A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Professional (A.K.A. CFP® Professional) is the gold standard of financial planning.  A CFP® Professional helps clients achieve their financial and personal goals. We look at your entire financial life – not just investments. Our goal is to help with your goals and create a path towards financial wellness and confidence in your plan so you can focus on your family, your business, your retirement, or whatever makes you happiest in life. At Conestoga, you will always work with a dedicated CFP® Professional that will help plan a path toward financial prosperity.

A fiduciary is a person who holds a legal and ethical relationship of trust with clients. They are legally bound to make recommendations in the best interest of those clients. As a CFP® Professional, the person you work with will act as a fiduciary on your behalf

Yes, as a registered investment advisory firm, we are fiduciaries to our clients. You also will work with a CFP, which means they are held to this highest fiduciary standard.

Yes, In fact our first meeting with you will be a “get to know” meeting at no cost to you where we can explain our services, answer your questions and see if there is a fit for a financial planning relationship going forward.

Not a problem.  We understand everyone has to start somewhere, and we will help you with what areas of your financial life we should cover. Throughout our relationship we will strive to make the planning process understandable and to continue to work with you so that you don’t just have a financial plan in place, but you understand the journey of how you will achieve your goals.

There’s been a lot of confusion out there on what role a robo-advisor actually does for people. Robo advisors only handle building an asset allocation for your investments. They don’t go through the financial planning process with you and provide ongoing personalized advice. Most of the time, their call centers will only be able to answer questions on process, like how to withdraw money or what are the limits on IRA contributions, etc.

While saving and investing is a cornerstone of most financial plans, a successful financial plan is so much more.

Besides knowing how much you need to save over time, what about all the other parts of a plan? Mitigating risk through insurance planning (including, Disability & Long-Term Care), College Planning, Mortgage’s and other loans, social security optimization, Medicare, tax planning and retirement income planning, just to name a few.

Just making small financial mistakes can add up to serious consequences or can severely affect your bottom line. And Big Financial Mistakes can even be more dire long term. We believe our pricing is an affordable way to help you build a strong financial structure for you and your family. Furthermore, you will always work with a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER ™ Professional which means you are not only working with a fiduciary that must put your interests first, your CFP will have the education training and experience that makes for a better planning experience.

That wouldn’t be a very good business model for them, would it? Many times, you just don’t realize that you are in fact paying for the product they are selling. You could be paying a wrap fee, sales commissions, or 12-b1 fees, etc.

Everyone in financial services gets compensated in some form, and many out there who call themselves advisors, aren’t even putting together a real plan for you or acting as a fiduciary.

In fact, some salespeople, especially those who offer products where they claim you ‘can’t lose money’, make incredible commissions on what they sell to you and claim there’s no fee!

We believe in full transparency and delivering more to you and we believe it shows in your personalized financial planning webpage that contains your living plan. You will always know the fees you will be paying upfront.

We assist DIY’ers all the time. Choose our subscription plan that doesn’t include investment management if you wish. We can still help you identify and set your goals, make a plan and stay on track throughout the planning process. You can handle the investments yourself, or even keep an outside asset manager while we help you with the plan architecture to achieve your goals

No. In order to serve our client base, we offer more than one service plan for you to choose, we have plans with no minimums and plans with minimums; the choice is yours.

Because of decades of evidence, we believe passive management is the best way to build wealth. While we sometimes recommend active strategies depending on the situation, we want to participant in markets rather than trying to beat them through stock picking. We know that historically Much of the alpha, if any, delivered by active managers is eaten up in fees, while we are focused on minimizing fees and maximizing diversification.

Not necessarily. If you choose one of our subscription services without asset management, or a full financial plan, then no, you do not. However, that does not mean we may not make recommendations for you to find a better custodian or money management style to help you reach your goals

We can discuss the pros and cons of different custodians if you need to move your investments for any reason.

Yes. Not only will we work with them, we want to coordinate and consult with them to make your planning experience even more valuable and coordinated along many fronts. If you don’t have other professionals you work with, we can help you assemble the right professionals to work with, and we never receive any referral fees.

Yes, that’s crucial to making sure all assets are managed properly – not just the assets we directly manage. We believe in a holistic approach to managing all of your assets.

Yes, we can. In fact, it’s often where we see mistaken assumptions that need correction. We are there for you for each and every individual enrollment period.

We have different pricing options to fit your needs. If you are just accumulating assets, or like to manage your own money, you can try our subscription service. If you want a full-service plan and have at least $250,000 in investable assets, you can work with us using our asset-based fee, which is very competitive, and declines as your assets grow. We also can just do a financial plan to set you on course or offer a subscription with a smaller Asset fee for small accounts under $250,000.

It’s your choice which best suits you.

At Conestoga, none of our financial planning services have any commissions, 12b-1, soft dollar or any kind of revenue sharing fees.

The first meeting is generally 60-90 minutes, and it is a “get to know” meeting. We will introduce ourselves and services and get started on your financial portrait identifying your goals and wishes to get a clear picture of where you want to go. We are generally ready to begin working on your plan right after this and we complete our intake of information; however, the pace is up to you. We like to keep the process rolling, but we won’t make any major changes to the implementation of your plan without a full picture.

When we have everything we need, we will present and review your financial portrait website where the plan lives and takes shape.

After that, we stay on top of the plan to make sure it is on course. We meet at least annually to review the plan, whether in person or via teleconference, and of course we are always available to you if you have questions, or if you need to make any changes. As well, your financial website is always updated to reflect your current situation and there for you to picture your future.

If you’re local to the Philadelphia area, we prefer to meet in person. If you’re not local, or would prefer to meet remotely, we can work via telephone or video conference.

No, there are no cancellation fees.

No, every one of our clients works with the same CFP® Professional, where you will have a direct line and email address. We encourage you to ask as many questions as you want. We believe your plan isn’t complete unless you understand it, and by asking questions it allows for better understanding. It also allows our CFP® Professional to better know you so they can be even more insightful about your plan

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