About
Sterling Advisor Solutions is dedicated to helping financial advisors and their clients achieve their goals in an effective, client-friendly and efficient manner. Drawing on deep expertise (our senior executives have combined over a hundred years of experience, and include a Stanford JD, a Wharton MBA, and a Stanford Ph.D.), we offer a wide and growing variety of optimized, proven, turnkey solutions to a wide variety of client situations and problems.
Sterling spends significant time and resources educating the entire advisor community. In our nearly quarter-century helping advisors find the best solutions for their clients, we have found that the more educated advisors are, the more their clients benefit.
Sterling Advisor Solutions typically focuses on identifying and implementing solutions that provide long-term benefits for both clients and advisors, while often also generating immediate short-term benefits. By implementing turnkey, cost-efficient, value-added solutions we help advisors help their clients retain their wealth more securely and for longer periods, often passing it down to future generations. In turn, their advisors may continue to manage and grow their assets for much longer periods of time than would likely be the case absent such planning
Our goal is to work with advisors (and advisors’ clients when requested) to help facilitate a wide range of planning and transactions, ranging from potentially complex activities such as the sale of businesses, real estate, or concentrated stock positions to the appropriate pre-planning for end-of-life retirement account protection. Sterling does not custody assets or provide tax, legal or investment advice, making our services complementary to those of financial advisors, attorneys, and CPAs.
Sterling Advisor Solutions is dedicated to helping advisors find the best solutions for their clients. Below, you'll find a map that outlines the broad spectrum of client situations where Sterling can help.
Sterling Advisor Guides
Sterling Advisor Solutions offers several innovative and insightful guides for advisors. These guides, written by Sterling CEO Roger D. Silk, will detail some common client situations, and discuss the optimal solutions for those clients and their advisors.
Currenltly, we have four advisor guides available, with more on the way. Information on each is available below. To request a particular advisor guide, please use the form at the end of this section
The sale of a business is often the largest single financial transaction in the business owner’s life. While the actual sale itself is usually adequately handled by the investment bankers and lawyers, too often the owner’s big-picture concerns get subordinated to the drive to “get the deal done.” Those big picture concerns may include everything from the owner’s spouse’s feelings, to good income tax planning, from the consideration of long term counterparty risk, to good planning for the owner’s retirement assets, and from the time shape of the purchase price, to good estate planning. These big picture concerns may fall through the cracks, unless there is someone driving the process and taking the big picture view. Sterling is uniquely qualified and capable of making sure your goals are achieved during the sale of your business.
From the point of view of need, an investor who does not expect to need the assets in his retirement account has, by definition, a large retirement account. In absolute terms, a large retirement account is often defined as an account of at least $1 million. This guide focuses on accounts that are large by both definitions. Large retirement accounts are different from other accounts in at least three ways. First, the proper time horizon for these accounts should be much, much longer than the investor’s life expectancy. Second, large retirement accounts are subject to devastating taxation at the death of the investor, and thus require special planning. Third, large retirement accounts are often associated with large required minimum distributions, and these distributions often create large, unwanted tax bills. The combination of required minimum distributions, and eventual investor death leads to large taxes, and a corresponding reduction in the funds available for the investor’s family, and also to a reduction in advisor assets under management. Good planning can in most situations solve most or all of these problems.
Holding a concentrated position in a publicly traded stock requires the holder to bear excess risk. Excess risk is risk for which the holder cannot expect to be compensated. We examine a number of reasons people continue to hold concentrated positions despite the excess risk. Perhaps the most frequent and compelling reason is the desire to avoid, or at least postpone, tax. We examine nine commonly discussed solutions, and find that one of two solutions – outright sales and stock diversification trusts – are the most appropriate solution in most cases. We also explain the often confused concepts of hedging and diversification.
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Politicians Spend, We Pay
The History And Causes Of Inflation And How You Can Protect Your Wealth
High price inflation has returned because politicians seem to have forgotten, or are ignoring, the lessons of history, and their economist advisors have forgotten, or are ignoring, the lessons of economic theory. By creating large amounts of new money, essentially out of thin air, the government is creating the monetary conditions that, in the past, have, almost without exception, led to high levels of price inflation.
Politician's Spend, We Pay by Sterling CEO Roger D. Silk investigates inflation, including the causes and effects, as well as what to do in times of high inflation such as now.
To learn more, please visit the page on our website for Politicans Spend, We Pay.