A free portfolio analyzer: what you pay in dollars and how your money is split. Don't know your funds' fees or holdings? No worries: our built-in fund finder looks them up. Free, no sign-up.
Educational illustration only. This shows what you own and what it costs. It does not say whether a mix is right for you.
Ten yes-or-no questions about the last time you, or your adviser, went through your money. You get a grade from A to F and a list of what to look at next. About one minute, no sign-up.
A checklist, not a rating of anyone's skill or results, and not a verdict on your investments.
Most people do it one of three ways: they add up their statements by hand, they use a free portfolio analyzer like this one, or they pay an adviser. Whichever you pick, the same questions come first. The SEC's guide to asset allocation, diversification and rebalancing and FINRA's investor pages cover most of them.
A target-date fund is a fund of funds that gets more conservative as its date gets closer, so the name alone doesn't tell you what you hold today. Our finder looks through to what's underneath. NYC Deferred Compensation publishes the mix of each pre-arranged portfolio in its portfolio fact sheet, and the TSP publishes its L Funds in its fund information booklet. We use those figures for plan funds, since plans like these don't file holdings with the SEC. So those funds show a split, but not a list of companies.
Mutual funds and ETFs report what they hold to the SEC on Form N-PORT, and the SEC publishes those reports as quarterly data sets. Fund fees come from each fund's latest prospectus filed with the SEC. A report shows a fund on one past date, so your fund may hold something different today. Money market funds report on a different form and show as not found. Funds that lean heavily on derivatives show no split, since their holdings wouldn't describe how the money is really invested.
If you ask for one, Eslyn Hernandez, your point of contact here, reviews your results and sends you a short video walking through what they show. It is general education, not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Investing questions go to Will Harrison, our Chief Investment Officer, on a call.
One fee covers two jobs: planning your whole financial life, and managing your investments. There is no extra charge for either.
We start by understanding your situation, then we follow the same seven steps that CFP Board sets for financial planning:
Where the plan starts: your numbers. We build your budget and cash flow (what comes in and goes out each month) and your balance sheet (what you own and what you owe). Those two pages drive every other decision in the plan.
How we test it. We plan around your goals, such as retiring at a certain age or paying for a child's college. Then we run scenarios, like retiring a year later or taking a different pension option, and a Monte Carlo test. That test runs your plan through thousands of possible market paths to show how often the money lasts. It shows the odds, not a promise.
Example: "We want to buy a home." This is how a goal moves through those seven steps. First we look at where you stand today: your income statement (what comes in and goes out each month) and your balance sheet (what you own and owe). Then we test whether the down payment, closing costs and the new monthly cost fit with what you have now, without starving your retirement savings. If they fit, we map out when and how. If they don't yet, we lay out the choices: costs to cut, a later date, a smaller price, or another way to fund the down payment, and show what each one does to the rest of your plan. You pick the path, we help put it in place, and we check it at every yearly meeting. This is an example of the process, not a promise of a result.
What the plan covers:
Will Harrison, our Chief Investment Officer, runs the portfolios, and most of the work is research you never see. He studies and follows the companies we own and the ones we might own: their results, their managers, and the trends around them. He decides what to buy, when to add, and when to sell, and he writes up his thinking every quarter in Inside the Portfolio. His approach:
Day to day, the portfolio work also includes:
Vanguard's research estimates that advisers who follow practices like these can add about 3 percentage points a year to net returns. The biggest piece, about 1.5 points, comes from coaching people to stay invested when markets drop. Vanguard is clear that this is not a steady yearly number. It shows up unevenly, mostly when markets panic or soar, and it varies a lot from person to person. These are Vanguard's estimates across many investors, not a promise of what we will add for you. Sources: Vanguard Advisor's Alpha and its research paper (February 2019).
We charge a percentage of what we manage, and we take no commissions. From our Form ADV brochure, Items 5 and 6:
The fee is taken from your account each month for the month before. Trading costs and the funds' own expenses are separate. How your adviser gets paid, in full.
Want to see costs over the years? Try the fee calculator. Wondering who your adviser answers to? Check if your adviser is a fiduciary.
Sirmium Capital LLC is a small, independent investment firm in New York, registered as an investment adviser with the State of New York. You can look us up on the SEC's public adviser database under CRD #167682, where our full brochure is posted.
Educational information only. Not investment, tax or legal advice, not a recommendation to buy or sell any security, and not a guarantee. We earn our fee only on money you move to us, so weigh what we say with that in mind. Sirmium Capital LLC is a New York state-registered investment adviser and is not registered with the SEC. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training.