We're helping investors solve their most important problem - TIME.

Traditional asset management processes are broken. Over 90% of active managers underperform their indices over 20+ year periods and yet the financial services industry still promotes style boxes, factor tilts and other performance-based portfolio strategies as planning solutions. Worse, this creates perfromance-based expectations instead of planning-based expectations which leads to performance chasing, higher turnover (higher taxes and fees) and behavioral biases. Defined Duration flips this all around and starts with your financial plan and ends by aligning specific assets to specific expenses and liabilities using a rigorously quantitative financial planning process.

In the traditional portfolio construction process the advisor does subjective risk profiling and implements a portfolio that tries to optimize for style boxed risk/return to meet client needs. Defined Duration quantifies the risk profile based on quantitative balance sheet and income statement inputs and then applies an asset allocation based on the underlying financial plan and needs, not a subjective risk optimization process. This gives the client greater clarity of why they own certain assets and the way those assets are actually helping them achieve their financial goals. Best of all, it can be implemented in a low fee, tax efficient, globally diversified and highly personalized manner.

We are huge fans of low cost indexing style strategies. We always try to use the lowest cost and most appropriate instruments to meet someone's needs. But we also know that one size doesn't fit all. On average, a Defined Duration portfolio will hold a custom T-Bill ladder and 5-10 stock and bond ETFs. Where appropriate we apply an insurance sleeve to insulate the investor from excess inflation and other risks, but the insurance allocation is 100% optional. But in all cases, diversification, low costs and tax efficiency are essential aspects of the products we utilize.

In theory, our portfolios can be as simple as 3 funds across 3 time horizons, but our experience is that investors need more customization and greater diversification to meet life's varying time horizons. On average, the Defined Duration process will output 4-5 customized allocation blocks across the 0-2 year, 2-5 year, 5-15 year, 15+ year and perpetual time horizons. The instruments utilized within each bucket can be structured and customized to meet the granular goals of the underlying investor. While we tend to defer towards "simple is better" we also know that our financial lives are anything but simple and some level of customization is always required. But at a minimum you can expect to see a portfolio where the 0-2 year time horizon matches a personalized T-Bill ladder, 2-5 year time horizon matches intermediate bonds and safe multi-asset instruments, 5-15 year time horizon matches a balanced allocation of stocks/bonds, the 15+ year time horizon matches a more aggressive stock tilted allocation and the perpetual time horizon is matched to instruments that exhibit insurance like features (gold, managed futures, options, etc). It's all customized to match the client needs and so every portfolio is different.

We built customized software based on our methodology to help us implement a quantiative planning process. We anchor risk to balance-sheet strength and cash-flow needs, not emotional and subjective questionnaires or a portfolio manager's guesstimates about the best stocks. Everything about the Defined Duration method is rigorously quantitative to reduce subjective and emotional inputs. This helps us create a portfolio based on your balance sheet robustness, not your emotional fragility thereby helping us build a portfolio that can ride out any storm knowing that we all become fragile when markets get volatile.

Reviews are tied to plan changes and horizon shifts, with disciplined rebalancing policies to keep durations aligned. Every Defined Duration portfolio is different because every client is different. These customized plans require as much upkeep as the client needs. So the answer is, it depends! But we try to minimize rebalancing knowing that more activity can result in more taxes and fees. That's why we built our own set of products and software to help implement the Defined Duration strategy. These products are specifically designed to reduce activity and enhance customization by maintaining an asset allocation and process that better aligns with our goals.

While we have our own customized products and software we also truly believe that this form of asset allocation is a better way to do financial planning and asset management. We didn't build this process with the goal of getting rich. We built this process with the goal of solving an obvious problem in finance - the problem of time. So yes, when we make recommendations we always try to do what's in the best interest of the people we are privileged to work with.