About Global Investment Strategies · Tucson, Arizona
Estate, business, and retirement planning that works as one plan
Founded in Tucson in 2009, GIS is built for business owners and families whose planning has grown past any one professional's desk. We work alongside the professionals you already have, so the documents, the tax position, the business structure, and the income plan all rest on the same set of numbers.
Doug McClureFounder & Managing Partner
Jay CliffordPartner & Vice PresidentHow the firm started
Where the coordination model came from
Global Investment Strategies started in Tucson in 2009. It didn’t start in financial services.
Founder Doug McClure came from land development and business turnaround, work where you inherit a situation someone else built, find out which parts contradict each other, and figure out the order to fix them in. That habit turned out to be the same one financial coordination requires.
It is also why the firm was never organized around selling a product line or gathering assets under management. It was organized around reading everything a client already has and finding where one piece assumes something another one contradicts. Seventeen years later that is still where every engagement starts.
Doug and partner Jay Clifford are the two people you would actually work with. Meet the financial advisors behind the firm.
What the work looks like
What coordination actually means
Most plans are built one piece at a time, by different people, in different years. Each piece is usually right on its own. Coordination is checking that they still agree with each other.
The beneficiary form and the trust
A trust says the estate divides three ways. The IRA beneficiary form, signed years earlier and never revisited, names one child. The form decides it, because retirement accounts pass outside the will. Nobody drafted anything wrong. Nobody read the two together.
The buy-sell and the valuation
A buy-sell agreement sets a purchase price using a valuation from the year it was signed. The company has grown since. The agreement still binds every owner to the older number, and the life insurance funding it was sized against that number too.
The withdrawal order and the tax bracket
A retirement plan sets which accounts to draw from first. A tax plan sets which bracket to stay under. Built separately, a withdrawal sequence can push income past a threshold that changes what Medicare costs and how much of a Social Security benefit is taxed.
None of these are failures of the professional who drafted the document. Each one is what happens when good work, done separately and years apart, was never read side by side. That reading is the work we do.
Illustrative examples shown for educational purposes. They do not describe a specific client engagement.
How we meet
We come to you
The conversation goes better somewhere you already know. GIS is a service area firm, so the meeting travels to you. Three options, depending on what you are comfortable with.
At your kitchen table
Most of the productive conversations happen at home. Your documents are already there, and so is the life the plan is meant to protect. It is easier to talk about what happens to the house when you are sitting in it.
At your place of business
For owners and executives, meeting on site means we see the operation we are planning around, and you don’t lose half a day to a drive. Succession conversations in particular tend to go better in the building.
Somewhere neutral
If you would rather not host, we use private conference space around Tucson. Quiet, secure, and no one from your office walking past the glass. It is also the easier room when adult children or business partners are joining.
We serve Tucson, Oro Valley, Catalina Foothills, Marana, and the surrounding communities.
Who we work with
We’re a fit for some situations and not others
We keep the roster small, which means being honest about where we’re useful. These are the situations where coordination earns its keep.
Owners three to five years from an exit
Early enough that the valuation, the buy-sell, the key people, and the tax structure can still be shaped. Owners who wait until they’re ready to leave have the fewest options left.
Families whose documents were written years apart
Multi-generational questions, trusts, beneficiary designations, business interests, and what actually transfers cleanly. Usually the documents exist. Usually nobody has checked whether they agree.
Retirees turning savings into a paycheck
The transition into retirement changes the whole problem: which account to draw first, when to claim, how to keep a market year from becoming a lifestyle year. Different work than growing the balance was.
People whose net worth is mostly one business or property
A business, a property, a concentrated position. When most of the net worth is illiquid, every other decision bends around that fact, and liquidity has to be planned for before it is needed rather than found when it is.
If your situation is genuinely simple, we’ll say so. That’s a short conversation, and a free one.
Next step
Start with a conversation about what you already have
No pitch and no product. Bring what you already have, and we will go through it with you at home, at your office, or somewhere neutral. If we are not the right fit, we will say so in the first conversation.
Schedule a ConsultationNo obligation · Coordinated with your advisors · Tucson, Arizona