A financial advisor in Miami can help you bring retirement, investments, taxes and other financial decisions into one plan. Holland Capital starts with what your money needs to do, then builds the investment strategy around it.
You may be five years from retirement with three old 401(k)s, a brokerage account, and no clear idea which money you should use first.
Most of your net worth may be tied up in the business you spent twenty years building. Company stock may have quietly become one of your largest investments. You may have parents, property, or accounts outside the United States while your own retirement is here in Florida.
Or you may simply have accumulated enough pieces that nobody is looking at all of them together.
That is where we start.
Holland Capital looks at what you own, what you earn, what you owe, what you spend, and what you are trying to accomplish. Then we work through the decisions in the order they need to be made.
The investments come after that.
Retirement Is a Date Until You Have to Pay for It
For years, retirement can sit somewhere out in the distance.
Then it gets close enough to put on a calendar.
Now the questions change.
Can I actually stop working when I want to? How much can I spend? When should I claim Social Security? Which account should I use first? Should I pay off the mortgage? What happens if the market falls right after I retire? How much can I give the kids without creating a problem for myself later?
You may have plenty of money and still not know the answers.
A 401(k) balance does not tell you what you can spend. Neither does a brokerage statement.
We start with the life the money has to support.
What do you spend now? What changes when work stops? Which expenses disappear? Which ones increase? What income will continue without drawing from the portfolio? What happens if one spouse lives another twenty or thirty years?
Then we can see what the portfolio actually needs to provide.
Taxes become part of that decision too.
The years between your last paycheck and required distributions from retirement accounts can look very different from the years before and after them. There may be opportunities to draw from one account instead of another, recognize gains, make Roth conversions, or delay Social Security.
Those decisions belong together.
That is the work behind retirement planning.
Your Compensation May Be More Complicated Than Your Paycheck
Maybe your salary is the easy part.
You also receive a bonus. Restricted shares vest throughout the year. Options have accumulated. There is deferred compensation. An old 401(k) is still sitting at the company you left six years ago.
Then one afternoon you add everything up and realize how much of your financial life depends on one employer.
That can happen without ever making a deliberate decision to concentrate your wealth.
The shares were part of your compensation. They performed well. More shares vested. Selling them created a tax bill, so you kept them.
Now the company pays your salary and represents a large part of your investment portfolio.
The answer is not automatically to sell everything.
We first need to know what the rest of the plan requires.
How much of the position can you afford to keep? How much risk is tied to the same company that provides your income? Which shares have the largest gains? Are there lower-income years ahead? Do you give to charity? Will you need some of the money when you retire?
Once those questions are answered, we can decide whether the position should come down and, if so, how quickly.
That can mean selling over several tax years, choosing particular tax lots, using appreciated shares for charitable gifts, or coordinating sales with other income.
That is part of capital gains tax planning.
The Business May Be Your Biggest Asset
You spent years putting money back into the company.
New employees came before another retirement contribution. Equipment came before the brokerage account. Cash stayed in the business because the business needed it.
Now the company is worth something.
Maybe a lot.
But your personal balance sheet may still look very different from someone who spent the same twenty years collecting a salary and maxing out a 401(k).
That creates a different set of questions.
How much should the business continue to hold? How much should come out to you? Are you using the right retirement plan? Can you save more without creating an unreasonable cost for employees? How much of your eventual retirement depends on selling the company?
And what happens if you do not sell it for what you expect?
We want the retirement plan to work without requiring every assumption about the business to come true.
While you still own it, compensation and retirement-plan decisions can affect how much you are able to move from the business balance sheet to your own. We look at that when we work on getting more out of a 401(k) as a business owner.
If a sale is ahead, the planning starts before the closing table.
Once the transaction is complete, some of the choices are already gone.
RETIREMENT ENGINEERING™
The Order Matters
Five retirement decisions and why timing matters.
When Part of Your Financial Life Is Outside the United States
Your retirement may be in Florida while part of your financial life is somewhere else.
Your parents may still live outside the United States. You may own property in the country where you grew up. You may have an old bank account there. Money may move between family members in different countries. Your spouse may not be a U.S. citizen.
More than half of city residents were born outside the United States, according to Census Bureau data. Most were born in Latin America.
The first job is figuring out what exists.
What do you own outside the United States? How is it titled? Where do you expect to live in retirement? Who inherits the property? Where do they live? Is money moving between family members? Are there accounts that need to be reported here?
Certain foreign accounts can create U.S. reporting requirements. Large gifts or inheritances received from someone outside the United States can create others.
Estate rules can change too.
A parent who is neither a U.S. citizen nor a U.S. resident can face very different U.S. estate tax rules on property owned here. The rules can also change when one spouse is not a U.S. citizen.
We do not try to turn the financial adviser into the CPA and the CPA into the lawyer.
We plan the U.S. financial side. Your CPA handles the tax filings. Your attorney handles the legal documents. If property or accounts in another country require advice there, a professional in that country belongs in the conversation.
Everyone should be working from the same facts and the same plan.
That is part of estate and wealth transfer planning.
You Moved to Florida. Your Financial Life Did Not Start Over
Maybe you came from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, or somewhere else with a state income tax.
Florida does not impose an individual income tax.
That does not mean everything from the old state disappeared when you changed your driver’s license.
You may still own property there. You may receive deferred compensation from a former employer. Stock granted before the move may vest afterward. You may still spend significant time in both places.
The move itself can also change the rest of the plan.
Your housing costs may be different. You may sell a home and suddenly have a large amount of cash to invest. Estate documents written in another state may need to be reviewed. The amount you need to keep available for taxes may change.
And if retirement was one reason for the move, we now have a new question to answer.
What does retirement actually cost here?
The goal is not simply to establish Florida residency.
It is to make the rest of the financial plan reflect the life you moved here to have.
Where Investment Management Comes In
By this point, the investment question is much easier to define.
We know what the money has to do.
Some of it may need to support you next year. Some may not be touched for fifteen years. Some may eventually go to your children. Some may be there simply because you have not decided what to do with it yet.
Those dollars should not automatically be invested the same way.
The plan tells us how much needs to remain available, how much can be invested for longer-term growth, and how much risk the portfolio needs to take.
Where you hold an investment can change what you keep after tax.
A 401(k), traditional IRA, Roth account and taxable brokerage account each have different tax rules. We account for those differences when deciding what belongs where.
We also start with what you already have.
You may own perfectly good investments. You may have positions with large unrealized gains that would be expensive to replace. You may have a stock you simply do not want to sell.
We do not replace investments just so the portfolio looks like ours.
We decide what still fits the plan and what does not.
Investment management is how we carry out those decisions.
It is not where the planning starts.
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.
The first meeting is mostly listening.
We want to understand what is happening now, what you are trying to accomplish, and what decisions are already sitting in front of you.
You do not need to arrive with everything organized.
We need enough information to understand the problem and decide whether there is work worth doing.
If there is, we separate the decisions that need attention now from the ones that can wait.
Your CPA and attorney keep their roles. We work with them when the plan crosses into taxes or legal documents so the tax return, legal documents, and investment accounts are working from the same set of decisions.
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 Florida office is in Winter Park. If you are looking for a financial advisor in Miami, we can work together without your adviser being down the street. Most meetings are by video or phone. When it makes sense to sit down together, we can meet by appointment at the Regus business center at 201 South Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami. Holland Capital does not maintain a branch office in Miami.
We work with clients throughout Florida. You can see the other Florida communities we serve here.
For more on how engagements are set up, the what we do page covers it.
RETIREMENT ENGINEERING™
The Order Matters
Five retirement decisions and why timing matters.
Frequently Asked Questions
I Moved to Miami from New York. Can New York Still Tax My Income?
It can tax some income after you move if New York still considers that income connected to New York.
Company stock is a good example.
If restricted stock or options were granted while you worked in New York and vest after you move to Florida, part of that income may still be taxable by New York. New York generally looks at where you worked during the period between the grant and vesting dates.
Remote work can create another issue. Working from your Miami home does not necessarily mean New York considers every one of those workdays a Florida workday for tax purposes.
Keep a record of when you moved and where you worked.
Florida does not impose an individual income tax. Becoming a Florida resident does not automatically eliminate a tax obligation another state can establish under its own rules.
What Should I Do with My 401(k) When I Change Jobs?
You generally have four choices: leave the money in the former employer’s plan, move it to the new employer’s plan if that plan accepts rollovers, roll it into an IRA, or take the money out.
Taking the money out can create an immediate tax bill and, depending on your age and circumstances, an additional penalty.
The other three choices deserve a comparison.
Look at the investments, costs, services, withdrawal rules, and what you expect to do next.
If you use a backdoor Roth strategy, moving an old 401(k) into a traditional IRA can change the tax calculation on future Roth conversions. Keeping the money in a 401(k), or moving it into a new employer plan when allowed, can produce a different result.
Our guide to 401(k) rollovers goes further into those choices.
Company Stock Is a Large Part of What I Own. Do I Have to Sell It?
No.
The question is what happens to your financial plan if that one investment has a very bad year.
That deserves more attention when the same company also provides your paycheck, bonus, and benefits.
Selling the entire position at once is not the only alternative. Depending on the stock, taxes, and your circumstances, you may be able to reduce it over several years, choose particular shares to sell, or use appreciated shares for charitable gifts.
The pace depends on how large the position is, what selling it would cost in taxes, and what the rest of your plan needs the money to do.
I Own a Business. When Should I Start Planning for a Sale?
Before you have a buyer.
A sale can affect your retirement, taxes, estate plan, investment portfolio, and how much cash you need to keep outside the business.
It also changes the question from “What is my business worth?” to “What does the sale need to produce for the rest of my financial plan to work?”
Some decisions can be made before a transaction that cannot be recreated after the sale closes.
What Does It Mean That Holland Capital Is a Fiduciary?
When Holland Capital provides investment advice, we are required to act in our clients’ best interests.
That duty applies to the advisory work we do, from financial planning through portfolio management.
When Should I Start Working with a Financial Advisor?
There is no age when you suddenly need a financial advisor.
A better reason is that you have a financial decision important enough to get right.
That could be retirement. It could be a job change, a rollover, company stock, the sale of a business, an inheritance, a large tax year, a move to Florida, or several of those happening at once.
Planning is most useful while you still have choices.
Once a stock sale happens, the tax year ends, the business is sold, or the retirement date arrives, some of those choices are gone.
The point of starting earlier is not to create more planning.
It is to make the decisions while you can still do something about them.
Are You a Fee-Only Financial Advisor in Miami?
We offer financial planning on a fixed-fee basis, subject to the scope of the engagement. Investment management is offered on a fee basis, generally calculated as a percentage of the assets we manage. When providing financial planning and investment advisory services, we act as a fiduciary.
Photo: P. Hughes / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.
