Why Use This Tool?

The Altfest Approach

At Altfest Personal Wealth Management, we want to help you meet your goals. We understand that each person’s lifestyle is unique and requires distinct consideration and planning. That’s why we provide services with a personal touch, whether it’s investing client money or providing advanced financial planning guidance. Clients benefit from our expertise, objectivity and genuine service, which have been a hallmark at our firm since 1983.

Objective Advice

Our fee-only approach is simple and straightforward: we work strictly for our clients and receive only your fees as compensation. We neither sell products nor accept commissions – whether for investments that we purchase for client accounts, or insurance that we recommend. We have a fiduciary responsibility to put our clients’ interests ahead of our own, and we embrace that. We have a genuine concern for our clients and are very sensitive to real or perceived conflicts of interest.

Investment Management Approach

We actively manage diversified, customized portfolios on our clients’ behalf. Having invested client money since 1983, we’ve lived through many economic cycles, and bull and bear markets, from the crash of ’87 to the roaring market of the 90’s.

    Our investment style rests on these key principles:

• Diversification
• A Value Bias
• Broad View
• Frequent Reviews

TPM™

TPM™ stands for Total Portfolio Management, a proprietary investment and financial planning tool that reflects the holistic approach we apply to our clients’ financial lives and the rigor of our analysis. It is an innovative advancement in the field of portfolio construction, grown out of our commitment to move the profession forward and our ties to academia. Rather than designing a portfolio in isolation, we use TPM™ to take into account all your assets and liabilities, including future earnings and spending requirements. We believe this method can help reduce risk and optimize investment returns for you.

Financial Planning

Our financial planning analyses, and in particular our retirement planning analyses, are highly sophisticated. Many members of the firm hold CFP® certificates – the leading designation in the field.

In addition to our depth of general planning knowledge, we have specialists in a number of targeted areas who can help answer your specific questions. We provide information in a straightforward manner and pride ourselves on our ability to listen, to understand your needs and then develop solutions that make financial sense in addition to providing personal comfort and satisfaction to you.

Karen C. Altfest, Ph.D., CFP is Executive Vice President of Altfest Personal Wealth Management. She previously was the Director of the Financial Planning and Investments Program at New School University and the Coordinator of the CFP program at Pace University.

Dr. Altfest frequently speaks about women and money and conducts educational seminars for recent widows and divorced women and people looking to retire.

Dr. Altfest is a former President and Chairperson of the New York Chapter of the Financial Planning Association. She is also a former Chairperson of the Northeast Region of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors. She is author of Keeping Clients for Life, (John Wiley & Sons) and co-author of Lew Altfest Answers Almost All Your Questions About Money, (McGraw-Hill), which was named one of the best financial planning books by Money magazine.

Worth magazine named her one of the Best Financial Advisers in the US from 1996-1998. She has been named one of the 120 Best Financial Advisers by Medical Economics and one of "100 Top Advisors" by Mutual Funds magazine in September 2002. In 2008 and 2009 she was listed on Wealth Manager's "50 Distinguished Women in Wealth Management" and was featured on the 2008 issue's cover. From 2006-2009, Altfest Personal Wealth Management was named a "Leading Registered Investment Advisory Firm" by Financial Advisor magazine.

Dr. Altfest is a graduate of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she received her Ph.D. She also holds MA and BA degrees from Hunter College and is a graduate of McGill University. Karen Altfest is a member of the Financial Women’s Association and serves as Treasurer of Temple Shaaray Tefila.