Lindsay, age 62, had been working as a medical practice manager for decades.  While she earned a comfortable living, she also found that she was becoming increasingly burned out navigating constantly changing insurance contracts and healthcare laws.  Almost daily, she began to dream of retirement – counting the days until the weekends, and the hours until the end of the work day.

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Sandy and Jill were not particularly happy about the performance of their portfolio and wanted a second opinion.  Despite a long bull market, their investments just weren’t growing. PARAGON’s investment management  team found that Sandy and Jill’s portfolio was the typical “kitchen sink” approach that we find in most investment advisors’ portfolios. Packed full of expensive “long-short,” “managed futures,” and “multi-alternative” mutual funds designed mostly to make money for Wall Street, while delivering mediocre returns at best for investors, Sandy and Jill’s portfolio was ripe for a tune-up.

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Frank and Linda had been working with a financial advisor for a long time but wanted a second opinion.  After a quick look at their portfolio, it quickly became apparent that their advisor, during a brief period of market uncertainty, had encouraged them to place half of their entire retirement nest egg in low-returning, high-fee annuities, loaded with expensive “guarantees” to provide lifetime income should the annuities perform poorly.

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Donna’s  father, Neal, an 80-year old Korean War veteran, had been extraordinarily healthy throughout most of his retirement. However, lately, he had begun to suffer debilitating pain in his joints. First it was his knees, and he used a cane, but with his walking gait interrupted and being forced to lean over to one side while using the cane, he began to have pain in his back, knees, and shoulders.

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Jill’s husband Bill’s career seemed on the fast track.  A career airline pilot, he had been recently promoted to Vice President in a well-known airline company.  When Bill unexpectedly died from an aneurism while on a business trip, Jill suddenly found herself she was thrust into the role of financial decision maker, a task for which she was wholly unprepared. She was immediately expected to make decisions about Bill’s 401k, pension, company stock options, life insurance, and pension options.  On top of that, Bill usually been mostly in charge of their investment portfolio and the college savings accounts for their college-age children. Without help, Jill felt that she would make serious missteps that could put her and her children’s financial future in jeopardy.

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Tripp and Susan just got some bad news from Tripp’s doctor.  He has pancreatic cancer, and, while it is in the relatively early stages, even with the newest and most aggressive treatments, the survival rate is less than 10%.  Tripp, a retired Army dentist who continued practicing as a dentist after his retirement from the Army, realized that it was likely that he would not survive for long. His thoughts turned to Susan.

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