The following core values guide our actions: 

• Passion for enabling people to fulfill their purpose in life by integrating their values and finances
• Belief in the need to deliver extraordinary customer service by being accessible and prompt in responding to client inquiries
• Objectivity and integrity in our recommendations to clients
• Desire to build a sustainable firm that minimizes its carbon footprint
• Pursuit of continual professional improvement and continuing education
• Involvement in the local community

1. The markets are efficient most of the time.  It is therefore difficult for active managers to outperform their indices consistently over the long-term.  As a result, we tend to recommend passive index funds and ETFs for most asset classes, but may use active managers for less efficient asset classes (e.g., international stocks, domestic small-cap stocks).   
2. The only “free lunch” in the investment world is diversification, though it works better at some times than others.  This means that an investor can improve returns simply by building a portfolio of investments that have low correlation to each other (i.e., one zigs while the other zags). To take advantage of this phenomenon, we recommend fully diversified portfolios to our clients, including asset classes such as fixed income, US stocks, foreign stocks, real estate and commodities. 
3. Market timing does not work.   As a result, we focus on long-term strategic allocations to asset classes and individual investments and do not frequently change our recommendations.   
4. High expenses reduce returns. We focus on minimizing expenses by using low-cost funds and trading infrequently.  After-tax returns can be further improved with tax-loss harvesting and other strategies, such as the location of tax-inefficient investments in retirement accounts.