ABOUT GUIDING PRINCIPLES NEW DEVELOPMENT TEAM TELL A FRIEND
“When you reflect upon your personal and professional achievements, and all that you have accomplished, it’s likely you put in hours of committed study and determination that has ultimately led you to a life and vocation to be proud of. A similar focus needs to be applied as you envision how that hard work will reward you in arriving at your desired lifestyle in 25+ years of a meaningful retirement.”
Victoria Wilk
Personal Wealth Advisor | CWS®
CA Insurance License #0F50866
310-880-5305 victoria@cradvisors.com
My focus is on helping individuals and families envision and articulate their desired lifestyle. A meaningful part of the process involves deep-dive conversations about money and what wealth means to you, then constructing a plan that aligns with what you aspire to achieve with your resources. Calculating assets is an important step, but discovering and honoring deeply held personal values and exploring family dynamics will have a profound effect on how the plan will come together.
For my colleagues and I here at California Retirement Advisors (CRA), a turning point to more optimally serve clients came with the effective use of our modern financial planning technology. Client-friendly and interactive, our CRA protocol provides you with visuals that promote clarity and transparency. This sets the stage to rationalize and justify the investment choices and options for the recommended course of action to grow and protect your wealth.
You will hands-on participate in how your savings and investments will play out well into your financial future, will serve to generate income and preserve your wealth. We encourage this approach when planning out several years or decades, and for legacy planning purposes as it leaves no stone unturned, and little to chance.
Professional Background
The financial industry regulators require continuing education to maintain my licenses, but we’re on our own to develop advanced skills and acumen to more optimally serve clients. My pursuit is on the study of macroeconomics and how the current and ever-changing domestic and global events will impact a client’s personal financial ecosystem.
My deep-dives are in the area of the shifting domestic and global economic concerns and what these changes will do to investment portfolios and other assets clients hold (real estate, precious metals, digital assets/crypto, foreign currencies). Extensive global travel and a formal education in international trade and commerce prepared me to be nimble and have the necessary conversations with clients so that we might act on opportunities and/or take necessary actions to protect a client’s wealth against unintended consequences.
I am registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the Series 6, 62, 63 licenses, and the Series 65 which designates me as a fiduciary and registered investment adviser representative. My California state insurance license permits me to research and recommend ways to mitigate risk, introduce a pathway for retirement income, and present alternative resources to grow and preserve your wealth. To address the more advanced needs of high-net-worth individuals, I achieved the Certified Wealth Strategist® professional designation through the Canon Financial Institute.
Who Victoria Serves
Personal finance can be a complex and confusing moving target that can often leave individuals uncertain when making important decisions. The people who respond most favorably to our work together are generally inclined to be good stewards of their money and desire a partnership approach and definitive guidance in understanding the nuances of how to grow their wealth. They seek clear and concise visuals, access to a digital platform, and a written road map that portrays how, together, we will strive to achieve their desired results.
Ready to Retire?
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
1. Crystal Clear Transparency
Trust is the most valuable currency in an effective advisor-client relationship. We value being up-front with clients about how we’re compensated, what the pros and cons of a specific product are, or what the motivations for a specific recommendation is. We are about full disclosure — and believe that kind of transparency creates good will with our clients.
2. Doing the Right Thing
As a licensed fiduciary, I take an unbiased approach from all points of view when offering different products, methodologies and solutions. I position myself as a facilitator who can offer insight and tools to help shine light on a situation. I try to stay neutral when delivering the pros and cons for my recommendations and investment products with honesty, integrity and good faith.
3. Painting the Big Picture
Your portfolio is not your singular focus, and it’s not ours either. Your life is made up of several components that reflect your financial well-being. The securities and insurance licenses that I hold, allow me to take a holistic plan-based approach that eliminates narrow product recommendations, and instead starts with an objective analysis of the client’s situation. Taking a skillful, tactical approach to connecting-the-dots of the various components of your life puts you in a more informed decision-making position about your financial life.
4. Practicing Discretion
It is a blessing that many of the new people we work with come from friends, family and professional colleagues of happy clients. Since our discussions and in-depth conversation include intimate topics of a very personal nature, our clients can rest assure that we maintain integrity, discretion, and confidentiality in all environments.
5. Creating a Vision
Our process includes discussion about your life that lies beyond your professional career and raising your family. Picture your life of potentially thirty years in retirement. To better understand what a client will find fulfilling, part of our holistic approach includes the fine-tuning of their goals, desires, needs, wants and life experiences to allow for the vision of their life to further unfold. These are the enlightening values that cannot be precisely quantified.
6. Revealing Insights for an Effective Plan
Through formal fact-finding and risk profiling, we generate a comprehensive understanding of our client’s current situation and mindset. This commitment to due diligence reveals insights about a client’s financial feelings that they didn’t realize in themselves. Our objective observations and analytics may demonstrate insights, such as “You may be more risk-averse than your current portfolio is positioned”, or “You’re actually in a better position to retire than you thought, here’s why...”. Insightful revelations will make a pivotal impact.
7. Simplifying vs Complexity
Our process is thorough and focused on each client’s uniqueness. We are adept at helping our clients process a deluge of information about the chaotic economic, political and market environments. We lead with perceiving and prioritizing your needs and expectations, then distilling and clarifying the solution. Resisting complexity, enhancing empowerment.
8. The Complete Package
Once we identify and prioritize your financial needs, you may become aware of potential gaps in your game plan. Bringing in other professionals from their area of expertise to bridge that gap is an additional hands-on resource provided by our firm. Our professional colleagues include CPA’s, estate planning attorneys, tax attorneys, and specialists in Medicare and Social Security.
- Victoria Wilk, California Retirement Advisors
New Development
Advanced studies and training in the retirement planning space served as the inspiration for launching The Women’s Retirement Project™.
“If the same investment products, retirement income strategies, advanced tax techniques, and estate planning that are available to men are also available to women, why aren’t more women engaged in learning how to grow, preserve, and protect their wealth?”
I observed how reticent women are in expressing their concerns and desires in retirement, and that advocating for a formalized approach to financial literacy would serve to bridge the gap in the way women process financial information.
Women prefer a big-picture approach to what they can expect to experience in 25+ years of retirement lifestyle to help them become confident, proactive decision makers and stewards of their wealth. More on The Women’s Retirement Project™ coming soon.
This is a glimpse of what I and my colleagues at CRA aspire to bring to the people we work with. If what I have presented about my background, skills and experience resonates with the kind of financial life management you want to establish, let’s schedule some time together.
My Team
L to R, Front Row: Ricky Ackerman, Chris Cordoba, Arcadia Berjonneau; Middle Row: Anthony Fratello, Sherrie Delaine, William Pettus; Back Row: Nguyen Le, Paula Buckley
Next Steps
Once we agree to meet, here is what is next on the journey.
We'll create your asset map from a discovery questionnaire
This will allow us to have a productive conversation and you'll receive a visual summary we can build on together.
Meet With Me
Share your story and your financial goals. I will ask and answer questions to learn how I can best help you achieve your goals.
Are We a Good Fit?
This is a no-pressure relationship! We each consider if I am a good fit to realistically help you meet your financial goals. If so, we can discus how to begin working together.
Review Service Offerings
You'll learn our planning philosophy, process, service options and costs.
Engage on Your Terms
You'll receive our financial planning agreement based upon the service you select to begin.