Private Client & Business Advisory Services

"Most Firms Are Interested In Your Money. We're Interested In Your Story."

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WELCOME

Inflation and geopolitics have captured market headlines this year, and headlines often serve up undigestible noise for wealth planning.


Recent legislative changes have altered the retirement planning landscape. The primary tax problem has shifted from the estate tax to the income tax for most of us, and many investment-only plans have not adapted. As the saying goes, ‘Ignore your teeth, and they’ll be gone.’


The same can be said for retirement savings lost to taxes. The unwinding of tax-favored retirement accounts, deferred interest, and capital gains are significant risks on the path to managing wealth. Opportunities are found in many and sometimes surprising places:


  • Tax-efficient portfolio design, account registration, beneficiary management, and asset location.
  • Retirement optimization, beginning at the planning stage at any age.
  • Coordination of tax planning with your CPA.
  • Ongoing tax planning. Laws and regulations constantly change.


Our clients are successful professionals and business owners who value hard work and the practical, often complicated, puzzles involving risk and wealth. With untaxed retirement accounts, private business ownership, or real estate likely to be your largest assets, investing without comprehensive and integrated planning is an opportunity lost.


As fiduciary wealth advisors, we bring a career-specific planning focus to our clients. Although each is different, all our clients have a desire for lifetime retirement income and to pay no more than required in taxes. We see too many plans wrapped around one uncontrollable variable (market returns) and little attention paid to risks, taxes, and fees. Investment and risk management strategies are not one-size-fits-all; two professionals with the same portfolios might have vastly different risks depending on occupation, family situation, age, and health.


For business owners or professionals with high W2 or deferred compensation, the priority is risk management. Most privately owned businesses are low-cost-basis assets with elevated risk and volatility. Money lost to poorly planned business sales, taxes, and wealth transfer remains the industry standard.


We provide business valuation and tax reports for owners as a core service, along with pre-sale, transaction, and post-sale guidance. We have completed over one hundred business valuations, transitions and sales, and compensation plans for clients across the United States.


Professionals and entrepreneurs who start saving late warrant careful planning and smart, not unnecessarily risky investments, to close the gap.

 

Keats Group has clients in many states, some of whom we haven’t met. Regardless of location, our relationship is nurtured by frequent communications using telephone, email, and online meetings.


We operate in a fiduciary capacity, always putting your interests first. Our Registered Investment Advisor, Advisor Share Wealth Management LLC, aligns with our fiduciary model. We are not bound by firm-directed investments, mutual funds, or fund families that pay us fees, as is common in the investment industry. Many funds (looking at you, mutual funds) have a seductive appearance of diversification but often impose taxes on gains enjoyed by previous investors (that’s us). There are no shortcuts to good portfolio design.

 

All client funds are held by third-party custodian Charles Schwab & Co., one of the largest financial firms in the world. Schwab maintains additional insurance for fraud, insolvency, or unauthorized trading.


We do not trade on your behalf without your review and approval in advance unless you specifically request it. You always control and have access to your accounts.


We have both asset-management fee and fee-only arrangements. We strive to optimize investments to match client risk preferences and retirement income needs, with keen attention to income and capital gains taxes and cost-basis. Managing cost basis is an important and underutilized tool in financial planning. We use low-cost index-oriented investments as the building blocks of our portfolios.


We do not require that you have us manage all your assets, and you can cancel our relationship anytime.

 

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Frequently Asked Questions

Here are answers to some of our most common questions. Feel free to contact us if you need any help.

  • Who do we serve?

    Most families we serve are mid and late-career professionals and business owners who are planning to retire or sell their company within ten years or reduce their ownership risk now. These successful individuals often face similar challenges that erode family wealth ─ high taxes, most retirement savings in pre-tax retirement accounts, high market risk and portfolio fees, a late start with retirement savings, or a concentration of wealth in a business or real estate. Our advanced planning process is tailored to address these issues to preserve family wealth. 


    Our specialty practice groups are accessible anytime for families with more complex situations, often involving estate planning, compensation and benefit plans, and business valuation and pre-transaction assistance.


  • Are we Fiduciaries?

    Yes, our wealth management advisors and asset managers are fiduciaries and place your interests as our first and only priority. Our asset managers are Certified Financial Planner (CFP) credentialed, and we have no firm mandates for what investments, funds, insurance carriers, or other solutions we recommend. This level of independence, which is not the industry norm, is a key benefit of the independent Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) fiduciary business model.

  • How are financial planning and wealth management different?

    Financial planning typically involves advice on investing, retirement planning, and insurance protection. Wealth management, on the other hand, is a more comprehensive service that involves a collaborative approach with specialists. This approach covers advanced planning areas such as investment portfolio design, asset protection and tax planning, estate planning, charitable giving, and business transaction assistance. Our wealth management process adds a margin of safety to each of the four pillars of planning ─ growth, income, risk management, and estate legacy.

  • How are we paid?

    We have both fee-only and assets under management arrangements, depending on our client’s desired scope of planning and assistance; these will usually differ for private and business advisory clients. We understand asset management fees are a drag on investment returns, so we reward clients who invest more with us. We also understand that fees are an issue in the absence of value. Our wealth management solution set provides deeper analysis and management of taxes, asset protection, and estate planning, including tax optimization and income reports not just once but every year you remain a client. We do not provide portfolio recommendations without an approved client risk analysis and a documented understanding of plan goals.

  • How we safeguard your assets?

    All client funds are held by third-party custodian Charles Schwab & Co., one of the largest financial firms in the world. Schwab maintains additional separate insurance for fraud, insolvency, or unauthorized trading. We do not trade on your behalf without your review and approval in advance unless you specifically request it. You always have access to and control your accounts and custodian registration information.

  • What Questions Should I Be Asking?

    • Does my current investment portfolio have hidden fees and taxes that my advisor did not discuss before making my investment decisions?
    • Are phantom income taxes affecting me?
    • How important are dividend and capital gains planning?
    • Are my investment accounts registered in a way that optimizes taxes, credit protection, income distribution, and family wealth transfer?
    • Should I reinvest or distribute dividends and capital gains, on which accounts? 
    • Are my investments in the best asset location? What assets should go where (what type of account)?
    • Do I have a flexible, tax-optimized balance of tax-deferred and tax-free accounts?
    • What is step-up in basis, and how important is this tax rule for wealth planning?
    • What experience do you have with business valuation and pre-sale to post-sale business succession?
    • What wealth management strategies aren’t we using that could move the needle for us?
    • What liability protections and strategies should I be considering?

DID YOU KNOW?

The first woman in the United States to complete a doctorate in computer science was a nun? And she happened to be a University of Wisconsin graduate, my alma mater (go Badgers). Mary Kenneth Keller (PhD 1965) was teaching high school math in Chicago in the early 1960s when she realized the importance of computers for mathematical computations. Her dissertation, “Inductive Inference on Computer Generated Patterns,” explored the ways computers could be used to solve problems.


Source: On Wisconsin Magazine, Summer 2024