ATS Advanced Trustee Strategies

As a very long time client of 13 years, I have been very happy, appreciative and grateful for ATS, Sandeep Varma, Steve Musser and the entire staff. As a young widow for the last 15 years, their knowledge, expertise and recommendations have provided me and my very young children long term goals and financial strategies to assist me in growing and protecting my assets. The quarterly reviews are pivotal in collaborating with current financial trends, the children’s ongoing life and educational needs, as well as planning for my future retirement. The entire staff are very professional, extremely helpful in completing documents and forms necessary, while also coordinating very technical, complex estate plans with my own Estate Attorney and CPA. Originally working with several other investment advisors, I found ATS holds the highest integrity and due diligence in the Financial Advisory Industry, in my opinion.

I attended a seminar put on by Sandeep Varma’s company called Advanced Trustee Strategies (ATS). The 3 services that ATA offers, that I am aware of, review Living Trusts, manage stock market investments and Charitable Remainder Trusts. I have comments on each. I believe my figures in here are accurate but I do not guarantee them. I encourage the readers to do the math themselves.
LIVING TRUSTS
My Living Trust was reviewed by Sandeep’s representative. His review found many errors and deficiencies and for $ 3,000 he said he could fix them. I paid that much for an Attorney, with many years of experience setting up Trusts, to draft my family Trust many years ago and he had just reviewed and updated it within the last month. It was hard for me to believe that my Living Trust still needed $ 3,000 worth of upgrades! I did not have the upgrade as it just didn’t seem right to me.
MANAGE INVESTMENTS
At one meeting Sandeep praised one of his investments as being supper great. I fell for it. It sounded so good I invested $ 100,000. Within 7 months I had lost $ 12,000! This is equivalent to an annual loss of 21%! And this was when the overall market was hitting new highs almost every week. I get a call from some ATA person asking me what I wanted to do: sell the stock and keep the money, sell the stock, called Tactical Core and buy Tactical Equity or just hold the stock and ride it out. Apparently others were in the same boat as me. Imagine, I pay Sandeep a fee of 2% per year to manage my account and this guy is asking me what I wanted to do! Wouldn’t you think Sandeep should be involved and discuss these options with me? Regarding investment fees I watched a program on PBS (Public Broadcasting System) Frontline series called the Retirement Gamble. That program said that it is a proven fact that when you pay a 2% fee to have your Brokerage Account professionally managed you end up with ¹⁄₃ of the profits and the broker ends up with ²⁄₃ of the profit. Think of it, you put up all the money, take all the risks and receive ¹⁄₃ of the profits. That program went on to say that actively managed Mutual funds do not beat index funds and Index funds are much cheaper. (Index funds are tied to the S&P 500, or the Dow Jones etc.) Index funds rise and fall as these broad market indicators rise and fall.
CHARITABLE REMAINDER TRUST
We started with a meeting where Sandeep described how CRT’s work. Basically you put a mortgage free property into a trust that is then owned by a charity that you select. The charity, actually you, sells the property tax free and Sandeep invests the money. The charity’s Trust pays you a fixed percentage of the value remaining in the Trust annually. The percentage of return is determined by your age, government guidelines and perhaps your own optimism. The example provided by Sandeep calls for a 7% return on and a .5% growth of the fund. I received a chart from ATA or their associates that showed that a 1.2 million dollar property will produce $ 1,325,875 for the charity after 20 years and $ 1,762,246 (this includes $ 66,294 in tax savings) is produced for the investor after 25% taxes, according to Sandeep’s figures. Of course these results are not guaranteed. The problem here is that these predictions ignore some very big expenses. First there is property selling costs, start up costs, annual bookkeeping costs and Sandeep’s fee of 1.5%. aif you include all these costs then the charity only receives $ 827,606. The investor receives only $ 1,080,613. Now comes another wrinkle. I get a call from Sandeep and one of his associates telling me that if I can close the deal before the end of the year that an Annuity company will «give» me $ 60,000. What they didn’t tell me is that this gift will cost the Trust $ 438,278 over the 20 year period. Now the total fees for the Trust (Sandeeps’s new fee of 1.85% Bookkeeping fees (minor) and the Annuity company fees which start at 2.85%) will total over $ 800,000 over the 20 year period! That started me thinking who is the real charity here! Is that much management really needed? I was then told that Sandeep’s fee (1.85%) is paid by the Annuity company. I E-​mailed Sandeep and asked how that is possible. Does the Annuity company give up over ½ of their 2.85% to pay Sandeep’s 1.85% fee? Sandeep did not respond. I think they mean they take Sandeep’s fee out of the balance in the Trust account and give it to him. My figures herein are based on that assumption. Now if you further include the Annuity’ Company’s fee, Sandeep’s increased fee you come up with a result of $ 443,228 to the charity and $ 871,813, after 25% taxes to the investor and of course the approximately $ 800,000 worth of fees that go primarily to Sandeep and the Annuity Company. If the Annuity Company takes over the investments (that’s what they do) then, it appears to me, sandeep almost has a free ride! Such a deal! There are much better ways to f

ATS does an outstanding job of educating their clients through their many seminars and workshops. They also provide customized service by taking the time to learn about your situation and offering several scenarios that can help you reach your goals. As a client since 2006, we have referred many clients to ATS and they have also been very pleased with the excellent customer service.