Fiduciary Financial Advisor in Lake Mary, FL

The accumulating is mostly done. You have spent a career earning well and saving steadily, and the balances show it.

What has changed is the kind of decision in front of you. The children are grown or nearly there. Retirement is a few years off instead of a few decades. The money is large enough that taxes, timing and the estate now affect each other, and a choice in one place changes the result somewhere else.

You may be looking for a wealth manager because the questions have changed. For years, the job was mostly to earn, save and invest. Now you are deciding when work ends, what the money can support, how much goes to taxes and what you eventually want to leave behind.

We start with a plan for the whole household. The investments come after it.

More Than an Investment Account

At this point, the portfolio is only one part of the decision.

You have a retirement date to choose and a level of spending to support. You have accounts with different tax treatment, Social Security decisions for two people and estate documents that may have been written years ago. You may also be deciding whether to help children or grandchildren now instead of later, or whether part of the estate eventually goes to charity.

Those decisions are connected. Retiring a year earlier changes how long the savings have to last. A large gift changes what is left to invest. A Roth conversion raises this year’s taxable income in exchange for moving that money to the Roth side for the future. A decision can make sense by itself and still create a problem somewhere else in the plan.

So we look at them together, then put them in order. Our approach to retirement planning starts from that full list.

The Decisions Change When the Paychecks Stop

The first years of retirement bring several decisions together at once. The paycheck stops, but Social Security may not start right away. You have to decide which accounts fund spending, what to do with investments that have large gains and how much income to recognize for tax purposes.

For a household with substantial pre-tax savings, those years can also create room for Roth conversions. The decision is not only whether a conversion lowers taxes this year. It has to be weighed against future withdrawals, required distributions, Medicare premiums, which are based on income from two years earlier, and the rest of the income plan.

We map those decisions before retirement so you can see how they affect one another while there is still time to adjust the plan. There is more on the trade-offs in Roth conversions.

Managing the Portfolio to the Plan

Once those decisions are connected in the plan, the portfolio has a job to do. We put the investment rules in a written investment policy statement. It lists the commitments the money has to meet, sets the level of risk the plan can accept and notes whether each account is taxable, pre-tax or Roth. Money headed to children or to charity is part of it too, because it can change how that money is invested and where it is held.

Every account under our management follows that statement, aiming for the return the plan requires without more risk than necessary. The measure is what you keep after tax for the risk taken, and where each holding sits across your accounts is part of that. Existing holdings are the starting point. If one still fits the plan, it stays.

Our investment management exists to carry out that plan, year by year.

Working with Holland Capital

Holland Capital Management is an independent registered investment adviser and a fiduciary. M. Chad Holland, CFA, CFP® works directly with clients and is responsible for the planning and advice.

You work directly with the person doing the planning. The first meeting covers what you have, what you want the money to accomplish and which decisions are closest.

If you already work with a CPA and an estate attorney, they stay. When the plan touches their work, we coordinate with them.

The first conversation is free. If there is work worth doing after that, we will define the scope and cost before you decide whether to move forward.

Our offices are in Charlotte, North Carolina and Winter Park, Florida. We work with clients in Lake Mary primarily by video or phone. When an in-person meeting makes sense, we meet by appointment at the Regus center at 801 International Parkway in Lake Mary.

We work with clients throughout Florida. You can see the other Florida communities we serve here.

Our what we do page explains how a planning engagement works.

Frequently Asked Questions

Photo: Tetraminoe / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped.