• Are you required to sell a certain type or quantity of products?
  • No! One of the things I like best about being an independent financial advisor hosted at LPL is that they never tell me I have to sell certain products, hit quotas or ‘push’ anything. So you can be assured that if I’m recommending an investment or insurance product, I really believe in that product.
• Are you affiliated with a certain mutual fund company or insurance company?
  • No! LPL has selling agreements with a vast number of fund companies and insurance companies, meaning that our portfolios are truly best of the best selections and we will work to find you the best fitting Life or Long Term Care policies for your situation.
• What’s with the LPL thing? I thought you were with Homestead Financial.
  • LPL is the largest* host of independent financial advisors in the nation with over 20,000 advisors! Many advisors under LPL create DBA (Doing Business As) names to individualize themselves and their practice. I, Grant, created Homestead Financial as a DBA name in 2024 for marketing purposes. However, nothing has changed in terms of the high quality service I’ve delivered to clients over the last almost 10 years.
• How do you get paid?
  • This can get complicated, so for a full legal description of my compensation, feel free to ask me for one of our disclosure documents. But in simple terms, the most common way I get paid is through a 1% advisory fee. Let’s say you invest $100,000 with me. Over the course of the first year I would make $1000. Of course, that’s a simplified example, but you get the idea. Note that these fees come direclty out of your investment account meaning you’re never having to write me a check. For more complicated situations like high net worth clients and complicated estate situations, I do occasionally charge a financial planning fee. These fees vary based on the complexity of the situation. But the vast majority of my clients pay me solely through advisory fees. I also make commissions on products such as life insurance and long term care insurance.
• How do you design your investment portfolios?
  • My portfolio design process is a pretty simple formula that I beleive produces solid, long term, well diversified portfolios for my clients’ investments. I start with a framework of asset classes that I want to use based on risk profiles for the portfolio and current macro-economic factors. Then I sort the whole universe of mutual funds and ETFs that LPL has access to, which is literally thousands of funds (both active and passive) into these asset classes. Within each class I sort the funds by historical performance over multiple time frames (1, 3, 5, 10 years). I make note of funds that float to the top consistently and begin researching the top-performing funds in each asset class. Often, a fund’s performance looks great, but research reveals future obstacles, maybe the fund manager just retired, or the fund uses an investment strategy that has worked well in previous economic environments but I don’t believe will work well in the upcoming economic environment. Other funds are the opposite. Maybe they have a strong management team and have early access to companies well-situated to profit from growing industries. I can usually tell pretty quickly whether a fund is trustworthy for my client’s hard-earned money. The final portfolio will usually be between 10-15 mutual funds and ETFs. There’s a big debate in the brainyack finance world over active vs passive management. My view is to let the fund’s performance speak for itself. My portfolios often hold both passive and active funds, giving clients even more diversification.
• Can I move my money anytime if I change my mind?
  • Short answer, Yes! Long answer, remember there may be tax implications on certain types of accounts and some of the insurance products we sell have surrender charges. But my standard investment account is a thing we call SAM (Strategic Asset Management). That is a ‘pay-as-you-go’ product, so yes, you can withdraw or move your funds anytime.

*As reported by Financial Planning magazine, 1996-2024, based on total revenue.