Firm:
Rosemary Frank Financial, LLC
Job Title:
Managing Member
Biography:
Rosemary Frank is the Principal of Rosemary Frank Financial, LLC, a fee-only Registered Investment Adviser. As such, she provides services in the areas of wealth management, divorce financial consulting, and other attorney support services. Bound by the fiduciary standard, she always puts the client's best interests ahead of all other considerations.
Her wealth management services are dedicated to helping individuals and families understand how money really works. A large part of her practice is focused on meeting the needs of women with attention to the specific challenges they face. She provides both financial education and guidance throughout all stages of life, but particularly following divorce, death of a loved one, or job loss. These can be extremely difficult times when the special patience and understanding she provides are appreciated.
As a divorce financial practitioner, Rosemary has worked on hundreds of divorce cases providing litigation support, expert witness testimony, or financial neutral consultant services. She has extensive experience with high net worth situations as well as highly contested divorce. Rosemary has emerged as one of the leading divorce financial practitioners in the country and regularly contributes to the development and refinement of professional procedures, protocols, and advanced thinking at a national level.
In addition to divorce-related attorney support, Rosemary is able to provide investment advisory services which are in support of and complementary to legal services in the areas of estate planning, business protection, litigation award management, inheritance management, and trust fund management. She is also an approved provider of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) on financial topics.
Prior to her career in financial services, Rosemary held a number of management and executive positions in the corporate environment. During her corporate tenure, she completed extensive business research and opportunity evaluations for a number of publicly traded firms in a variety of manufacturing and service industries. The focus of this work was on markets for new products/services and/or new geographies, new adaptations and uses for existing products, and merger and acquisition analyses. She also managed a host of ongoing activities to monitor the respective industry trends of key customer/client clusters. She regularly prepared critical presentation content for C-suite executives to deliver to public, professional, and investor audiences, as well as market and business outlook discussions for inclusion in SEC filings and annual reports.
Rosemary received her B.S. degree from Rochester Institute of Technology and was awarded an MBA by the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She holds the designations of Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA), Advanced Divorce Financial Analyst (ADFA), Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) and Master Analyst in Financial Forensics (MAFF). She is also a TN State Supreme Court Listed Rule 31 Family Law Mediator, specially trained in domestic violence. As an educator, she has authored several Continuing Legal Education (CLE) courses, on the financial and tax issues of divorce, which have been approved for credits by the TN Commission on Continuing Legal Education for attorneys and the TN Alternative Dispute Resolution Commission for mediators. In addition, she previously held an active General Securities licenses as well as a General Securities Principal (supervisory) license for a number of years before transitioning to the fee-only advisory service model. Most recently, she was approved as an Arbitrator, for securities transactions disputes, by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Education:
BS, Business, Rochester Institute of Technology
MBA, Business Administration, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Assets Under Management:
$2 million
Fee Structure:
Fee-Only
CRD Number:
4787101
Insurance License:
#817517
Disclaimer:
Rosemary Frank Financial, LLC is a registered investment adviser. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Rosemary Frank is not an attorney and does not provide legal advice.
I commend you for acknowledging that you may have made a mistake in buying the condo. However, consider it a place to live, not an investment, so do not put any more money into it. At this point, you are living with very limited means and really should be more focused on having an emergency fund equal to six months expenses and considering your long range financial outlook. I suggest making sure that the $5,000 is in a simple savings account where it is not at risk, rather than any kind of "investment" where it would be at risk. You are not in financial condition to be taking on risk of losing any of it. Spending it on the condo would also be a risk because you can not be assured that it would increase the sale price dollar for dollar. Also, do not be in a hurry to sell the condo because you will most likely not get a higher price than what you paid, but will still have the selling expenses to pay.
Looking to the long term, you need to increase your earning capacity. Consider getting a second job and put all of that income towards building your emergency fund to six months worth of expenses. Then redirect the second income to save for some kind of occupational training or education that will qualify you for a higher paying job. Then of course, use the money for that training. Quit the second job and use that time for your schooling. Thereafter, you will have created a whole new life for yourself. Good Luck.
Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this question. Business valuation is a specialty that relatively few CPAs, and even fewer financial advisors, are qualified to do. In my practice as a divorce financial consultant, I often use the work product of a business valuator and am familiar with the details, research, and alternative methods of valuation they must consider before forming their conclusions. It's complicated. The professional you need will have at least one of the following credentials: ABV (Accredited in Business Valuation), CVA (Certified Valuation Analyst) or AVA (Accredited Valuation Analyst).
You don't mention exactly why you need a valuation or if the business is your own. In any event, if a valuation is important enough to do, then I believe it is important enough to do it right. Find a professional business valuator in your area.
It sounds like you are an aggressive saver if you feel as though you could save another $70,000 over the next two years if you put "all" your money in the stock market now. This does not need to be an either/or decision. I suggest continuing to save for a home and begin to invest. Both have risk, but there is risk in doing nothing as well, opportunity risk and inflation risk. You don't mention where you are in your relationship and whether your future spouse would participate in the selection of a home at this time. I strongly suggest that be the case. And as you further develop your long range plans, you may find that your needs and/or preferences are different from what you now think. It would not be prudent to buy now, then sell in two years because the house or location is no longer desirable, for whatever reason.
I would say, invest half and continue to save, dividing savings between house fund and investments until you are ready to begin your new married life and do it together. The fact that you are willing to literally start over with the house fund tells me you are not really there yet and maybe feeling pressure regarding what you "should" do or overly influenced by local economics. Also, put yourself in your future spouse's position of prospectively being told something like, "I just bought this place and can't sell it so soon. This is where you will live."
Of course this decision cannot be made in isolation. Consider your other financial circumstances: family obligations, your age, health, job security, retirement savings, etc. In general, I think you have a good idea with leveraging because mortgage money is the cheapest money you can get. Investing the proceeds from your current home, for the long term, may well result in returns that exceed the cost of funds, i.e., mortgage interest. Also, you need to consider that paying cash for the house has its own cost as well, that being the lost opportunity cost. Money tied up in home equity is money that cannot be invested and you thereby forego potential investment returns. In addition, I prefer to see people keep their options open. More liquidity provides more options for dealing with life's unexpected events. Also, consider a 30-year mortgage so as to not burden youself with the higher payment of the 15-year. Again, keeping your options open, you can make extra principal payments as often as you like, and effectively pay it off in 15 years, but fall back to the lower payment as needed. The difference in interest rates may not be that great if you are in good overall financial condition with an excellent credit score.
What you are contemplating in "going public" is the process of an Initial Public Offering or IPO. This is a complex process that could involve a number of professionals such as an investment bank as an underwriter, external auditor, stock transfer agent, broker dealer, and others. The best place to start is to contact an attorney with a speicalty in securities law who can explain the process, what their role would be, whether your firm would qualify as a publicly traded business, what securities laws and regulations you will be subject to, and guide you through the process if it would indeed be in your best interst to do so.
While your firm's growth is admirable, you fit the definition of a small business, as per the Small Business Administration, until you reach revenue levels in excess of $35 million. As such, an IPO may be out of your reach. I'm aslo concerned that you did not mention what your profitability is and how that compares to other firms in your industry. As an alternative, you might consider taking in private investors who would contribute capital that could be used to fuel further growth. Contracts and agreements would be required and, again, an attorney is your best resource for this.