As a fiduciary financial advisor in Naples, Holland Capital helps you make decisions across your estate, taxes, investments, and two homes as one financial picture. We start with the plan, then build the portfolio around it.
You spent years accumulating things one decision at a time. You bought the house. Funded the accounts. Invested in a business or real estate. Helped the children. Gave money to causes you care about.
Eventually, the decisions stop being separate.
Selling an investment changes the tax return. Giving money to the children changes the estate. Keeping a house up north affects more than where you spend the summer. An IRA at one firm, a brokerage account somewhere else, and a trust managed by a third party may each look perfectly reasonable on its own, while nobody is looking at what they add up to.
The question is no longer whether each piece works. It is whether they work together.
When Estate Tax Becomes an Actual Number
For most families, estate tax is something that happens to other people. The federal exemption is $15 million per person in 2026, according to the IRS. With the right elections, a married couple can pass twice that before any federal estate tax is due. Above the line, the top rate is 40 percent.
If your balance sheet is approaching that line, decisions that once seemed ordinary start carrying estate consequences. The home, brokerage accounts, a share of a business, a building up north, life insurance, and whatever sits in a trust all count toward the same total. Gifts above $19,000 per person in a year use up part of your lifetime exemption.
That can change the question from “How much can I leave?” to “What should I do while I am still here?” You may want to help the children now. Pay tuition for grandchildren. Give appreciated investments to charity. Move future growth outside the estate. Or do none of those things until you know how much you are likely to need yourself.
The tools are well known: gifts during your lifetime, trusts that move future growth out of the estate, charitable gifts and charitable trusts, and life insurance owned so that its proceeds are not counted in the estate. Which ones belong depends on what you want the money to do. We work through those choices as part of estate and wealth transfer planning.
Florida has no estate or inheritance tax. A state where you own property may. Some states tax real estate located inside their borders even when the owner lives somewhere else, so the house up north can carry its own state estate tax.
We run the numbers on your estate as it stands today and as it may look in fifteen years if the investments keep growing. Your estate attorney drafts the documents. Your CPA files the returns. We make sure the plan they are working from reflects everything you own.
One Life, Two Addresses
You may spend the winter here and the summer in Michigan, Connecticut, or the mountains of North Carolina. There may be a doctor in each place, a bank in each place, and an advisor up north you have worked with for twenty years.
About four in ten housing units in the city of Naples are held for seasonal or occasional use, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
Two homes are fine. Only one of them can be your domicile. Where you vote, where your cars are registered, where you file a declaration of domicile, where your doctors are, and where you spend your days all tell the story. If the other state has an income tax, those records are what it looks at.
Your money may be divided the same way. An IRA with the advisor up north. A brokerage account at a bank here. A trust account somewhere else. You do not necessarily need to move any of them. You do need someone looking across all of them.
Which account should pay for a new car, a large trip, or work on one of the houses? Selling from the wrong place can create a tax bill you did not need. Taking too much from an IRA can change the tax picture somewhere else. Holding cash in three different accounts because nobody sees the other two can leave more money sitting than you intended.
Two homes bring their own decisions. There are two sets of property taxes, insurance, and maintenance, plus the cost of moving between them. At some point, you may also have to decide whether you still want both. A home that was not your main residence does not receive the exclusion a primary home does when it is sold, so the gain can be taxable. That sale is part of capital gains tax planning.
You can keep the advisor, CPA, attorney, or other professionals you already trust. We build one plan around the decisions you are making, so the people you rely on in both places are working from the same numbers.
What Should You Spend, Give Away and Leave Alone?
Once you have more invested than you are likely to spend, not every dollar has the same job.
Some of the money has to support your life. Some may eventually go to children or grandchildren. Some may go to charity. And some assets may be worth keeping for the rest of your life rather than selling simply because they have gone up.
The money meant to support your life is usually the part an annuity is proposed for. A contract can tie it up for years, with a charge if you want out early. Our guide covers five steps to take before you sign.
The money you expect to spend, give away, and leave behind may belong in different investments and different accounts.
Appreciated stock can be the best asset to give to charity, because the gift can avoid the capital gain. Investments you expect to leave to heirs may be better held than sold, because their cost basis resets at death. Traditional IRAs carry income tax for whoever inherits them, which can make them a good fit for charitable bequests.
The next question is where each investment belongs. A taxable account, traditional IRA, and Roth IRA do not treat income and gains the same way. Deciding what to own and which account should own it is the work of asset location.
Then there is the money spread among different firms. You may own the same companies several times without realizing it. You may have more cash than you intended. Or the accounts may each look diversified while the combined portfolio is making one large bet.
Before changing anything, we put the pieces together. What will you actually spend? What do you want to give away? What are you likely to leave behind? Which assets should be sold, and which may be better left alone?
Those decisions come first. The investment management follows them.
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 about the whole picture: what you own and where, how the year divides between your homes, what you have already set in motion for the family, and what is still undecided.
Retirement Engineering™, our planning process, was built for decisions that affect each other. It sets the order: what has to be decided this year, what depends on something else, and what can wait.
It often helps to bring your CPA or estate attorney into the conversation early. They keep their roles. We give them a plan to work from.
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 Naples primarily by video or phone. When an in-person meeting makes sense, we meet by appointment at the Fifth Avenue Office Center, 780 Fifth Avenue South.
For clients whose investments we manage, accounts are held directly at Charles Schwab in the client’s own name. Holland Capital manages the investments but does not take custody of client assets. If a client ever needs in-person assistance from Schwab, the closest branch is in Naples at 375 Fifth Avenue South.
We work with clients throughout Florida. You can see the other Florida communities we serve here.
If you would like to read how engagements work before we talk, the what we do page covers it.
RETIREMENT ENGINEERING™
The Order Matters
Five retirement decisions and why timing matters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I Have to Spend Six Months a Year in Florida to Be a Florida Resident?
Florida has no minimum number of days. Residency here is about intent and evidence: a Florida home, a Florida driver’s license and voter registration, and often a declaration of domicile filed with the county clerk under section 222.17, Florida Statutes.
The other state’s rules can still reach you. Some states, New York among them, can tax you as a resident if you keep a home there and spend more than 183 days in the state during the year. Keep a record of where you spend your days.
Do I Have to Move All of My Accounts to Work With Holland Capital?
No. The first job is to understand what you own, where it is held, and how the pieces work together. Some people keep accounts or professional relationships they have had for years.
Once the plan is built, you can decide whether keeping accounts in different places still makes sense or whether bringing some of them together would make the plan easier to manage.
How Much Can I Give My Children Each Year Without Using My Exemption?
In 2026, you can give up to $19,000 to each person without using any of your lifetime exemption. A married couple can give $38,000 to each person by combining their exclusions.
Payments made directly to a school for tuition, or directly to a medical provider, do not count toward that limit at all. That can make paying a grandchild’s tuition to the school a better choice than writing the grandchild a check.
What Does a Fiduciary Owe Me When Estate Tax Is on the Table?
Holland Capital acts as a fiduciary when providing financial planning and investment advice. In Naples, much of that advice is about what to spend, what to give away and what to leave alone, often across two homes and two states.
Gifts to family or to a trust can move money out of accounts we manage. If that is right for your estate plan, we recommend it anyway. If a different choice would pay us more, we say so before you choose.
Do I Need a Fiduciary Financial Advisor Who Is in Naples Year-Round?
No. If you split the year between Naples and another home, a relationship that runs by video and phone works in both places. Most of our meetings happen that way, and documents are shared securely.
When you are in Naples and want to sit down together, we can meet by appointment at the Fifth Avenue Office Center, 780 Fifth Avenue South.
How Are You Paid?
Advisory work is paid by fee: financial planning is offered for a fixed fee once the scope is clear, and investment management is an advisory fee based on the assets we manage. We act as a fiduciary when we give planning and investment advice, and you see the cost in writing before you decide anything.
Is Holland Capital Management the Right Fit for You?
Start with a 15-minute Clarity Call. We will talk through your situation, what you are trying to solve, and whether working together makes sense.
Photo: Charles Patrick Ewing / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0, cropped.
