On Tuesday, November 14th, Burns Scalo hosted a breakfast and interactive panel discussion about the partnership of technology, education and infrastructure, and how it’s fueling the tremendous growth taking place in Allegheny County.

The event panelists included State Representative, Jason Ortitay, Pittsburgh International Airport CEO, Christa Cassotis, Allegheny County Executive, Rich Fitzgerald, South Fayette Township Commissioner, Gwen Rodi, Senior Managing Director of Integra Realty Resources, Paul Griffith, and Burns Scalo President, Jim Scalo, who moderated the discussion. The event was sponsored by Waldron Private Wealth, and other Western Pennsylvania industry leaders, and was held on the 2nd floor of the recently completed Burns Scalo office complex, Beacon I, where guests enjoyed spectacular views of the rolling hills and turning foliage of Bridgeville, PA.

A key component of the discussion was the central role connectivity plays in growth and investment. “Linkages” Burns Scalo President, Jim Scalo, pointed out, “Are what move the needle in real estate economics. When two high value points are connected, the areas between them benefit tremendously.” Illustrating the point, was the impact the completion of Interstate 279 had on Cranberry and Wexford, providing both townships with direct access to downtown Pittsburgh. Not only have the populations of Wexford and Cranberry doubled, but they have both experienced extraordinary community investment and job growth, including newly constructed hotels, schools, the Lemieux Sports Complex and numerous restaurants and shopping centers since the highway was completed.

Similar growth is expected to result when the third leg of the “technology triangle” is completed: the Southern Beltway, which will connect Southpointe and Pittsburgh International Airport, and is scheduled to open in early 2020. Comparable to the impact that 279 has had on the many communities surrounding Cranberry and Wexford, not only will Southpointe benefit from the influx in traffic and connectivity, but the many communities along the corridor as well. And leading up to the completion of the beltway, there has already been tremendous growth in South Fayette County, including the Beacon I and the soon to be completed Beacon II office complexes, the construction of Pennsylvania’s first Top Golf complex, as well as numerous hotels, offices, retail outlets and restaurants in Bridgeville and Southpointe. And this only adds to what has been taking place in other parts of the region, like the world headquarters Argo AI is developing in the Strip District, following on the heels of Uber, who built their Advanced Technologies Group offices just up the street, with both being strategically located downtown to mine the cutting edge talent coming out of CMU. Other impactful additions to the Pittsburgh economy include Shell Chemical, who is building an ethylene cracker complex in Potter Township, and Google, who built their corporate campus in Bakery Square. Also worth mentioning is Pittsburgh’s highly competitive bid to land Amazon’s second headquarters, which would bring with it an estimated 50,000 jobs, 250,000 hotel nights and $5 billion in additional investments.

But regardless of whether Pittsburgh wins the Amazon bid or not, Allegheny County is already experiencing significant growth, and is positioned for sustained growth going forward. Our incredible depth of educated, uniquely skilled talent, produced by institutions like Carnegie Mellon, Robert Morris, Duquesne and Pitt means that not only can students who grew up and went to school here find high quality jobs here, but this richness of talent will continue to attract employers to relocate and build their businesses here. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise then, that Pittsburgh was recently named by CNBC as the best city for millennials for job prospects and quality of life. Pittsburgh was also named by USA Today as the best city to retire in, influenced by our world class health care and low crime rate.

With the completion of the Southern Beltway scheduled for the first part of 2020, South Fayette County and all points along the corridor are positioned to experience a significant boom in job growth, investment, property value and population, similar to what Cranberry and Wexford have experienced over the past few decades. The additional route to the airport, and the development along the corridor will only further enhance the infrastructure that companies value so highly when selecting a location to build and operate their businesses: access to the airport and access to the highly skilled talent and culture of the metropolitan area. With Pittsburgh’s world class universities, hospitals and burgeoning technology sector, the region’s future is built not only for a boom now, but for sustained growth far into the future.

Disclaimer

On Thursday, October 12th, Waldron hosted a wonderful group of clients, colleagues and philanthropic organizations at the Pittsburgh Winery, to raise awareness for child homelessness, and at risk youth in Pittsburgh.

Our event centered around an intimate performance by country music recording artist and NY Times best-selling author, Jimmy Wayne, whose own experience with poverty, homelessness and abuse fuels his passion for helping kids across the country. Attendees also heard presentations from three incredible organizations, The Bradley Center, Pace School and Kids Voice, who provide education, therapy and hope to at risk youth in Pittsburgh.

Jimmy captivated our audience with his story, delivered in his own inimitable style, imbued with humor, kindness and strength. He shared many personal, painful moments from his life, from growing up in a shack in rural North Carolina with his grandfather, a neglectful, angry bootlegger whose household was rife with emotional abuse and physical danger, and to eventually being abandoned and homeless by age 13. Jimmy quickly learned the extensive shortcomings of the foster care system, from the temporary nature of placement, to the cold reality of “aging out” when you turn 18, where the neglect, abuse and lack of education foster children often experience provide the foundation for a multitude of harrowing outcomes. Jimmy was extremely fortunate, and was taken in by a compassionate and caring couple at age 16, where he experienced support and love for the first time, and from which he drew the strength to engage in school and develop his musical abilities. Six years later, he was living in Nashville, had a #1 hit on the country music charts, and was performing at venues like Madison Square Garden. But he never forgot about the hopelessness and terror he had experienced growing up in an abusive household or the pain and desperation of being a homeless youth in America. To raise awareness about his experience and the experience of thousands of children across the country suffering the same fate, he began a seven month, 1,700 mile walk from Nashville to Phoenix. During his journey, which he chronicled in his NY Times best-selling autobiography, Walk To Beautiful, he would walk all day, and perform at night at venues along the way. A poignant detail he shared was that while on stage, the audience would be packed with fans, cheering, taking pictures, and reaching out to touch him, but the next day when he was walking, dusty and tired, and looking every bit the homeless youth he had been for much of his life, people driving by wouldn’t even look at him, never mind stopping to see if he needed water or somewhere safe to sleep. When you’re homeless, he pointed out, you are forgotten.

We were very grateful to be able to host Jimmy, as well as representatives from three tremendous organizations operating here in Pittsburgh, working every day to provide at risk youth in our community therapy, education and opportunity. After Jimmy concluded his performance, Waldron President, Matt Helfrich invited Scott Hollander, Executive Director of Kids Voice, Lisa Fox and Dr. Craig Taylor, CEO and Chief Medical Officer, respectively, from the Bradley Center, and Karen Shepherd, CEO of Pace School to share their mission, and their insights into the turmoil many children in Pittsburgh struggle with every day. The organizations’ representatives discussed how emotional disabilities limit a child’s ability to make friends and learn, the prevalence of sexual abuse at the hands of a family member, and the debilitating side-effects of entering the foster care system, such as the separation of siblings, and how the temporary nature of placement can diminish a child’s sense of self worth, and their outlook for the future. At risk children in Pittsburgh, and across the country, are denied the opportunity to experience a nurturing childhood, and instead are subjected to a horrific variety of emotional and physical abuse, and are then sent out into the world without any type of support system or even any acknowledgement of the incredible uphill battle they face.

The intent for our event was to gather leaders and influencers within the community, to shed light on an extremely disadvantaged and vulnerable segment of our population, and to create connections between the fantastic people in attendance. Our sincere thanks to Jimmy, and the teams from Kids Voice, the Bradley Center and Pace School, for their passion and dedication to improving the lives of at risk youth.

To learn more about the work that Jimmy continues to do for at risk youth at Project Meet Me Halfway, or the three amazing groups from Pittsburgh who presented at our event, here is a brief overview of the organizations, and links to their websites.

Project Meet Me Halfway
Mission: to improve the lives of foster children aging out of the system.

Kids Voice
Mission: Kids Voice advocates in court and in the community to ensure a safe and permanent home for abused, neglected, and at-risk children.

The Bradley Center
Mission: The Bradley Center is a home, school and therapy provider for children, youth and families affected by trauma, mental illness, and behavioral health challenges.

Pace School
Mission: To provide educational and therapeutic services that enable any child to thrive.

Disclaimer

Over the past few years, there have been many alarming stories about database breaches, hacks and identify theft.

Without even googling “recent database breaches” I can recall a number of them, just off the top of my head: the Target credit card information breach, Yahoo email and account information breach, Sony, JP Morgan Chase – the list is extensive. Outlaws are everywhere, and all corners of the internet remain to be the Wild, Wild West. And while the threats are well known, many people have essentially thrown in the towel when it comes to protecting themselves online. With the increasing number of accounts we have online, trying to remember all of the passwords is a huge burden, and for that reason, many users make the critical mistake of using slight variations of the same password for all of their accounts. The major flaw with this logic is that all a hacker has to do is crack the code once, and then with a little work, they can access all of your accounts. And if a hacker is able to get into your email account, they can look for statements or other communications from your bank and other financial institutions and target your most sensitive accounts. So what are you supposed to do to protect yourself? My recommendation is simple: sign up for a password manager service. There are many companies offering secure password manager services, and about half of them offer this service for free. At Waldron, we use LastPass, but if you browse through the firms in the link above, you can compare all of the top rated services currently available.

LastPass provides a free password manager service linked to one email address and one computer or device; for multiple devices, you can upgrade to a premium LastPass subscription for $1 a month. Either way, there are major benefits to signing up:

1 – Once you have set up your accounts in LastPass, you can login to one account, and access all of your other accounts, with one click. To maximize your security, have LastPass generate secure passwords for all of your accounts. These passwords will be extremely difficult to hack, as they will have no relationship to any of your personal information or any of your other passwords. They will typically be a long string of unrelated lowercase and uppercase letters, intermixed with random numbers and symbols, none of which you will have to remember. You simply login to LastPass, click on the account you want to open, and LastPass will automatically log you in.

2 – All you have to remember is one password, your LastPass password. The good news is it’s easy to create a secure password if you follow the guidelines provided by LastPass, which you can read in full here, or which can be summarized as follows: to create a strong password use a pass phrase instead of a password. A secure pass phrase is any series of words which do not include your name or any other personal information. An example of a secure pass phrase is: my Car flies the Raptor Volcano. The benefit of using a pass phrase is that it is easy for you to remember, but extremely hard for a hacker to crack. And the more words that are in your pass phrase, the greater the security the pass phrase will provide. And because your pass phrase does not include any personal information, or any other information that could be gathered through a search online, there won’t be any clues to help the hacker out. By memorizing one secure pass phrase, you will be able to protect, and easily access all of your accounts in one location.

While there is no iron clad guarantee that you will never be affected by criminal activity online, by using a password manager and a pass phrase to access your account, you will increase your chances of protecting your accounts and personal information exponentially. And by moving your accounts to a secure password manager, you can greatly simplify the process of accessing them.

Disclaimer

Our firm was built from an accounting perspective, so our wealth management counsel doesn’t focus exclusively on investment management, but rather, we view investments as part of a client’s complete financial picture.

To inform our comprehensive and integrated approach, we need to know about all of the components which make up a client’s financial life. When we enter into a client engagement, we take a deep dive into the client’s estate plan, cash flow needs, insurance coverage, investment portfolio(s), monthly expenses, philanthropic goals and family legacy goals. Once we’ve had a chance to talk through their situation and to ascertain their wealth management goals, we move on to gathering the pertinent documents (investment statements, estate documents, tax returns, insurance policies, etc.), so that we can conduct our analysis, integrate the pieces, and present our findings. Central to this presentation is our customized, private wealth report.

Every private wealth report begins with the client’s unique goals for their lifestyle and legacy, and all of the schedules within are presented in relation to their role in supporting the client’s articulated goals. Each section of the report includes summaries of all pertinent accounts and entities, and is constructed to illustrate how each piece fits into the client’s financial picture. If a client is a corporate executive, we integrate their restricted stock options, deferred compensation and pension structures into their cash flow and investment management strategy, if they’re planning to make a significant lifestyle purchase, we factor the acquisition into their tax and estate planning outlook – whatever is going on in the client’s life, and the lives of other family members who play a role in their wealth planning, we integrate into their wealth report. And as the client’s life changes, whether they plan to retire, sell their business, or purchase a vacation home, we update their projection schedules to illustrate how different strategies might impact the other areas of their wealth. As their life evolves, so does our analysis. Every schedule is analyzed by our investment management and wealth planning teams, and fine-tuned by the lead advisor managing the account, all through the lens of supporting specific client goals. One of the key schedules is the client net worth statement, which presents all liquid and illiquid assets and liabilities, into one easy to digest document, clearly illustrating which elements are part of their estate, and which fall outside. For estate and tax planning purposes, this schedule serves as a big picture overview of the different elements contributing to their tax exemption total, while also providing aggregate account totals for the assets which comprise their net worth.

The unique value of our customized report is that it integrates all the elements of a client’s financial situation, and delivers them summarized, organized, and time stamped in a single location. And as their lives transition, and new needs arise, we work with them to update, replace or create new schedules, reflecting what they want to discuss and review. For us, a customized approach is the only way to provide comprehensive service that truly supports our clients’ needs. And for our clients, Waldron’s customized, private wealth report provides them with a big picture view of their financial situation, and a simplified way to track the progress they are making towards achieving their long term goals.

Most people do not enter into an advisor engagement with a comprehensive understanding of the elements which comprise their financial situation, and even fewer appreciate the relationships between these components, and how each decision they make can impact the other areas of their wealth. Understanding these complex interrelationships is the basis for our approach to financial planning, and drives our analytical process of integrating the components of each client’s unique situation to support their wealth management goals.

Disclaimer