated assets without changing your overall investment approach.
• Tax benefit: Selling underperforming investments to realize a loss can offset capital gains and reduce taxable income. Unused losses can be carried forward to future years, keeping more of your money invested and compounding over time.
  

The services of a New Haven AIF® (Accredited Investment Fiduciary) advisor shouldn’t be solely focused on performance; they should also focus on preserving as much principal after taxes as possible.

2. Adjustments you can make to your portfolio to fit your retirement timeline and risk tolerance

Here are three strategic portfolio adjustments that help align your investments with your retirement timeline and current tolerance for risk that declines over time.

Shift from Growth to More Income-Oriented Investments:

• Why it fits your retirement timeline: When you retire, preserving principal and generating after-tax income become more important than chasing higher returns. 
• Benefit: Income-producing investments like higher dividend-paying stocks, municipal bonds, or short-duration bond funds can provide steady cash flow while helping reduce your exposure to excess volatility.

Increase Allocation to Lower-Volatility Assets:

• Why it fits your risk tolerance: Reducing exposure to higher-risk investments, such as small capitalization growth stocks, helps limit sharp declines that can be harder to recover from when retirement is close or you are recently retired. 
• Benefit: Adding cash equivalents, short-term bonds, dividend-paying blue chip stocks, and other lower-risk investments can help create a buffer against market volatility while keeping part of your portfolio invested for long-term growth. 

Build a “Bucket Strategy” for Withdrawals:

• Why it fits your retirement timeline: Structuring your portfolio into time-based buckets (short, mid, and long-term) helps match your investments with when you’ll need the money.
• Benefit: The short-term bucket holds more conservative investments for near-term withdrawals, while long-term assets stay invested for principal growth. This helps reduce the need to sell stocks during downturns while protecting your long-term financial security.

Watch our founder, Paul Schatz, discuss tariffs.

3. Building a Financial Plan That Can Help You Adjust to Life and Market Changes

Build a Financial Plan That Adapts with You:

• Why it matters: Life rarely follows a straight line, and neither do the markets. Whether it’s a job change, a health issue, a market downturn, or a significant life event like divorce or the loss of a spouse, your financial plan should be adaptable enough to handle expected and unexpected change.
• Benefit: A dynamic, well-structured financial plan helps you respond to change without derailing the pursuit of your long-term financial goals. It can guide changes to spending, investments, tax strategies, and income needs so you’re not making rash decisions when markets are volatile and emotions impact your financial decisions.

Revisit and Update Your Plan Regularly:

• Why it matters: A plan built even one year ago may not reflect today’s priorities, market conditions, or tax policies.
• Benefit: Regular reviews with a fiduciary advisor help you refine projections, reassess goals, and make timely updates to investment strategies, helping you stay on track even when life throws curveballs.

This is where timely planning becomes essential. Whether you’re approaching retirement or facing a life transition, a fee-only financial advisor can help you reassess your cash flow, income strategy, and retirement goals. The right team can review your tax exposure, insurance coverages, and estate documents to ensure everything aligns with your current goals and circumstances.

If you’re considering switching financial advisors, this is often when many realize their current advisor isn’t providing the level of attention or timely, holistic advice they need to pursue their financial goals. Volatile times call for responsive, thoughtful planning, not a once-a-year review with a few generic recommendations.

4. Objective Advice: Not Sales Pitches

In unpredictable markets, it’s easy to fall prey to sales-driven recommendations disguised as “solutions” based on vague commitments. When this happens, investors have to make a decision about changing financial advisors.

Your best solution is a fee-only financial advisor in New Haven, CT, who is a true fiduciary. That means the advisor is legally obligated to act in your best interest. Because they don’t earn commissions, they don’t have any incentive to push specific investment or insurance products.

This objectivity becomes critical in times of uncertainty. Your advisor should be your advocate, helping you cut through noise, evaluate high-quality investment opportunities, and stay focused on pursuing your long-term goals. This includes transparency about fees, performance expectations, and potential risks.

If you’re working with someone who doesn’t meet these standards or feels anxious rather than informed, it might be time to consider changing financial advisors.

Heritage Capital was built with this level of care and accountability in mind. We work with individuals and families who want more than investment advice; they want a partner who helps align their financial lives with the changes that matter. 

Let’s talk if you’re in New Haven or anywhere in Connecticut and looking for a fresh perspective on retirement planning, wealth management, and the quality of your current advice.