Independence from Proprietary Products

Our background as CPA's influenced and impacted our money management business model in maintaining our independence from dealing in proprietary products. In our money management portion of our business, we are compensated either by charging a percentage of assets under our management, or a flat fee. We feel that this arrangement prevents any incentive to churn accounts to generate commissions, or to sell specific products that produce higher fees. Further, we do not share in any portion of the nominal transaction costs incurred by our clearing brokerage house.

Additionally, since we are not associated with any particular family of funds, we are able to screen our index funds and mutual fund selections through independent research services in order to know who manages the fund, and to judge the fund's performance relative to its peers within the same sector, assess its turnover ratio for income tax effects, and ensure that the investment policy of the fund is in accordance with our own. We have no incentive to invest in a particular fund family other than in meeting our clients' needs.