Passing wealth to your children has three parts, and the third is the one people underestimate.
A trust, revocable or not, or a will. We’re happy to work with the estate attorney of your choice, or connect you with one of the estate services vetted by Schwab for our clients.
The cost basis of your assets resets at your death, so the assets carrying the largest unrealized gains are usually best left to heirs rather than sold during your lifetime — those gains disappear at the reset. We build wealth transfer into your tax planning, not alongside it.
If you don’t prepare your heirs to handle what you intend to transmit, you’re likely not maximizing the impact of the transfer. We invite your heirs into the conversation — and invite them to become clients — so they can learn to manage assets before they inherit yours.
Clients’ children can come to us with any money question, at any account size. Investment knowledge is key, and we’re happy to provide it — because an informed investor is always a better investor, and the earlier that starts, the better.
Several of our clients own investment real estate, and it fits well with what we do: financial assets diversify away from real estate, which tends to be local, and provide the liquidity real estate lacks. Real-estate leverage can even provide a tax deduction and liquidity at once. The point is to manage one investment mix rather than two.
If your wealth is concentrated in employer stock — through RSUs or an employee stock purchase plan — diversifying it is one of the most common situations we handle. We map vesting and lockups, plan sales to spread the tax impact, and move methodically from concentrated stock toward a portfolio built for your whole life.