Guides
The decisions, in the order they actually arrive
Practical sequences for the events that reshape a family's finances, and plain comparisons of the structures families choose between. No advice, no product, no email required.
Life events
What to do, and in what order, when something specific is underway. Timings are typical rather than prescriptive.
Selling a business in Virginia
Selling a business is a planning problem before it is an investment problem. Charitable timing, entity structure, state residency, and proceeds allocation all have windows that close at signing. Planning that begins twelve to eighteen months ahead keeps those options open; planning that begins after the wire works with what remains.
Receiving an inheritance
An inheritance arrives with a deadline structure most people are not told about: some decisions have statutory windows measured in months, and most of the rest have none at all. Separating the two is the first useful task, because almost nothing needs to be decided in the first quarter.
Opening a donor-advised fund
A donor-advised fund is an account at a sponsoring charity: the contribution is complete and deductible when made, grants are recommended over time, and the sponsor handles administration. Opening one is straightforward. The decisions worth spending time on are what to contribute, when, and who advises it afterward.
Helping aging parents with their finances
The first pass is documentary, not financial: locate the estate documents, confirm who holds powers of attorney, check that beneficiary designations still name the right people, and establish whether the drafted trusts were ever funded. Unfunded trusts and stale designations are common, and both override a will.
How the models differ
Plain structural comparisons of the arrangements families choose between. These describe how the models are set up and regulated; they do not rank them.
Fee-only fiduciary vs. broker-dealer
A fee-only registered investment adviser is compensated solely by its clients and owes a fiduciary duty across the advisory relationship. A broker-dealer representative may be compensated by commissions and is held to Regulation Best Interest at the time of a recommendation. The difference is in compensation and in the standard's scope.
Multi-family office vs. wirehouse
A multi-family office is an independent firm providing coordinated investment, planning, governance, and philanthropic services to a limited number of families. A wirehouse is a large brokerage whose advisers work within an institutional platform. They differ in ownership, scope of service, and where products come from.