As a fiduciary financial advisor in Stuart, Holland Capital brings your investments, taxes, estate plan and retirement income into one plan. We work alongside your CPA and attorney so the decisions they make and the decisions we make point the same way.
You have good people around you. A CPA who has done your return for years. An attorney who drew up the wills and the trust. An investment account at one firm, another at a second, and maybe a retirement plan or annuity left over from an earlier chapter.
Each of them does their part well. But each sees only their part.
The CPA sees last year’s return after the decisions are made. The attorney sees the documents, not the account titles. Each firm sees its own statements. You are the one who carries the whole picture around in your head, and the questions that cross from one piece to another tend to land on you.
The first step is getting it all in one place. What you own, how it is titled, what it produces, what it costs in tax and where it is meant to go. Then you no longer have to be the only person who knows how the pieces are supposed to fit.
Nobody Owns the Whole Picture
The gaps show up where one professional’s work meets another’s.
A trust is signed, but some accounts were never retitled to it. A beneficiary form names someone the will no longer mentions. The investment firm sells a position in December, and the CPA learns about the gain in March. A required distribution comes out of the account that makes the least sense tax-wise, because nobody was looking at all of them together.
It is rarely anyone’s mistake. It happens when every advisor is responsible for a piece, and nobody is responsible for how the pieces fit.
That is the job we take on. We keep one current picture of what you own, how it fits together and what each part is meant to do. Before a decision is made, you see what it changes elsewhere: the tax return, the estate documents, the income plan. When the plan reaches into your CPA’s or attorney’s work, we talk to them directly, so everyone is working from the same numbers.
We do not replace them. Legal documents stay with your attorney, and the return stays with your CPA. We connect their work to the rest of your plan. There is more on how the financial side of an estate plan fits together in estate and wealth transfer planning.
Income You Can Count On in Retirement
Retirement is where the separate pieces start running into each other. The investment accounts have to produce what you spend. The account you draw from affects the tax return. A gift to family or charity can affect both.
So the questions become practical. How much can you spend each year without worrying about the later years? Which accounts should pay for it? How much tax will each withdrawal create?
We build the income plan around Social Security, any pension, required distributions and the accounts available to fund your spending. Before deciding where a withdrawal should come from, we look at what that decision does to the rest of the plan. The plan gets revisited as markets, tax law and your life change.
Which account you draw from is only one of those decisions. The same coordination applies to when you take gains, when you give to charity and whether a Roth conversion makes sense in a given year. We cover how that schedule is built in retirement income planning.
The aim is to know how the pieces are meant to fund your retirement before each year’s decisions arrive. That is the heart of our retirement planning.
One Portfolio, Even When the Accounts Are in Several Places
Accounts held at several firms can each look reasonable on their own and still add up to a portfolio nobody designed as a whole. You may own the same companies through several funds, carry more of one kind of risk than you realized or have taxable investments in accounts that were never considered together.
For the accounts we manage, we use one written investment policy statement built from the larger financial plan. It spells out the yearly income the plan depends on, the range of market swings it can absorb and the tax character of each account. Within those limits, we manage for after-tax, risk-adjusted return and weigh how each account is taxed when placing investments.
Your current holdings are the starting point. We do not realize a gain just to tidy up the statements. Changes have to improve the plan enough to justify their cost.
Our investment management carries out that plan.
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 understanding what you have and who is already helping you. We will ask how the pieces fit today and where the loose ends are.
The professionals you trust stay in place. Our job is to make sure an investment decision does not reach your CPA or attorney only after it has already been made.
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 Stuart primarily by video or phone. When an in-person meeting makes sense, we meet by appointment at the Alliance meeting center at 770 SE Indian Street in Stuart.
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 Palm Beach Gardens at 4675 PGA Boulevard.
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.
RETIREMENT ENGINEERING™
The Order Matters
Five retirement decisions and why timing matters.
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Does Your Fiduciary Duty Cover Accounts Held at Other Firms?
Holland Capital acts as a fiduciary when providing financial planning and investment advice. When our planning work includes an account held somewhere else and we recommend a change to it, that recommendation is fiduciary advice too.
Where our advice would also raise our fee, for instance by consolidating an outside account with us, you hear that from us before you act. The firm holding the account remains responsible for its own work, and you can ask that firm which standard applies to its advice.
What Should We Bring to the First Meeting?
Recent statements for each account, your last tax return and a list of who helps you now, including your CPA and attorney.
If you have a trust, the summary page is enough to start. Beneficiary forms help too. If some of this is hard to find, that is useful to know as well. We can start with what you have.
Can You Work with Our CPA and Attorney from Winter Park?
Yes. Most of that coordination happens by phone, video and shared documents, and none of it depends on anyone being in the same building. When a meeting in person makes sense, we can meet by appointment at the Alliance meeting center at 770 SE Indian Street in Stuart.
Photo: JonathanPuello / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.
