Financial Planning

Life Insurance Planning

You work hard to give your loved ones every advantage. But would your family have the financial resources to maintain its lifestyle if you died?

While nothing can replace you, a life insurance policy can help ensure that your loved ones have the financial security necessary to live out their dreams. Life insurance benefits can help:

• Pay the mortgage or any other debt.
• Maintain your family’s standard of living.
• Keep your children in their current school and fund college.
• Pay for final expenses.
• Leave a legacy.

Life insurance can also be more than a safety net. Depending on the type of life insurance, it can also be the foundation for a sound financial strategy. With permanent life insurance, for example, as you pay premiums, the policy accumulates cash value that grows tax deferred and can become a source of funding you can utilize to help meet your financial goals.*

That’s in contrast to term life insurance, which does not build cash value but is one of the more affordable types of insurance you can buy.

If you’re a business owner, offering life insurance as part of a comprehensive benefits package will help to recruit and retain valuable employees and give them the financial security they need while contributing to the success of your business.

Life insurance can also minimize the financial impact felt by the death of a key contributor to your business. Its proceeds or cash value can be used to cover the potential loss of business or recruit a successor.

*Utilizing cash value through policy loans, surrenders, or cash withdrawals will reduce the death benefit; and may necessitate greater outlay than anticipated and/or result in an unexpected taxable event.

Investment Strategies

Your goal to achieve financial security will undoubtedly include investing for your future.

We can offer you the expertise you need to ensure your investment strategies are aligned with your goals, time horizon and tolerance for risk.

Northwestern Mutual offers investment advisory services, private client services and trust services. Within these levels of service, we may recommend that your portfolio include one or more of the following investment tools.

• Signature Choice is an investment advisory program that allows your wealth management advisor to provide advice concerning asset allocation, security selection and rebalancing. Your advisor can utilize a wide range of securities including mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and individual equity and fixed income investments to help implement your investment strategy.

• Signature Managed Accounts is an investment advisory program that utilizes third party asset management and portfolio manager selection to assist in providing you with a comprehensive investment solution.

• Signature Portfolios is an investment advisory program that utilizes select mutual funds and/or exchange traded funds to construct well-diversified portfolios for your needs.

• Signature Annuities is an investment advisory solution that utilizes investment options available within the NM Select^TM Variable Annuity to construct, comprehensive, well-diversified investment portfolios for your needs.

We also have access to offer you the following products and services through Northwestern Mutual Investment Services, LLC (NMIS):

• Bonds
• Cash management services
• CDs
• Money market funds
• Mutual funds
• Stocks
• Treasury bills
• UITs

Wealth Management

Our wealth management services go above and beyond what you might expect from a financial services provider. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company offers:

Investment advisory services, designed to:

• Provide high-quality investment services and products.
• Build and monitor diversified portfolios.
• Develop objective, personalized plans.
• Focus on long-term results.

Trust services and partnerships, designed to:

• Provide continuity of stewardship that can last multiple generations.
• Preserve family harmony when carrying out your intentions.
• Carry out detailed record-keeping and accounting.
• Calculate taxes and file returns.

Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company serves as trustee on Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts. In addition, through our Trust Alliance Program, we partner with nationally-recognized trust administration firms that offer a broad range of services to revocable trusts, charitable trusts, endowments and foundations.

Online access to your account, so you can review:

• Comprehensive monthly statements.
• Performance reporting.
• Account access on a secure website.
• Current account balances on your investment holdings.
• Detailed transaction records on all accounts.

Fee-Based Financial Planning

When you want a financial plan developed with your goals and interests put above all else, it’s a good time to engage a fee-based financial planner.

Fee-based financial planners design unique personal financial plans and are compensated for their time and expertise. Under this fee structure, the planner is a fiduciary and has a legal and moral responsibility to place your interests first.

Of course, your planner’s role goes beyond just providing expert guidance in the creation of your financial plan. A fee-based planner can also help you with the implementation of your plan through a combination of appropriate and innovative insurance, brokerage, advisory and/or private client platform solutions.

In the end, your planner is paid to work with you to make sure your financial needs are met with care, with expertise and with an understanding of your unique circumstances and individual goals. Together, you will agree on the appropriate fee structure based upon those needs and the specific services required.

Making great decisions about your wealth, whether you are deciding to grow it, protect it or both, starts with sound thinking – thinking that makes sense. Here’s how our thinking starts when it comes to helping you make important financial decisions.

The Planning Process

With financial independence, family legacy and social capital solutions in place, wealth optimization becomes the focus of the planning process. Your planner will use a unique and disciplined values-based approach to help you make wise choices and to help ensure that your plan is focusing on what you value.

The planning process consists of four quadrants or phases, each one representing one planning cycle: Discovery, Creative Solutions, Strategy Deployment, and Results Management.

1. Discovery: Identify and think about the problem. The first phase begins by thinking clearly about the problem. This is called the Discovery phase, and this is where clarity on your goals is achieved and planning gaps are identified.
2. Creative Solutions: Think about the solution. The second phase is the Creative Solutions phase, in which you think clearly about the solutions and make decisions regarding closing the planning gaps.
3. Strategy Deployment: Implement the solution. The third phase is the Strategy Deployment phase, in which you implement the solution that helps you achieve your desired results.
4. Results Management: Manage the results. The final phase is the Results Management phase; we establish a plan to manage and implement the results. This assures that you have confidence your plan will work over time.

Working with a knowledgeable and experienced planner who has access to current technologies and a thorough understanding of tax rules and financial planning techniques is important. Working with an advisor who takes the time to understand your unique desires and goals is critical.

Your planner will take the time to help you make that assessment, develop a plan that works for you and provide you with the tools and strategies necessary to successfully implement that plan.

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.