It starts by working out where you are, not by selling you something. Some people get three steps in and find they do not need us for anything else.
The order
Most financial advice starts by selling you something. This starts by working out where you are. Some people get to step three and find they do not need us for anything else — which is a perfectly good outcome and happens more than you would think.
Step one
What is actually coming in and what is actually going out. Almost every plan that fails, fails here, because there was never any room in the month for it to work. This is unglamorous and it is the step that decides whether any of the others are possible.
Step two
Money leaving as interest cannot do anything else for you. Clear the most expensive balances first and roll what is freed up forward instead of absorbing it. How that works, in detail →
Step three
Three to six months of income, somewhere boring and reachable. This is what stops one bad month from undoing two good years, and it is why it comes before anything with a lock-up period on it.
Step four
Coverage sized to the actual obligation — the mortgage, the years the children are at home, the income the household would lose. Plus the things that pay while you are alive, which in a working career you are far more likely to use. What each kind is for →
Step five
Retirement income, the old accounts nobody has looked at, what has to be certain and what can afford to fluctuate. The retirement side →
Step six
A review when something changes — a birth, a move, a change of employer, a death, a business. Most of the damage we find was done by a plan that was right in 2016 and was never looked at again.
What to expect
Twenty minutes on the phone about your situation. Nothing is sold and nothing is signed. If there is nothing here for you, that is where it ends.
What is available, what it costs, and what each one is actually for — in plain language, on paper, at your pace. Illustrations include the guaranteed columns, not only the favorable ones.
If it is not right, we will say so. If it is, we handle the application and we are still reachable afterwards.
Two promises that are easy to keep
Nothing is sold on a first call. There is no version of this where you are asked for a card on the day you first speak to us.
Your details are not sold to anyone else. We are not a lead broker. What you tell us stays with this practice and the carrier you choose to apply to.
Who you deal with
Every conversation, every application, every policy is handled by Lidio Quintana, licensed in California (#4052831) and Nevada (#4134793). You are not passed around a call center and your details are not handed to whoever bought the list this week.
You can confirm the license yourself with the California Department of Insurance, or in Nevada with the Nevada Division of Insurance, before you tell us anything — and we would rather you did. Look him up →
Next step
No cost, no obligation, nothing sold on a first call. Twenty minutes on the phone and you will know whether there is anything here worth doing.