Wealth Management in Orange County
Estate and wealth management, where financial advice is focused on what you keepWho We Advise
Wealth management goes beyond mere maintenance; it is a dynamic journey of growth and refinement during working years and sustainability in retirement.
Your financial needs evolve with each life stage, and as you accumulate wealth, the strategies for a W-2 employee, a 1099 independent contractor, and an independent business owner within a corporate framework vary significantly.
When you transition into retirement, how you led your professional life greatly influences your next steps, whether it’s staging your 401(k) for distribution, liquidating shares, or negotiating the sale of a business.
We are here to guide you in optimizing your wealth management at every stage, ensuring your decisions lead to the best possible outcomes as your trusted partner and navigator.
Small Business Owners
You took the more difficult path professionally; let’s take the difficulty out of the path ahead ⇒
Business Professionals
Let’s have the discussions your HR department never will ⇒
Retirees / Pre-Retirees
You have decided to retire, or are just about to, let’s make sure it’s all that you’ve imagined ⇒
How We Work Together
Flexible options to engage in financial advice in the way you prefer
Financial decisions take on very different views depending on your stage of life. Wealth management is very different, as you build wealth early in your career, carefully grow it in your prime earning years, and strategically maintain it in retirement.
- If you prefer to be hands-on with your wealth management, we can be your financial sherpa, providing advice as needed on an hourly basis.
- If you prefer professional wealth management, we conduct the research and modeling and, based on your goals and risk considerations, ensure clarity and care in every recommendation, providing this service for a flat or wrap fee.
- If you need advice for a solution that should not incur an ongoing fee, we can research and explore all your options, find the right partners for your needs, and upon making your choice, that organization, not you, pays our one-time fee.
No matter which path you choose, we consider it our duty and honor to be your financial advocates to help support the financial opportunities and challenges that life may present. Our goal is to help you navigate your financial journey with prudent advice so that you may achieve your goals with better clarity and less undue financial stress.
You may have done a great job developing and maintaining your financial portfolio, and perhaps all you need is a second opinion, an occasional review of strategies, or sound advice on critical financial planning considerations as they arise. In this case, we are here for you as needed, providing financial advice on an hourly basis.
You may prefer a dedicated team to design your short- and long-term strategies for managing and monitoring your financial world, with regular communication and financial goal planning for your work and personal investments. In this case, we are here to provide advice regularly, as a traditional percentage of assets under management, working as your partner to navigate challenges and capture opportunities together.
You may have a situational need for a specific goal and require an unbiased opinion. This generally means a particular product solution that provides compensation through a commission for placing business with a specific company. Such compensation does not come out of your funds but is paid directly by the company. As an independent firm, we work with all major A-rated companies and have no ties or requirements to any company, solution, or product. This allows us to honor our duty to focus on the best possible solution for your needs rather than a company controlling and restricting our options, or compensation weighing unjust bias into any recommendations.
Wealth management with a focus on strategy for today, and legacy for tomorrow
Our firm was founded to address the overlooked tax implications in financial planning and wealth management. Tax-loss harvesting alone is just not enough. Your CPA knows tax code, but your financial advisor should also be advising you of the tax aspects of your financial decisions.
Investment performance presented in pre-tax dollars can be misleading. We identify assets that inherently provide tax efficiencies while crafting strategies to reduce capital gains during withdrawals. Most importantly, we assess whether a proactive tax strategy aligns with your specific financial situation. You can trust that our discussions will include performance, as well as your potential tax savings, as these conversations are essential to protecting your financial well-being.
Fee-only advisors avoid conflicts of interest, yet they refer you to someone else if you do need an insurance solution for a Trust to benefit a future taxation concern. That other party, in turn, may “sell” you whatever benefits their contractual obligation with a specific insurance carrier. How is this in your best interest?! We believe that being a fiduciary shouldn’t have a limit in our responsibility to you.
We believe you should have an annual review that discusses performance, changes in your life, your business, or your goals, and how you have benefited from your actual overall savings from implemented tax strategies.
If you wish to see your financial decisions through an ever-present tax lens, and have deeper, more meaningful conversations to uncover strategies that you can benefit from, then we welcome the opportunity to start a conversation.
Investment advisory services:
- Tax managed investments
- Stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs
- Asset allocation
- Portfolio design & management
- Foreign investments
- Donor-advised funds
- Real estate investment trusts
- Real estate/ 1031 exchange strategies
- Tax drag analysis
- Tax loss harvesting
- Distribution management
- Capital gains reduction strategies
- Opportunity zone funds
- Separately managed accounts
- Unit investment trusts
- Municipal bonds
Investments
Ideally, working with an investment advisor begins with great communication, and trust in knowing that your best interests are primary, a true fiduciary advisor only places your investments in fiduciary accounts. This means institutional funds.
The best advisors institute strict processes, procedures, and structures that will adhere to the prescribed plan and execute according to your objectives. So what is missing?
The final ingredient must be directed at your bigger picture. All considerations, decisions, and actions need to constantly be checked against your true long-term objectives, beyond purely financial gain.
Estate Planning
Estate planning is not just meant for anyone with significant wealth, but anyone with a home (or homes), checking and savings accounts, investments, life insurance, and personal valuables. The true goal is to decide, in advance, who will receive your assets after you die, instead of the process of Probate to step in and decide for you.
You have options to do this yourself, hire and attorney to do it for you, or a hybrid model that takes you step-by-step through your options where you become an active participant to be intimately aware of your details and along the way.
Estate planning considerations:
- Establishing a Living Trust
- Titling of assets
- Asset positioning
- Asset distribution
- Gifting strategies
- Income planning
- RMD strategies
- Minimize taxes and fees
- Probate avoidance strategies
- Family dynamics, blended families, divorce
- Family members best suited when you cannot manage your financial decisions
- Family members best suited for medical decisions.
- Financial planning for retirement vs. legacy
Retirement
Retirement is the only endeavor that does not allow for trial and error. You must get it right on the first try or suffer the consequences of not knowing something was possible. Planning for retirement is checkers, and executing retirement is chess. You can’t afford a wrong move.
This should be the best chapter of your life. Let us show you how your plans and dreams can translate into strategies and processes that will safeguard all that you have worked for, and address all that you could imagine and some things you never realized.
Retirement planning services:
- Comprehensive financial planning
- Estate planning
- Tax planning
- Traditional IRA, ROTH IRA, Self-directed IRA
- ROTH conversions
- 401(k), 403(b) and 457 managed options
- Asset protection
Retirement income planning services:
- Distribution management
- Maximizing tax brackets
- Social security planning
- Pension planning
- Gifting strategies
- Fixed Income strategies
- RMD strategies
Financial Planning and Coordinated Services:
- Estate planning
- Trust planning
- Legacy planning
- Charitable giving
- Healthcare planning
- College planning
- Retirement planning
- Tax planning
- Windfall planning
- Inheritance planning
- Income Planning
- Life insurance planning
- Financial restructuring after divorce
- Financial restructuring after the death of a spouse
- Financial coordination for the care of a parent
Financial Planning
Financial planning is teamwork. It is a process of taking your details and translating that into your roadmap, but that alone is an empty shell.
There may be multiple iterations, and it must be fine-tuned to your wishes, including the other coordinated professionals to execute all that is needed. Since this is a living, breathing process we continue to monitor and modify as it evolves over time.
Employer, Entrepreneur, Executive advisory services:
- Entity structures reviews
- Partnership structures reviews
- Business valuation coordination
- Cash flow analysis
- Tax efficiency analysis
- Capital expenditure reviews
- Expense reduction analysis
- Risk management assessment
- Key employee retention strategies
- Buy-sell agreements
- Exit planning
- Continuation planning
- Business financial planning
- 401(k), 403(b), 457 Small business retirement plans
- SEP IRAs, Solo 401(k)
- Executive Defined benefit plans
- Employee benefit analysis
Business
Focusing on what you do best and enjoy the most can be a challenge, but can lead to the most success in your business. Retaining control of your business and your work-life balance can both be possible simultaneously.
Operational expertise is the main focus of most businesses, but financial considerations hold the same importance. Cash flow, business expenses, and employees are all principal factors.
We take a unique approach to how the pieces fit while coordinating with your bookkeeper, CPA or CFO to uncover opportunities and tailor solutions that build off your business structure.
Wealth management should address the tax implications of your financial decisions
The U.S. Government Accountability Office indicates that taxpayers overpay an estimated $1 billion annually due to unrealized tax reduction opportunities.
Tax professionals focus on reducing tax liability. Their role is to utilize the tax code to benefit your return at tax time, and as proficient as they may be, they do not have the time to be “tax architects” of their client’s investments, nor do they prefer to be.
Accountants prefer to stay focused on accounting principles and partner with trusted financial planners that align tax implications with accumulating and preserving wealth, aligning with their and their client’s objectives. The problem is that most financial advisors and firms do not consider overall tax implications their concern.
Financial stress doesn’t have an income threshold. We show you how to develop a crystal clear understanding of how to position yourself for long-term success.
Client focused wealth management = Results, in after-tax dollars
The vast majority of wealth advisors, and firms consider wealth management to be focused solely on performance. Tax-smart investing benefits you by considering tax implications just as important as investment performance.
Taxes are typically not a discussion until placed in the capable hands of your CPA or accountant at tax time, for them alone to do the heavy lifting and create the best outcome.
With investments, there are fund fees and management fees. How about the governmental fees (taxes) that you pay in the way of capital gains on the results of your investments? The majority of wealth management advisors discuss your fund fees and management fees, but rarely the “third fee” (taxes).
What is your true performance once you factor in your capital gains? Imagine your investment performance in after-tax results. That is what we do for clients.
We advise clients through a proactive, year-round strategic tax planning process designed to apply the most appropriate strategies to create opportunities to reduce the tax drag of your investments to reduce capital gains for better after-tax outcomes. We provide the best wealth management in Orange County.
In all of our engagements, our goal is to listen
The financial advisory industry has a habit of categorizing individuals and businesses into boxes by assets. We prefer to focus on understanding your “big picture” goals, instead of presenting a generic menu of options. It’s only then we can begin to examine the appropriate ‘how’ to fit your unique ‘why’ and the applicable wealth management and tax strategies best suited for your needs.
Initial conversations don't need to be awkward...
You don't want to be judged for not having the "right" financial habits, saving enough, or spending too much.
You don't want to open up to a STRANGER about your finances.
You don't want to be told what to do instead of having a navigator, presenting you with options around what matters most to you.
We have no agenda and believe in truly listening first, and advice second. We begin with a phone conversation, lend actionable advice, and promise no follow-up unless you ask.
You are welcome to send us a message on the right, schedule a conversation, or give us a call. We are here to support your concerns, provide clarity, and lend perspective.
Drop us a line
Please let us know what questions you have