Kopka Financial is a financial planning and investment management firm. I take a holistic approach to your finances, so that we can personalize the best plan for each individual client.
Kopka Financial is a registered investment advisory firm dedicated to helping you through life’s transitions.
Working with Kopka Financial starts with a comprehensive financial plan. The plan allows us to learn about your goals, savings, and spending habits. I want your money to provide you with a lifestyle that you can afford and fulfills you. Planning helps me understand what is important to you and gives us a frame work for our ongoing investment management. I help people to grow and preserve their resources. I advise my clients on how to use their cash flow to realize their life goals. Both financial planning and investment management are ongoing services because your life and “the markets” are subject to change.
The financial plan is an excellent tool for investment management, and it offers insight to many necessary conversations for financial peace and education. Financial Planning is a process that will take time and requires sharing your financial information. Once we have a grasp on your finances, we can work on how to achieve your goals with your customized financial plan. We will identify and prioritize your goals.
I will assist and support you to achieve your life’s aspirations while mitigating life’s curve balls. Once your customized plan is completed, it serves as an excellent framework for your investments and savings. Much like tracking investments, revisiting your plan regularly will help ensure your plan evolves and continues to meet your financial needs. The plan serves as a guide and is dynamic, like your investments.
Portfolio management is based on investment selection, which involves diversification amongst asset classes and sectors based on your financial plan. I strive to reduce portfolio risk using sound investment principles, so your investments serve you for your lifetime goals. I will allocate funds into accounts that are balanced and efficient for your plan, rebalance portfolios and track the performance as it relates to industry benchmarks, and more importantly, your expectations. We will keep a close eye, together on what we control like risk, costs and taxes.
I offer personalized and professional asset allocation, reporting and tracking. My number one concern is helping you achieve your goals, protecting your portfolio, and utilizing tax management strategies. I enjoy working with your tax professional to collaborate on strategies to minimize the taxes you pay, which of course, maximizes your net worth.
Combining investment management and financial planning will help us work cohesively together for our client advisory relationship.
An often shared “rule of thumb” in widowhood is don’t make any major decisions for a year. This is prudent, trite advice and not always practical.
It saddens me to say, you are facing one of life’s most stressful experiences. I get it: I am a widow. My husband passed in 2014. Life keeps moving on, and as much as I wished for life to be a vacuum for that one year, and I wish that for you too, it most likely will not be. I am here to professionally help you through your time of uncertainty. I am willing to listen and apply conservative and consistent principles of money management while you grieve and grow. I will help you through not just one year, but help you plan for your future as you discover and rediscover new outlooks and paths for your future.
There are items in closing an estate that must be attended to now, and there are also some that can wait for later. Please contact me for a simple now and later check list.
I encourage you to take time to give yourself space to deal with the natural and often labeled “negative” emotions. Be mindful of help. People with the best intentions for your emotional support and financial support may not give the best advice available for you. You need to confer with trusted experts like myself to help you through this period of your life. It is a good time to be still in your purchases, if you can. I will help you get your finances in order which will make life easier for you.
At Kopka Financial, I will address the issues that are unique to families of children with disabilities. I have both professional and personal experience managing and establishing special needs trusts. As your trusted advisor, I will work with your child’s guardian, your estate attorney, your accounting professional, and care managers and specialists involved with your child. We will work together when considering lifestyle needs and issues involving your child.
At Kopka Financial, you will work with someone who understands the difficulties in obtaining and maintaining government benefits. I consider the role these benefits can serve when critical needs are both costly and serve as a gateway to other specialized benefits. Together, we can address and prepare for the financial security of your child with a disability.
I understand special needs strategies while keeping in mind your other financial objectives. Special needs strategies go beyond investment advice and integrate planning strategies with estate planning, insurance, and trust considerations. Your strategy will address your household and explore options allowing you to follow your own retirement aspirations while securing a future for your child.
As parents we hope and expect our children to outlive us. If you have a special needs child, you need to be sure they are taken care of after you’re gone. It’s important you work with professionals who are knowledgeable, trained, and sensitive to planning for a family with a special needs trust. It’s imperative the financial advisor you select to manage a special needs trust embodies those characteristics.
Unlike many advisors, I started in the financial industry like you, as an investor. I remember being advised to open a Roth with those old Series E bonds and then watched our “retirement” quickly double and quadruple in the fast ride up in the dot com tech bubble: I then watched it crash. I waded through statements and thought huh? Why did that happen? The answer was simple: bad advice. I had to retool. I knew I had to save for my retirement. That was a given. But how? I was a math teacher, so the math wasn’t going to stop me. I understood the time value of money calculations. So, I entered the financial industry to problem solve. I loved it. I soaked up knowledge like a sponge. And through my experience as a teacher, I had the ability to explain to my clients what to do with their money, so they understood it. Plus, I get the responsibility of handling other people’s money. It’s huge, and I take that VERY seriously. Suits, ties, and marble floors don’t make you money. Someone who understands finances, can explain finances, and will care about you and look after you, does. And that would be me. Set up a meeting with me. I’ll prove my value to you.
I started in the financial industry in 2007. My experience and in field education began at the grandeur of the large wire houses until my personal life led me to a small, local planning firm and from there, to an elite solo advisor working with high net worth clientele. Industry experience, education, and guidance combined with my naturally curious, resourceful and investigative nature led me to the task of opening my own firm, Kopka Financial. LLC. To best serve my client’s and your needs as a fiduciary, I embrace the truly independent model for today’s fiduciary advisor.
Initially, I sought out training for advising families of children with disabilities as a personal interest, a place I gravitated to as a perpetual volunteer. This training was a natural interest with a sincere way to give back and offer my expertise. Later and not long after working as a special needs advising professional, the training became a personal experience. Living with a person with disabilities is an experience, one which creates a paradigm shift where you may never see the world the same, and that is good. My household, in part, was covered by Medicare and a disability supplement coupled with income supplemented by Social Security Disability Income. This is also something you will not find that many advisors have personal experience with. I bring a lot more to the financial experience as a widow, single woman, solo parent and mother, former caregiver and medical advocate, and business owner.
Additionally, I am a proud member of The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA). NAPFA is the country’s leading professional association of Fee-Only financial advisors—highly trained professionals who are committed to working in the best interests of those they serve.
A CFP® is a certified professional that qualifies to use the marks through their education, experience, ethics and examination set forth by the CFP® Board. The CFP® Board is a non-profit organization acting in the public interest by fostering professional standards in personal financial planning through its setting and enforcement of their qualification requirements. A CFP® Professional is a fiduciary, meaning they must put the client’s interest ahead of their own.
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