Comprehensive Wealth Management
A working model, kept current, used to test decisions before you commit to them. Your plan is a working model, built to be used. We start with your goals — sorted into needs, wants, and wishes — then build a projection around your real cash flow, assets, and obligations, and stress-test it across a wide range of market outcomes. From there we model the decisions actually in front of you, whatever they happen to be: whether retiring two years earlier holds up, what selling the business leaves you with, how to fund a grandchild's education, which accounts to draw from and in what order once the paychecks stop.
The big financial decisions arrive one at a time, usually with a deadline attached. Seeing what each one does to everything else, before you commit, is the difference between guessing and deciding. The model stays current as your circumstances change, and when something comes up between reviews, you can call us and we'll run it.
A portfolio built to the specifications your plan requires. The portfolio comes after the plan. Your projection tells us what return the plan requires, when you'll draw on the assets, and how much volatility it can absorb without derailing — and the allocation is built to those specifications. From there, the portfolio is assembled in three layers, each with a job. A core of globally diversified, low-cost holdings for broad market exposure. A performance layer using active management only where we believe it can add value net of cost. And a protection layer using low-correlation strategies, including options overlays and, where appropriate and available to you, alternative investments intended to limit downside.
The three layers only work if they work together, so we look at how they interact — where the core and the performance layer are exposed to the same things, whether the protection layer would actually behave differently in the market that tests it, and how the whole portfolio responds to the economic conditions that drive returns. That's a question about how something is built and what it's exposed to, not how it performed last year.
Placement matters alongside selection, so we position holdings across your taxable and tax-advantaged accounts with their tax treatment in mind, and harvest losses where doing so is worth the trade. Every position is there for a reason we can explain, and the whole thing is built from the plan outward — so when your circumstances change, the plan is updated first and the portfolio follows from it.
Deciding which exposures are worth transferring and which are worth carrying. Risk is the part of a plan that only matters in hindsight, which is why it has to be examined in advance. We look at where your wealth is exposed and what it would cost your family if that exposure came due — the plan if you die, the plan if you can't work, the plan if care becomes necessary later in life. Each one gets the same question: is this worth transferring, or worth carrying yourself? At a certain asset level the answer is often to carry it, and we'll say so. Where transferring makes sense, structure matters as much as the coverage itself, and we coordinate with your estate attorney so the arrangement supports the plan rather than working against it.
Coverage already in place gets examined the same way. Policies sized against a smaller balance sheet quietly stop being adequate, and many don't perform the way the original illustration projected — those get pulled and reviewed rather than assumed. Portfolio risk is handled separately, inside how we build and manage the allocation. What damages substantial families is rarely a risk nobody identified. It's a decision that was right once and never looked at again.
When one position, or one vesting schedule, drives most of the outcome. One position has grown into most of your net worth, or your pay arrives as ISOs, NQSOs, and restricted stock on a vesting schedule you didn't set. Either way, the decisions are timing decisions. We model what a significant decline in that position would do to your plan, then work through the tools that fit — exchange funds, options strategies, staged diversification — and coordinate with your CPA so the tax picture is clear before you act. How the shares were acquired matters too: company stock in a 401(k) may be eligible for net unrealized appreciation (NUA) treatment, and founders holding qualified small business stock (QSBS) face their own timing questions.
Holding a concentrated position is itself a decision, made every day by default. Most people postpone it because the tax bill on selling is visible and the risk of holding isn't. Putting both on the same page, in dollars against your actual plan, turns an avoided conversation into a choice you're comfortable owning — and keeps the opportunities that are easy to lose by accident from quietly expiring.
Keeping the plan, the portfolio, and the documents pointed in the same direction. This is the work of deciding what passes on, and to whom. We project the future value of your estate to identify where tax exposure is likely to develop, then work through strategies with your estate attorney — or introduce you to one — including gifting, estate freeze techniques, and revocable and irrevocable trusts. On the charitable side, we work with donor advised funds, qualified charitable distributions, and charitable trusts, and we look at which assets are most efficient to give and when.
Estate plans go stale quietly. Documents get signed, the balance sheet keeps growing, and a plan drafted for one set of numbers ends up governing a different set. State thresholds vary widely and are often far below the federal one, which catches families who assumed the question didn't apply to them. Someone has to keep the plan, the portfolio, and the documents pointed in the same direction. That's our part.
Connecting the largest asset on your balance sheet to the rest of your plan. For most owners, the business and the personal plan are the same conversation, and we treat them that way. We consult on the strategic questions that come up as a company grows, and where it's useful, we're available to serve on a board or advisory board. We also work on the pieces that connect the company to your household — how cash and excess profits are put to work, and how the retirement plan is built: its structure, what belongs in the investment lineup, and how it's managed and monitored once it's running, including serving as broker of record.
Continuity belongs in that conversation too. A business that depends on one or two people is exposed in a way the balance sheet doesn't show, so we look at what would happen if an owner or key employee died or left unexpectedly — and where key-person or buy-sell coverage is the right answer, we help put it in place so that event doesn't force a sale on bad terms.
Your retirement, your family's security, and your employees' livelihoods are all downstream of one asset that's illiquid and hard to value. Keeping your personal plan current with what's happening at the company is how that asset stays connected to everything it supports — and it's what puts you in position to act deliberately when a transition eventually comes into view, rather than deciding under a deadline someone else set.