Greetings,

2015 is in full swing and we are excited to see what the year will bring.

In case you missed it in our last quarterly letter, we are slightly shifting how planning is done throughout the year. Carolyn is busy working on tax planning, and estate reviews, while Carrie is working on insurance and projections. We will now stagger planning topics for each client so Carolyn and Carrie can stay consistently busy throughout the year. Tim will continue to reach out to each of you during the year to touch base on your investments and is always available to answer questions.

What is a benefit of working with a small, personal firm? One benefit is to help stymie identity theft.

With identity theft and fraud happening more often, working with people who know you well is the first and most important road block. In the last year, we've had multiple attempts by fraudsters to impersonate clients. Thankfully, we know everyone very well - both by their style of communication in email and by voice. It makes it hard for an impersonator to get by.

That being said - we worry about the day someone trips us up. Therefore, we have a policy in place that if you want to move any funds out of Fidelity or you want to set up transfer instructions to another institution, we require a verbal confirmation from you.

Another safeguard we have in place is your client vault. If you have something to send us that contains personal, critical information, do not send that through email. One hack through your email will give up all that information to the fraudster, and makes it much easier to impersonate you. The best way to get those documents to us is to upload them in your client vault which is now located in your portal. Krissy has written a quick review below on how to access and upload documents to your vault. While this process might seem more cumbersome, it will protect your information and save you worry minutes in the future.

As always we appreciate your feedback on how we are doing. Please send us your questions, comments and suggestions on what we can do to improve.