Methodology - Meridian Slate Financial Analysis

Philosophy and Foundation

Our analytical approach is built on the principle that financial decisions deserve careful examination rather than quick judgment. Major life transitions involve multiple variables, uncertain futures, and personal priorities that don't fit neatly into standardized frameworks.

We believe that individuals make better decisions when they understand the trade-offs involved and have examined multiple potential outcomes. This doesn't mean achieving certainty, which is impossible with future events. Rather, it means reducing uncertainty to the extent possible through systematic analysis.

The foundation of our work is personalized examination. While we draw on broad experience and established analytical methods, every engagement starts with understanding your specific circumstances. What works for someone else may not work for you, and generic advice often misses crucial details of individual situations.

We also believe in transparency throughout the analytical process. You should understand how conclusions are reached, what assumptions underlie the analysis, and where uncertainty remains. This approach respects your intelligence and ensures you can make informed decisions based on clear information.

Evidence-Based

Analysis grounded in established financial principles and empirical research rather than speculation or market timing.

Personalized

Every analysis tailored to your specific circumstances, priorities, and risk tolerance rather than generic recommendations.

Transparent

Clear explanation of analytical methods and assumptions so you understand how conclusions are reached.

The Meridian Slate Analytical Framework

Situation Understanding

We begin by developing a comprehensive understanding of your current position and the decision you're facing. This involves examining your financial circumstances, understanding your priorities, and clarifying what you're trying to accomplish.

This phase isn't just about gathering numbers. It's about understanding context: why this decision matters to you, what trade-offs you're willing to consider, and what constraints you're working within. The quality of the entire analysis depends on getting this foundation right.

Framework Development

With your situation understood, we build analytical frameworks specific to your question. This might involve cash flow modeling, scenario planning, or comparative analysis depending on what you're trying to decide.

The frameworks are tailored to your circumstances rather than using generic templates. A liquidity analysis for someone considering early retirement looks different from one for someone planning an entrepreneurial venture, even though both involve examining cash positions.

Scenario Modeling

We examine multiple potential outcomes by modeling different scenarios. This includes both optimistic and conservative assumptions, as well as variations in key variables that could affect results.

Scenario modeling helps identify which factors matter most to your decision and how sensitive outcomes are to different assumptions. It also reveals where additional information or contingency planning might be valuable.

Trade-off Analysis

Every financial decision involves trade-offs. We make these explicit by examining what you gain and what you give up with different approaches. This includes both quantifiable factors and qualitative considerations.

Understanding trade-offs helps you make decisions that align with your priorities. What looks optimal in one dimension may have costs in another, and you're in the best position to judge which trade-offs are acceptable for your situation.

Results Presentation

We present findings in clear, accessible format with emphasis on what matters most for your decision. This includes written analysis, visual representations where helpful, and discussion of key considerations.

The presentation focuses on helping you understand your options rather than directing you toward a particular choice. We explain what the analysis shows, where uncertainty remains, and what factors might influence your decision.

Ongoing Clarification

As you think through the analysis, questions often emerge. We remain available to clarify findings, explore additional scenarios if circumstances change, or discuss how new information might affect the analysis.

This isn't about ongoing management, but rather ensuring you fully understand the analytical perspective and can apply it effectively to your decision-making process.

Professional Standards and Research Foundation

Our analytical approach draws on established research in financial planning, behavioral economics, and decision theory. We stay current with academic literature and professional standards to ensure our methods reflect current understanding of effective financial analysis.

The CFA credential provides a foundation in analytical rigor and ethical standards. This includes comprehensive training in financial analysis, portfolio theory, and quantitative methods. However, we recognize that professional credentials are starting points rather than endpoints for expertise.

We adhere to fiduciary standards in our client relationships, meaning we act in your interests rather than promoting particular products or solutions. Our compensation comes from analytical services, not from implementing recommendations or earning commissions on financial products.

Research-Informed Methods

Our analytical frameworks incorporate insights from academic research on financial decision-making, risk assessment, and behavioral patterns that affect financial choices.

Professional Standards

We maintain CFA Institute standards for professional conduct, including objectivity, competence, and confidentiality in all client engagements.

Quality Assurance

Every analysis undergoes internal review to ensure accuracy, completeness, and clarity before presentation. We check calculations and verify assumptions systematically.

Continuing Education

Ongoing professional development ensures our methods remain current with evolving research, regulatory changes, and emerging analytical approaches.

Limitations of Conventional Financial Guidance

Traditional financial advice often relies on standardized recommendations based on broad demographic categories or asset accumulation goals. While this approach has efficiency advantages, it can miss crucial details of individual circumstances that significantly affect which choices are appropriate.

Product-focused approaches tend to start with solutions and work backward to problems, rather than beginning with thorough understanding of your situation. This can lead to implementing standard strategies that may not fit your specific needs or priorities.

Many conventional approaches also underemphasize scenario analysis and trade-off examination. Without exploring multiple potential outcomes and understanding what you're giving up with different choices, it's difficult to make truly informed decisions.

Our methodology addresses these limitations by starting with your situation rather than predetermined solutions, examining multiple scenarios systematically, and making trade-offs explicit throughout the analysis. The focus remains on understanding your specific circumstances rather than fitting you into standard categories.

What Makes Our Approach Distinctive

Analytical Depth Without Ongoing Management

We provide thorough analysis for specific decisions rather than ongoing portfolio management. This focused approach allows deep examination of particular questions without requiring comprehensive financial relationship. You get the analytical perspective you need for the decision at hand.

Scenario-Based Rather Than Point Estimates

Instead of providing single projections, we examine multiple scenarios to show how outcomes vary with different assumptions. This approach acknowledges uncertainty honestly while providing useful ranges for decision-making.

Transparent Methodology

We explain our analytical process clearly so you understand how conclusions are reached. This transparency allows you to assess the reasoning, question assumptions, and apply similar frameworks to future decisions.

Independence from Product Sales

Our compensation comes entirely from analytical services rather than product sales or implementation. This structure aligns our interests with providing quality analysis rather than directing you toward particular financial products.

Personalization at Scale

While we serve clients worldwide, each analysis is built specifically for your situation. We've developed efficient processes for gathering information and building models without sacrificing the personalization that makes analysis valuable.

How Progress and Results Are Tracked

The success of financial analysis isn't always immediately measurable, since outcomes unfold over time and depend partly on factors beyond anyone's control. However, we can assess whether analysis achieves its intended purpose: helping you make more informed decisions.

We track client satisfaction systematically through post-engagement feedback. This includes whether the analysis addressed the questions you brought, whether findings were presented clearly, and whether you felt more confident about your decision after reviewing the analysis.

For clients who return for subsequent analyses, we can compare actual outcomes against scenarios that were modeled in earlier work. This provides valuable feedback on the accuracy of our modeling approaches and helps refine methods over time.

We also monitor the decision usefulness of our analysis by asking whether clients found the scenarios helpful, whether the trade-off analysis clarified their thinking, and whether the analytical perspective influenced how they approached their decision. These indicators help us understand what aspects of analysis provide the most value.

Realistic Expectations

Financial analysis provides perspective and frameworks for thinking, not certainty about future outcomes. Markets fluctuate, circumstances change, and unforeseen events occur. What analysis can do is help you understand the range of possibilities and make choices that are sound given what's knowable at the time.

Success looks like making decisions you feel confident about because you've examined them thoroughly, not because you have guarantees about results. The goal is informed choice, not prediction of unknowable futures.

Expertise Built Through Diverse Experience

Meridian Slate's analytical methodology has been developed and refined over more than a decade of examining diverse financial situations. This experience spans liquidity position analysis, career transition planning, charitable giving strategy, and various other financial decision contexts. Each engagement has contributed to our understanding of effective analytical approaches.

Our work with clients across different countries and financial systems has provided perspective on how principles apply in varying contexts. While financial markets and regulations differ by jurisdiction, the fundamental analytical frameworks for examining personal financial decisions remain broadly applicable with appropriate customization.

The CFA credential represents a foundation in analytical methods and professional standards, but practical expertise comes from applying these principles to real situations. Over hundreds of client engagements, we've seen which analytical approaches provide the most clarity and which aspects of analysis clients find most valuable for their decision-making.

We've also learned that the most effective financial analysis combines quantitative rigor with understanding of personal circumstances and priorities. Numbers matter, but so does context. The best analytical work illuminates both what the data shows and what considerations extend beyond pure calculation.

This accumulated experience informs every new analysis we undertake. While each client situation is unique, patterns emerge across engagements that help us identify relevant scenarios to examine, potential pitfalls to consider, and analytical approaches likely to provide useful perspective.

Experience the Meridian Slate Methodology

If you're facing a financial decision that would benefit from systematic analysis, we're available to discuss whether our approach might be helpful for your situation.

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A Systematic Approach to Financial Analysis