While many experienced financial planners encourage their clients to plan for retirement, Christina Winch says she takes lessons from her own book and advises her clients to plan instead for a rewarding life that may include continuing to work.

Winch, CEO of Winch Financial Services, based in Appleton, Wis., has been an investment advisor for 30 years. Now, at the age of 65, when most successful people would be thinking of retiring, the CFP licensee is expanding the financial services companies that she created. She advises her clients to stay active, and maybe working, as well.

"If they find their job is rewarding, like I do, I tell them they should keep working," Winch says. "The impact of taxes, an increasing life expectancy and inflation all contribute to eating away at a retirement fund. If you enjoy your work, why not continue?"

Having recently suffered through the death of her husband, Dr. Timothy Winch, she and three of her children have immersed themselves in the three companies that make up Winch Financial, including Winch Advisory Services LLC, a fee-only registered investment advisor catering to high-net-worth clients with at least $500,000 in investable funds. Included under that umbrella is the company that started Winch's career, Winch & Associates LLC, a branch office of Woodbury Financial, based in Woodbury, Minn., that provides commission investment products, tax-deferred annuities and a variety of life insurance products. Winch Insurance and Tax Services rounds out the mix.

Winch, who began her career as a high school English teacher, earned a teaching degree from the University of Wisconsin. She practiced a holistic style of teaching English and now brings that same whole-life approach to investing.

"I had worked for J.P. Morgan Trust Company in the summers, and I started talking with teachers and administrators about where we were (financially) and where we were going. They used insurance companies and fixed accounts for 403(b) accounts and didn't even realize they could use mutual funds. I also found people in debt, and you cannot have peace in a family if you are arguing about money," she remembers. "We started talking about inflation and what dollar cost averaging is."

In addition to her background as a teacher, Winch is equally influenced by her Christian beliefs, which she brings to her own investing and to her clients' investments, if they want it. She has also been graced with musical talents, which she passed on to her children, and which still infuse her family life.

She says each attribute or belief helps round her out as a person and helps her create an investment practice in which human beings are acknowledged as distinct individuals with different needs and goals. She dispenses her advice from offices that clients say look more like comfortable living rooms than business premises. She still teaches classes at the University of Wisconsin, but instead of English and French, she now dwells on such things as investments, trusts and taxes.

"'Investing in Confidence' was our slogan in the beginning and still is today," says Winch. "In class, we talk about debt planning and how to start saving. The Christian influence comes into financial planning because it means taking your gifts and investing them wisely so you have a life worthy of the calling you have received."

She has earned degrees from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and the College of Financial Planning in Denver, as well as licenses to handle insurance and sell securities. But shortly after entering the financial world, she knew the real growth in the profession was in advising clients on their investments and helping them build and transfer wealth. She hired two portfolio managers and then made the major shift from all commission-based load products to no-load investments and fee-based advice. She eventually began serving mostly high-net-worth clients and has attained a 98.5% client retention rate.

Her fees are based on the amount of the clients' investments, such as 1% for $1 million in investments, or can otherwise be based on the discrete planning services she provides, services ranging in cost from $4,000 to $12,000 for an initial plan and then $1,500 a year thereafter.

Winch Advisory Services grew from 187 clients in 2005 to 224 the next year and 449 in 2007, while assets under management increased from $140 million two years ago to $183 million in 2006 and $235 million last year. One of her sons, Sam, is the head of Winch & Associates and manages the client relationships for that arm of the business.

Her daughter, Tanya, is opening a branch office for the firm in Austin, Texas, and her youngest son, Adam, recently graduated from college and is helping out at Winch Financial until he enters law school, after which he may return to the family business.

Winch recently developed new departments for research and development and marketing and now has three analysts and three accountants. Among the firm's clients are several current and former members of the Green Bay Packers football team and other major league athletes, as well as entrepreneurs and retirees. In addition to growing and preserving money, Winch says she encourages clients to consider how to wisely share their wealth.

"As we grew as a firm, we started to delve into estate planning, including disability and long-term care planning. But just as important was planning charitable giving. Many people have no idea how to approach charitable giving, but many are not happy unless they share their wealth," she says.   

"We have had an 80-year-old invested in annuities who wanted to leave $300,000 to charity but wanted to use the money, too. We put him in a charitable remainder trust to meet his goals," she recalls.

Winch's clients have brought other diverse types of problems to the firm. For professional athletes, such as her Green Bay football player clients, a lucrative but short career has to be used as the basis for a lifetime of income.

"An NFL player may play for five years and have another five years under contract but he often may not play because he is injured. He has to consider how much money he needs to live on, whether he has to change his lifestyle, and how does he make that income last," she warns.

To help clients accomplish their goals, Winch has developed a number of investment plans with the help of Jeff Thomasson and John Wypiszinski, two of her investment advisors. For instance, the Monday Fund is a systematic investment strategy of small and midsize common stocks selected by Thomasson based on his quantitative research. Changes are made by selling any stocks performing poorly and buying strong ones with the goal of creating aggressive returns for separately managed accounts.

Winch Financial Services also puts clients in absolute return funds that are safe and reflect almost no market volatility. The balance between these funds and riskier ones will depend on each client's needs. About half of a client's investments may be in accounts with more risk while another substantial part will be in ultrasafe accounts.

"We use fund managers who have low volatility rates, even when there is great volatility in the market. We want to consistently generate a positive return. Timber or real estate are examples of alternative investments that could be included in our absolute return strategy," she says.

Clients also are advised to have a dynamic portfolio. Aggressive investors will be directed to emerging markets like China, as well as developed international markets. Clients facing large estate tax burdens in the future may want to have a revocable trust and plan some insurance strategies.         Sometimes high-net-worth clients can have a $2 million capital gain that is taxable from the sale of a single stock. Winch might advise using as much of the proceeds from the sale as possible for charitable giving, then selling down each year to offset the losses. But each decision depends on the individual investor.

"You cannot just plop a portfolio on a client. I have been successful because I listen. Although our actual returns vary by client, we have generally outperformed the broad equity market during the past five years," Winch says. "In 2007, an especially volatile year for stocks, we focused on managing risk and preserving value for our clients. Over the course of the year, investment performance was once again well ahead of the broad equity market."

To keep up with the constantly evolving financial planning industry, Winch Financial Services is launching its own alternative investment fund which aims to offer consistent, positive investment returns in most market environments with an emphasis on low volatility and preservation of capital.             Although the fund will be capable of generating equity-like returns, its volatility will be tempered to be more consistent with the overall bond market.

Although Winch is in her office from early morning until late, she is far from one dimensional. A singer like her husband, Winch raised her children in a home filled with music. Each plays an instrument, writes music or is in a band, although their musical styles differ. Sam is an alternative folk musician and has written songs for television's Grey's Anatomy. Tanya is a country rock musician, while Adam creates new wave music. Even Thomasson, who was "adopted" into the family, is a jazz fusion artist who is producing an album.

In fact, Sam, now a Winch vice president, started as a songwriter and guitar player, but decided he needed something a little more stable, so he joined his mother's firm.

"I was attracted to the financial world, but I did not know what I was getting into at first," Sam Winch says. "Now I have been here for 10 years and I realize how unique my mother is. She has maintained her sovereignty and independence in the midst of wirehouses trying to gobble everyone up. What we are able to do with our internal analysts is develop portfolios with more subtlety.

"We generally use mutual funds, but we can get sector-specific," he continues. "When energy began leading the market, we put 5% or 10% of clients' portfolios in energy stocks. In a poor market like we currently face, we will go to utilities, which have less volatility than some other investments. We report back to every client a minimum of three or four times a year."

Some of Winch's clients do not really care whether they get frequent reports. Don and Kathy Krueger of Oshkosh, Wis., have a couple of million dollars invested with Winch. "I tell her everything is in her hands," Don Krueger says. "If she needs to make changes, she knows she does not need to ask me. I know we have three international funds that have done well, but I don't know a lot of details and I don't feel like I need to keep watch. I took a lump sum retirement from my utility company position because she said I would do better investing the money than having an annuity, and that has proven true."

Krueger has two daughters and six grandchildren who he anticipates will someday inherit a substantial amount of money from him and his wife, thanks in part to Winch and her associates. He says visiting her office is like meeting with extended family in a living room.

The Kruegers, like Mel "Buddy" Patterson and his wife Shirley, met Winch through her class at the University of Wisconsin. Both couples wanted to learn more so they could handle their investments themselves, but they ended up turning their money over to Winch.

"I wasn't happy with my old advisor because he was losing too much money for me and I was not sleeping at night. I wanted to do it on my own," remembers Patterson, an Appleton resident who is a retiree from a Wisconsin paper company. "But I saw that Christina is really smart and I thought maybe I should let her handle it. She has completely regained the $300,000 my old advisor lost and I am sleeping a lot better now, even in this turbulent market."

Winch plans to weather the current market for all of her clients. She is expanding and redecorating her Appleton offices to make them even homier. In addition to her office work, she makes time for a regular radio broadcast on a Christian network where she offers financial advice to average people or those in financial trouble, and she plans to continue teaching. New clients are obtained by referral only, and she plans on opening five more offices in the next few years in New York; California; Madison, Wis.; Chicago; and Atlanta, where she already has clients located. The busy schedule does not scare her.

After three decades in the industry, she says, she has no plans to slow down. "I retired once, in 1990, and I have no plans to do it again," says Winch.