A Message From Carol
helping clients succeed financially:
I help clients pursue their investment goals with sound financial strategies. You deserve a personal, tailored plan. Lasting, meaningful and open relationships are the foundation of my practice. You've worked hard for your money and should feel confident with your investment choices as you make decisions for your financial future. Whether you’re in the early stages of building wealth or facing complex retirement- or estate-planning choices later in life, I’m ready and equipped to help you.
Chris Wigington
Advisory Solutions Director
Katie Mohan
Marketing Manager
Tamekia Thompson
Operations Director
Yurij Szelewycz
Supervisory Principal
A look into our practice
It's natural-and wise -to re-examine your financial outlook after an unexpected or game-changing life event. Or to hear life's clock ticking and feel the urgency to plan more deliberately to meet your most cherished goals. As your Financial Advisor we can provide guidance on your short and long term financial goals. We can also help you create, monitor and manage an investment portfolio geared to your specific situation.
· Carol Scatolini, CFP ®, Wealth Manager
Why Invest With Us
WE USE A GOALS-BASED PLANNING PROCESS CALLED ENVISION®
This process is refreshingly realistic, innovative and easy to understand.
FINANCIAL PLANNING IS THE HEART OF WHAT WE DO
We strive to acquire a complete and accurate understanding of your goals in our initial work together.
PORTFOLIOS THAT MANAGE RISK WHILE OPTIMIZING GROWTH
Your investment portfolio is tailored to your timeframe, risk tolerance and personal objectives.
Financial Planning
We look at all aspects of your life. As your Advisor we will always put your interests first. We will treat you with respect, honesty and dignity.
Retirement Planning
We help you determine how much to save before retirement and how much you can withdraw once in retirement. This is critical to ensure you have accumulated enough before you retire and that you do not deplete your assets once you are in retirement.
Customized Investment Portfolios
We offer individualized portfolios that are designed just for you. We use the full spectrum of investment choices including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and more. We have access to a wide range of institutional portfolio managers who excel at what they do.
CAROL SCATOLINI, CFP®, WEALTH MANAGER
President, Scatolini Wealth ManagementCarol Scatolini CFP® is a Wealth Manager and President of Scatolini Wealth Management. Since 1995 Carol has helped clients address their financial concerns and develop strategies by focusing on each individual’s specific needs. With extensive experience throughout major shifts in the markets, Carol has dedicated her career to delivering the personalized investment planning services her clients deserve. Carol began her career as a Financial Advisor with Merrill Lynch in Worcester where she developed her fundamental investment knowledge. In 2003, she earned the CFP® certification by completing an approved educational program, passing a rigorous examination and meeting stringent experience requirements. In 2006 she relocated to the Springfield, MA location and remained there until 2011 when she established her independent company, Scatolini Wealth Management located at Post Office Park in Wilbraham, MA.
Carol focuses on helping clients with all their complex and major life events such as retirement, divorce settlement, inheritance, and estate planning strategies. Each client receives personalized financial advice as well as a custom financial strategy tailored to their unique situation. Special attention is given to diversification, asset allocation and risk management. Over the years Carol has worked with a cross section of clients including young and mature families, clients with significant inherited and earned wealth, business owners with specific needs and charitable organizations and foundations. She also has focused on helping women investors develop their financial acumen and confidence through her investment planning process.
Phone: (413) 596-9033
Email: carol@scatoliniwm.com
The benefits of our goals-based planning process
Instead of simply investing toward a dollar amount for a retirement target, we use a process called Envision®. This process can help you uncover your goals, determine which are the most (and least) important and track your progress in reaching them. Our approach includes:
- An exploration of your unique goals and dreams
- An investment plan built to support your needs and goals
- Monitoring to keep you on track
- Flexibility to update your plan to reflect life or market changes
- Easy to follow reports and updates
The Envision® process is a great way to start creating your own personal roadmap. It also gives you the flexibility to alter your plan to account for changes in your life. For more information on this process, give us a call today.
How Strategies are designed to help you retire with confidence
Our approach to retirement income planning begins with the development of a structured plan that outlines specific strategies to address your goals and objectives, concerns, and timeline. Together, we can determine a fully diversified retirement income strategy compatible with your individual situation.
Understanding your retirement income needs
For many years, you may have pursued an investment strategy emphasizing growth to help build retirement assets. However, once retired, you need to balance your need for income with growth to ensure your portfolio is buffered against market volatility and keeps pace with inflation. This makes it critical to re-evaluate your risk tolerance and preferences to help ensure both your investment strategy and spending plan are aligned with your retirement lifestyle needs and goals.
How long will your assets last? Consider your withdrawal rate.
For most individuals, an essential part of retirement income planning is determining an appropriate withdrawal or spending strategy. What is the appropriate withdrawal rate for you—4%? 5%? 6%? By establishing a withdrawal rate that’s too high, you could deplete your savings too quickly and potentially outlive your money. And, once you’re retired, it’s important to review your retirement income plan whenever your circumstances or the markets significantly change, but at least annually, so you can adjust your spending strategy and withdrawal rate as needed. In addition, keeping the rest of your portfolio invested and diversified gives it the potential to continue growing.
Asset allocation and diversification are essential components during your years of saving for retirement. How you allocate your assets across various asset classes during this accumulation phase can have a profound impact on the savings you have upon entering retirement. However, once in retirement, the focus will likely be to include an allocation designed to meet specific income objectives, including asset protection, growth, and guaranteed income. If you want to learn more about our retirement strategies schedule a consultation with us today.
Why Advisory?
To succeed in today’s complex markets, you need objective advice that you can rely on. Sometimes the best advice is to hold steady and maintain your investments. Other times, the best advice is to take immediate action. Above all you need advice you can trust. Most people do not have the time or the resources to perform the necessary due diligence and analysis on the investments for their portfolio or perform the necessary analysis to build a portfolio in the first place. Individual investors may not be aware of, or follow, good investment disciplines, which may result in lower returns.
We utilize numerous investment programs to help you meet your investment goals, whether you are seeking a long term asset allocation portfolio, have a need for income, or want to meet another specific goal. We offer asset allocation models from conservative to long term for investors seeking income, growth and income or growth. Our models include mutual funds, ETF’s, stocks and bonds.
We believe each client deserves specialized investment advice. We spend considerable time preparing and developing individualized investment strategies. We are careful to consider all factors relevant to investment decisions-risk/reward levels, life-stage planning, estate strategies and others. We are committed to designing customized and innovative ways to better serve you. To learn more about our investment portfolios schedule an individual consultation with us today
Clarify your objectives
While there are many reasons to invest the three most commonly cited reasons are to:
- Help ensure a financially secure retirement
- Pay a child’s or grandchild’s higher education expenses
- Leave a financial legacy for heirs or, perhaps, a favorite charity
We discuss your objectives and then help you prioritize them. For example, you may want to save for retirement. But how do you plan to spend your retirement? Playing golf or tennis? Traveling? Shopping? Enjoying time with children or grandchildren? Pursuing a second career? Volunteering for your favorite charities? These are all issues to consider when defining your objectives.
Determine your time horizon
Knowing your time horizon is important because it will help dictate the types of investments you should make. Having a longer time horizon usually means you can invest more aggressively because you should be able to ride out any short-term price volatility and have the potential to enjoy the increased returns that a riskier investment usually offers.
Assess your Risk Tolerance
We determine your risk tolerance to see how much risk you can comfortably live with in your portfolio. Although higher returns may be attractive, you may be comfortable with a relatively low level of risk. Once we identify your risk tolerance we can design your portfolio to fit within it, which may require you to adjust your objectives or time horizon.
Establish your starting point
Once you’ve clarified your objectives and time horizon, you need to determine where you are today. In other words, is your financial house currently in order? For example, if you’re carrying a heavy debt burden, especially high-interest credit-card debt, you’ll probably need to reduce it before you start investing.
Developing Your Portfolio Strategy
One of the keys to successful investing is constructing a portfolio with the right investment mix, or asset allocation to help you work toward your objectives. It all starts with having a solid investment plan that takes into consideration what is happening now, what could happen next and what may happen even later. Having a proper asset allocation is a time-tested strategy that lets you “be in every lane” when it comes to managing your portfolio. Because no one knows for sure which investment is going to do well tomorrow, we create portfolios that spread your money over a number of different types of investments. That way you can be prepared for just about anything.
The Value of Advice
Following a disciplined investment process and working with a financial advisor can give you confidence that your investment portfolio is suitable for you based on your investment goals, time frame and risk tolerance and that, with regular monitoring, you remain invested to meet those investment goals. We treat each client as an individual and provide quality services and investment choices. Our portfolio recommendations are customized for you-they are not boiler plate solutions. We provide information that is clear, understandable and focused on helping you reach your long term financial objectives.
Keys to a Successful Relationship
Our objective is to help clients succeed financially and work toward their life goals. Whether you’re in the early stages of building wealth or facing complex retirement- or estate-planning choices later in life, we’re ready and equipped to help you make decisions for your future. We all have unique goals in life and want to feel confident that we’re on track to meeting them. In that effort, it helps to have a financial roadmap to keep us on track – especially given the twists and turns that inevitably lie ahead.
What You Can Expect From Us:
You can trust that we will consistently and responsibly perform all requested services and that we will be available when you need us.
We Will:
- Treat you with respect, honesty and dignity
- Act as your advisor, putting your interests first
- Strive to acquire a complete and accurate understanding of your goals, your tolerance for investment risk and your timeframe
- Explain the implications of the strategies we propose
- Update you by email, mail and phone
- Meet with you regularly to review your Financial Strategy Action Plan
Give us a call today to learn more.