Carol is a widow. Her husband, Dwight, had been the primary earner in the family before he passed away two years ago. They had made a great team and shared much of their life together. However, Dwight had always handled most of the investment decisions.

Dwight did a great job of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s and when he passed away everything went just as Dwight had planned and Carol was able to work through the estate settlement process with little trouble.

Now, a couple years later, statements kept showing up at the house, bonds were being called, cash was building up, and so many of the newsletters and magazines that made perfect sense to Dwight seemed like jibberish to Carol. After receiving a referral from a good friend, Carol was introduced to the team at Buttonwood Financial Group.

We met at Carol’s house and spent several hours reviewing what turned out to be more than a two foot high stack of investment statements that had built up. What Carol needed was a good, old-fashioned spring cleaning and that was exactly where we started.

Once we boxed up the statements and got them back to the office we were able to implement Buttonwood Wealth Management Solutions (BWMS) software so all of Carol's investments, bank accounts, CD's, insurance and estate program were accessible in one location - at any time. There were over fifty-eight different investment accounts, which ranged from assets at brokerage firms to stocks held in dividend reinvestment directly with the companies.

In the weeks that followed we were able to establish two trust accounts and two IRA accounts for all the assets to transfer into. With assets consolidated, we were able to establish a regular withdrawal strategy to create a steady and consistent income for Carol.

Excess cash from called bonds was reinvested, the hassle from piles of statements was eliminated and Carol went from spending time daily trying to track her investments to finding time to travel and be with her grandchildren.