Plumb Placements for 2024 Citywealth Magic Circle Awards

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Plumb is proud to announce that we’ve placed in two categories for the 2024 Citywealth Magic Circle Awards:

  • Technology Innovators of the Year (Winner)
  • UNHW Private Client Services of the Year (Runner Up)

The Magic Circle Awards recognize the accomplishments of professionals and firms working with high-net-worth individuals and families. The awards are presented in London in front of an esteemed audience comprised of over 400 professionals representing over 140 diverse organizations.

Following a rigorous submission process, the submissions are assessed and judged by a panel of private wealth advisors. Online voting is also open to the public, and counts for 10% of the final award vote.

Our proprietary Plumb Bill Pay App is a big reason we have been included in these awards. To learn more about our services and our Plumb Bill Pay App, please watch this brief overview video and reach out to schedule a personal demo.

Plumb delivers financial peace of mind by assisting high-net-worth individuals and family offices know where their money is going, so their trusted advisors can effectively manage it. We work in partnership with their team — including wealth, CPA, and other advisors — to provide the highest quality of data and financial reporting to establish a holistic view of their assets and financial holdings. We’d love to help answer any questions you may have. Feel free to schedule time to speak with Anneke Stender, our EVP, at your convenience.

Digital Wallets and HNWI: Balancing Convenience with Security in Mobile Payments

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For high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), while convenience and saving time is valued highly, when it comes to managing their finances, security is one of the most important concerns. Digital wallets have emerged as a popular option for mobile payments, offering a blend of both convenience and security. However, for wealthy individuals, the question remains: do digital wallets offer the right balance of these two critical factors?

 

Let’s first define a digital wallet. According to Investopedia, a digital wallet is a financial application that allows you to store funds, make transactions, and track payment histories on devices like phones and tablets. So, think in terms of Apple Pay, Google Pay, CashApp, PayPal, Venmo, and Zelle – to name a few.

 

Digital wallets offer advantages that are particularly appealing to high-net-worth-individuals:

  • They allow users to store multiple payment methods in one secure location, eliminating the need to carry around a bulky wallet full of cards.
  • Payments can be made quickly and easily with just a tap or a click, streamlining the checkout process both online and in-store.
  • Many digital wallets offer features such as loyalty programs and bill pay, further simplifying financial management.

 

Despite the convenience they offer, digital wallets also raise security concerns for HNWIs. Some of these concerns include:

  • Data breaches: If a digital wallet provider is hacked, the financial information of its users could be compromised.
  • Malware: Malicious software can be used to steal data from digital wallets or even take control of them altogether.
  • Loss or theft of devices: If a high-net-worth individual’s phone or other device that stores their digital wallet is lost or stolen, their financial information could be at risk.

 

In light of these concerns, there are a number of steps that can be taken to mitigate the security risks associated with digital wallets:

  • Choose a reputable provider: Use a digital wallet from a well-established company with a strong track record of security.
  • Enable strong authentication: Use strong passwords, PINs, multi-factor authentication (MFA), or even biometric authentication (such as fingerprint or facial recognition) to secure your digital wallet.
  • Keep your software up to date: Make sure your phone and digital wallet app are always up to date with the latest security patches.
  • Monitor your transactions: Regularly review your digital wallet transactions for any suspicious activity.
  • Be cautious about public Wi-Fi: Avoid using public Wi-Fi to access your digital wallet, as this could make it easier for hackers to steal your information.

 

The Future of Digital Wallets for HNWIs

 

As digital wallet technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more features and security enhancements designed to address the concerns of HNWIs. However, the bad actors and fraud-perpetrators out there are also becoming more savvy and sophisticated making security vigilance a top priority for high-net-worth individuals and those who help manage their finances.

 

Digital wallets offer a convenient way for HNWIs to manage their finances. By taking appropriate precautions, HNWIs can minimize the risks and enjoy the benefits of this innovative technology.

 

Expense Tracking for Wealthy Individuals: Tools and Strategies for Comprehensive Financial Oversight

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For high-net-worth individuals, managing finances extends beyond simply tracking income and expenses. It’s about gaining comprehensive oversight of a complex financial landscape that may include investments, trusts, real estate, and more. In this context, meticulous expense tracking becomes an essential tool for informed decision-making, optimizing wealth preservation, and achieving financial goals.

 

Let’s start with the basics. Why track expenses?

 

Expense tracking for wealthy individuals offers several unique advantages:

 

  • Identify spending patterns. Track where your money goes, from regular bills to occasional indulgences. This reveals areas for potential cost-cutting or strategic reallocation of funds.
  • Monitor asset performance. Track the specific expenses related to various assets like vacation homes, yachts, or art collections.
  • Inform investment decisions. Understanding spending habits can help to guide investment strategies. If you know how – and how much – is being spent, you can better determine the types of investments you should be making.
  • Catch mistakes before they happen. With exact and itemized expenses, it’s easy to spot something that doesn’t look right.
  • Ensure tax compliance. Accurate expense records are crucial for tax preparation and audits, especially for charitable giving. When expense tracking is set up properly it can help save both time and money with tax preparation.
  • Achieve financial goals. Tracking expenses against set goals, like saving for a second home or philanthropy, keeps you on track.

 

There are also a few effective expense tracking strategies that we suggest to all our high-net-worth clients.

 

  • Set clear goals. Define your financial objectives and tailor your expense tracking to monitor progress towards them.
  • Choose the right tools. Select a tool that aligns with your needs, preferences, and level of financial complexity. For example, the Plumb Bill Pay app is a great tool for providing clarity into finances.
  • Categorize meticulously. Create custom categories to accurately reflect your spending patterns and identify areas for improvement. At Plumb, we create the categories that best suit our clients’ needs so they can see their expenses exactly how they want to see them.
  • Review regularly. Schedule regular time to analyze your spending data and identify trends or areas for adjustments. Plumb provides customized reporting to our clients, as frequently as they need, with as much detail as they want.
  • Seek professional guidance. Consult a financial advisor or wealth manager for personalized recommendations and strategies, and seek outsourced bill payment and accounting support – like the experts at Plumb – to ensure effective management of your expenses.

 

Remember, expense tracking is about gaining valuable insights into your financial behavior, making informed decisions, and ultimately, achieving your long-term financial goals. By embracing effective tracking strategies and utilizing the right tools, wealthy individuals can transform expense management from a chore into a powerful tool for financial empowerment.

 

Take the Next Step Towards Financial Ease and Clarity: Experience the benefits of secure and streamlined expense management. Contact us at sales@thinkplumb.com to discuss how our outsourced bill payment services can enhance accuracy, save time, simplify record-keeping, and reduce stress, and fortify the security of your financial transactions. Your peace of mind is our priority.

Customized Expense Categories for HNWI: Tailoring Reports to Individual Financial Goals

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Beyond Budgeting: How Personalized Expense Categories Empower HNWI Clients

While expense categories are essential for any budget, for high-net-worth individuals with intricate financial lives, customization becomes vital.

At Plumb we understand the unique needs of our high-net-worth clients. We believe that tailored categories can unlock granular tracking, insightful decision-making, and refined budget planning. However, we’ve also seen where excessive detail can have a downside. Too many categories, lacking meaningful insights or tracking benefits, can risk becoming an overwhelming burden.

In this brief article we outline why expense categories matter, the benefits of these categories, and some best practices — and challenges — of implementation.

 

Importance of Expense Categories

  • Track spending: Organizing expenses into different expense categories helps HNWI clients with multiple properties and complex finances track where their money goes.
  • Customization: With QuickBooks class tracking, the clients can see their expenses broken out in whatever way they want and need to see it. This granular categorization might include categories for different properties, children’s school tuition, credit card purchases, country club expenses, or it can be as detailed as individual doctor fees and specific retail stores.
  • Decision-making: Detailed reports based on these customized categories empower clients to make informed financial decisions.

 

Benefits for HNWI Clients

  • Detailed insights: Drilling down into specific expense categories allows for better budget planning and cost control.
  • Control over finances: Clients can see where their money is going and take control of their spending habits.
  • Improved reporting: Customized categories enable clear and accurate financial reports for better analysis. At Plumb, with customized expense categories in place for all clients, we issue reports efficiently and seamlessly – whether they are shared regularly or based on an ad hoc request.

 

Implementation Best Practices and Challenges

  • Standardized Chart of Accounts: This helps maintain consistency across clients while still allowing for customization based on what the client needs.
  • Data overload: Highly customized categories can lead to complex data and reporting challenges. If there’s no benefit to the client, and it’s getting in the way of providing updated and accurate data, we will make the recommendation to the client for a better approach.
  • Matching and accuracy: Ensuring accurate data capture and categorization can be complex with many details. This is where Plumb shines. Our expert bill pay team has the tools and experience to create timely, accurate, and meaningful reports for our clients – regardless of the complexity of the expense categories.

 

With our decades of experience managing the bill payment and expenses of our high-net-worth clients, we understand the best practices of creating customized expense categories: how to create them, how to utilize them to drill down to important information, and how to create valuable and insightful reports.

 

Take the Next Step Towards Financial Ease and Clarity: Experience the benefits of secure and streamlined financial management. Contact us at sales@thinkplumb.com to discuss how our outsourced bill payment services can enhance accuracy, save time, simplify record-keeping, reduce stress, and fortify the security of your financial transactions. Your peace of mind is our priority.

Time is Money: The Power of Bill Payment Apps

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In the fast-paced world of wealth management, even a minor delay can cost high-net-worth individuals and their advisors dearly. Any time not spent on maximizing returns is a missed opportunity.

 

Between managing complex portfolios, navigating the markets, and tending to multiple properties, every minute counts. However, a persistent drain on valuable time often lurks in the shadows: bill payments.

 

Traditionally, bill payment involved manual processes, requiring individuals and advisors to gather bills, write checks, and track payments meticulously. For HNWIs with complex investment holdings, this means dedicating considerable time and resources to monotonous administrative tasks. Moreover, the risk of mistakes and missed payments are ever-present, potentially leading to errors, late fees, and penalties.

 

Enter bill payment apps, which have transformed the landscape by offering intuitive platforms that centralize and automate the entire payment process. These innovative platforms are revolutionizing the way HNWIs and their advisors handle financial obligations, introducing efficiency and automation into a previously cumbersome process. These apps allow users to aggregate bills from various sources, including utilities, credit cards, mortgages, and subscriptions, into a single dashboard. Through secure integrations with bank accounts and financial institutions, bills are automatically retrieved and presented for review, eliminating the need for manual data entry.

 

The Plumb Bill Pay app is the perfect example of a game-changing app, and was developed and built exclusively by Plumb to address the issues and challenges faced by our high-net-worth clients and their advisors.

 

Here’s how bill payment apps, and the Plumb Bill Pay app in particular, save HNWIs and advisors precious hours:

  • Streamlined Workflow: Bill pay apps automatically categorize, prioritize, and schedule bills for payment. This ensures timely settlements without the need for constant oversight, eliminating countless hours spent on paperwork and data reconciliation. Additionally, these apps offer customizable alert systems, notifying users of upcoming due dates, payment confirmations, and unusual activity, thereby enhancing transparency and security.
  • Enhanced Visibility: Gone are the days of scrambling for missing invoices or chasing down overdue payments. Bill payment apps provide real-time visibility into spending patterns and cash flow dynamics, offering personalized insights and recommendations, empowering users to make informed financial decisions. {Read about the Plumb Bill Pay app Commitments module and how it provides clarity and insights.}
  • Reduced Errors: Manual processing is prone to human error. Bill payment apps minimize the risk of mistakes with automated payments, ensuring accuracy and timely payments.
  • Improved Security: Traditional paper-based systems are vulnerable to fraud and theft. Bill payment apps offer robust security measures such as multi-factor authentication and encryption, to safeguard sensitive financial information. {Learn more about just some of the ways Plumb provides the most stringent digital security here.}
  • Advisor Efficiency: For financial advisors, managing bill payments for multiple clients can be a time-consuming burden. Bill payment apps allow advisors to delegate and automate tasks, freeing up their time to focus on strategic financial planning and client relationships.

 

Bill payment apps have emerged as indispensable tools for HNWIs and their advisors, offering unparalleled convenience, efficiency, and security in managing financial transactions. By streamlining the bill payment process, these platforms liberate valuable hours that can be redirected towards more productive endeavors, ultimately empowering individuals to achieve their financial goals with confidence and peace of mind.

 

Know Your Net Worth: Personal Bookkeeping & Bill Paying Services

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Personal bookkeeping & bill paying services help keep your financial life on track.

Do you know your net worth?

It is a simple math equation. Your net worth equals your assets minus your liabilities.

personal bookkeeping

For those with a complex financial life, it can be a challenge to determine this calculation. You must first assign values to all your assets, including investments, brokerage accounts, personal property such as real estate, vehicles, jewelry, etc.  You also need to accurately track your expenses and debt, including loans, bills, taxes due, etc.

When someone’s wealth accumulates to a certain level, many individuals and families turn to a personal bookkeeping service or setup a single family office to help with the day-to-day financial tasks of tracking income/expenses, paying bills and creating consolidated financial reports.

How Can a Personal Bookkeeping Service Help?

Here at Plumb Family CFO, we understand the unique needs of the high-net-worth.  We have been helping affluent families, busy entrepreneurs and retired couples navigate their personal finances by providing a high-level bookkeeping service that is trusted and dependable.

We become your back-office accounting team. Our accounting experts have both corporate and personal bookkeeping backgrounds and deliver white-glove customer service.  By outsourcing bookkeeping to Plumb Family CFO, you will receive a team of accountants to provide services including:

  • Monthly consolidated financial statements to determine your net worth
  • Cash flow reports to track your income and expenses
  • Budget analysis to create a personal budget based on spending habits and long-term goals
  • Bank & credit card reconciliations
  • Entity bookkeeping for sole proprietorships, partnerships or corporations if necessary
  • Payroll administration for your household employees
  • Trust and foundation accounting
  • Bill payment services, including wire transfers, vendor management and capital calls

The setup process is unique for each family.  Personal bookkeeping services are customizable and pricing is based on a monthly fixed-fee basis.  The back-office accounting means that we can work virtually for the majority of the bookkeeping transactions, but also have meetings in person or on the phone to review financial statements and goals.

At Plumb Family CFO, we believe that by knowing your net-worth you can take true control of your wealth. 

What are the benefits of hiring a personal bookkeeper?

  • Reduce your stress and anxiety from managing multiple bills and due dates
  • Get a clear picture of your net-worth to make better decisions regarding your wealth
  • Gain access to a view of your monthly expenses, due dates and income from all your entities, etc
  • Have more time to focus on your family, your business and free time
  • Add the missing piece to your team of trusted advisors 

Want to learn more?  Please contact us for a no-obligation phone call to learn more about our process, pricing and personal bookkeeping services offered.

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