You insure the house. Your portfolio is worth more.
You insure your home. Your car. Your medical expenses. You do it because one bad event can wipe you out.
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Then most people leave the largest asset they own completely uncovered.
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For the families we work with, their portfolio is usually worth more than the house. It's the thing that has to pay for the next three decades. We use listed options to protect the portfolio you have spent a lifetime building.
WHAT WE DO
Financial Planning
Every journey should start with a plan. And every time a new chapter starts, two things change: your time and your money.
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Retirement, a business sale, a death in the family, kids finishing school. The plan isn't a binder you build once. It's the thing you revisit each time the ground moves.
Asset Management
Nobody minds risk on the ride up. It's only on the descent that people realize how much risk they've been taking.
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Our job is to smooth out the peaks and valleys, using a core portfolio of stocks and ETFs with an option overlay on top. Not to predict the market. To decide in advance what happens if we're wrong.
Who We Work With
We work with a limited number of families, most of them within ten years of retirement or already there. They've done the hard part. They've accumulated. What they want now is to enjoy life and not worry about undoing years of hard work.
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We're probably a good fit if you:
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Have built most of what you'll ever build
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Would rather give up some upside than live through another 2008
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Want to outsource the stress of the day-to-day management of your portfolio
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Would rather talk to the person managing your money than to a call center
We're probably not a fit if you:
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Can sleep through a 40% decline and want every point of the upside
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Are looking for the highest possible return, or the next hot thing
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Want someone who will tell you what you want to hear
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We'll say so in the first conversation if it isn't a match. That's a better outcome for both of us than finding out in year three.
How it works
One. The Destination
Where are you actually trying to go, and what does it cost?
Two. The Requirement
What return does that destination actually require? It's usually lower than people assume.
Three. Minimum Risk
What is the minimum amount of risk you need to take to get you to your destination? Why take more risk than your own goals require?
Most of what we do is closing the gap between the return you need and the risk you're willing to take to get you to your destination.
Who you will work with
Tim Smith
Halena Shinn
President
Client Liaison
Tim started Fairway in 2007, after ten years at Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney and Wachovia. He left because he thought he could do better for clients working for them instead of for a firm's sales targets.
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Nearly thirty years and more than 500 families later, that's still the arrangement.
Halena joined Fairway in 2009 from Advent Software. She handles onboarding, Schwab paperwork, and the details that matter but are easy to miss, like reminding you when a required distribution is due.
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Nothing slips past her.
The Firm
Fairway Asset Management, Inc. is an independent, fee-based registered investment adviser founded in 2007. We are a fiduciary. Client assets are custodied at Charles Schwab.
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We keep the practice small on purpose. Every client works directly with Tim.
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We have offices in San Ramon and San Clemente. We love meeting clients face to face, but we have clients across the country and are more than happy to meet remotely.
