Ever feel like you spend too much time trying to keep your finances or investments straight? Or wish your financial “big picture” pointed toward a future you feel confident in?
If you’re ready to align your financial life with your real life, you’ve come to the right place.
If you’re ready to align your financial life with your real life, you’ve come to the right place.
At Wells Fargo Advisors, we’re proud of what sets us apart — our goals-based Envision process.
“Investment planning” often boils down to cookie-cutter investment mixes and generalized guesswork. It’s better than nothing, but it’s impersonal and vague.
The Envision process does more.
Our process goes beyond simply choosing an investment strategy and hoping for the best. It’s a life planning tool that helps you and your Financial Advisor:
Best of all, it gives you and your advisor the tools you need to:
When you work with one of our Financial Advisors, the conversation starts by exploring your big-picture plans, hopes, and dreams. With the help of our unique Envision Priority Cards, you and your advisor will prioritize your goals for the future and map out a financial course to help you achieve them.
Your Envision plan will take into account:
Once you’ve penciled in your goals, the Envision process will help you arrive at an asset allocation (investment mix) that supports your objectives. Your advisor will “stress test” your investment portfolio through statistical modeling when creating your plan to help you determine how likely you are to achieve your goals.
One output from the test will be a plan result -- a number between 0 and 100 that estimates the probability of your plan's success. A “reasonable” plan result of 75 to 90 is your investment sweet spot. We call this the “Target Zone.”
Anything above the Target Zone may show overconfidence in reaching some of your high-priority goals. If your plan result is higher than 90, you might assume more risk than necessary or sacrifice certain goals at the expense of others.
On the other end, you don’t want a plan result lower than a 75. Anything below the Target Zone may show less confidence in your ability to achieve your goals.
We show you how your investment performance today measures up against your plans for tomorrow.
With the Envision process, following your progress is simple. By contacting your Financial Advisor or accessing your account online, you can see a simple chart that tracks your “dot,” which moves based on the value of your investments. When you find your dot is outside of the Target Zone, you may need to work with your advisor to adjust your investments or your goals.
Think of your dot as a personal growth chart for your progress toward your financial goals.
Think of your dot as a personal growth chart for your progress toward your financial goals. By tracking your investment results against the Target Zone rather than a standardized index, such as the S&P 500®, you’re in a much better position to answer the question, “How am I doing?”
The Envision process and your advisor will not lose sight of your goals, dreams, and priorities. They may remain the same for many years, or change over time. Whether it’s a life or market event, the process can be updated easily to adapt to your new goals or circumstances.
Throughout your Envision journey, your advisor will keep a watchful eye on how your plan is performing against the Target Zone. Helpful, reader-friendly progress reports will update you as frequently as you wish.
You’ll regularly address questions critical to your financial big picture, such as:
Based on your goals, priorities, investments and risk tolerance, the Envision process helps you and your Financial Advisor respond to these questions and work toward your goals.
IMPORTANT: The projections or other information generated by the Envision software regarding the likelihood of various investment outcomes are hypothetical in nature, do not reflect actual investment results, and are not guarantees of future results. Results may vary with each use and over time.
Life has a way of throwing new opportunities and unexpected events our way. If your goals or priorities change or fluctuating market conditions threaten to throw your Envision plan out of whack, contact your Financial Advisor. He or she can help you determine if your plan needs adjusting.
Some life changes and new goals might impact your Envision plan. Here are some examples:
The Envision process is built for tinkering, adjusting, and updating. You can “try out” or “test-drive” big-picture goals and ideas to find out how they’ll play out within an investment strategy. When you have a life event or a new goal, you can also test drive them online to see the effect on your plan.
We’ve found most people appreciate a planning process that adjusts to and accommodates the twists and turns of life.
At Wells Fargo Advisors, we’ve built one of the nation’s premier investment firms around a deep respect for planning. Our commitment to helping you plan effectively, invest wisely, and map a realistic course to your future is nowhere more evident than in our Envision process.
Envision® methodology: Based on accepted statistical methods, the Envision tool uses a simulation model to test your Ideal, Acceptable and Recommended Investment Plans. The simulation model uses assumptions about inflation, financial market returns and the relationships among these variables. These assumptions were derived from analysis of historical data. Using Monte Carlo simulation, the Envision tool simulates 1,000 different potential outcomes over a lifetime of investing varying historical risk, return, and correlation amongst the assets. Some of these scenarios will assume strong financial market returns, similar to the best periods of history for investors. Others will be similar to the worst periods in investing history. Most scenarios will fall somewhere in between. Elements of the Envision presentations and simulation results are under license from Wealthcare Capital Management, LLC. ©2003-2019 Wealthcare Capital Management, LLC. All rights reserved. Wealthcare Capital Management, LLC is a separate entity and is not directly affiliated with Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC.