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We help clients align their values with their life goals and vision. We do that through comprehensive, fiduciary financial advice.

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Do you have money piling up in a checking account? Perhaps you inherited money and it’s still aligned with a parent or grandparent’s views, not yours? Maybe you are an entrepreneur or run a mission-driven business and know you need to do some planning about the financial implications for you and your family.

Our Core Services:

Organizing Your Finances

Many times the first step with new clients is simply collecting all of their financial information to get a clear picture of their financial life. This organization process helps ensure we get started on the right footing.

Building Your Roadmap

After working to nail down your details, we’re ready to plan our work together in a way that makes the most sense for you! We’ll build out a custom strategy for your unique goals.

Investment Strategy, Alignment, and Ongoing Management

We learn about your cashflow needs, time horizon, social impact approach and more to develop a tailored investment strategy personalized to your needs.

Estate Planning

We help understand your existing wills/trusts. If you may need some or you might needs updates, we’ll help you move forward.

Tax Planning

We’ll review your prior taxes, identify opportunities for improvements, think long-term, and make plans to help you avoid common mistakes.

Spending Plan

We’ll help you align your spending with your life vision and use your money to do good, increase your fulfillment, and boost your happiness.

Retirement Projections

We’ll help you figure out how much you need to save. If you want to leave your job earlier than at traditional retirement age, we’ll help you make that happen.

Charitable Giving

We’ll help you figure out how much you want to redistribute, how, and more. Your plan will also cover non-deductible giving like political contributions.

Risk Management and Insurance

We’ll help you figure out if you need insurance and if so, what kinds, how much, and how to procure quality policies at a good value.

Education Planning

If you want to help provide for a child, grandchild, or someone else’s college education we’ll help you understand 529s and other savings options, how much to set aside, and how to manage the investments.

Equity Compensation

Whether stock options, grants, or other forms of equity compensation, we’ll help you understand the tradeoffs and make a plan. Then we’ll help you stick with it.

Real Estate

We’ll help guide you through buying a home including setting the budget, engaging the professionals, negotiating for a good mortgage rate, and more. We’ll also help you figure out if you should keep your prior home as a rental and can analyze investment properties.

Lifestyle Transitions We Help Clients Navigate:

Major Purchases

From buying a home, to purchasing a car, we’re here to help you plan for the major purchases in your future.

Job Transitions / Sabbaticals

Would you like to transition to a new role or take time away from paid employment? We’ll help you identify your goals and make a career and financial plan that meets them.

Inheritance

Have you inherited wealth (unexpected or otherwise)? We’ll help you figure out how to approach it from a financial and emotional standpoint.

Sale of a company

If you’re a founder or an executive going through a major business sale, you deserve to be supported. We can help you navigate the sale of your business, and set you up for financial and lifestyle success in your future endeavors.

Marriage

Combining your finances with your partner, and navigating setting goals together can be a challenge. We’re here to support you as you start your new life together.

Retirement

Are you looking for help setting yourself up for success in this exciting next chapter? We’re here to help answer the financial questions, and guide you through making decisions about living an exciting and meaningful life after you retire.

Growing family

Have questions about how to include an expanding family in your financial plan? We can help you work through this transition and redefine your goals and values.

Comprehensive Financial Planning

All of our client relationships begin here. We firmly believe that a comprehensive financial plan that is guided by your unique goals and values is the best way to live a fulfilling, impactful financial life. The plan will lay out what’s important to you and how we can structure your financial life to achieve it. We focus on tax-efficient planning that prioritizes charitable giving and sustainable impact. But we don’t stop there. Our financial planning services are designed to help our clients live the lives they’ve always imagined for themselves. We advise on career management, legacy planning,real estate, tax planning, and more.

Investment Planning & Ethics​

Many of our clients also engage us in investment management services. We pride ourselves on being a full-service firm that takes an evidence-based approach to our portfolio management. We embrace the research that led to Nobel prizes for Fama and Markowitz. But we also work to make sure clients’ values are reflected in their portfolios.

We believe that this science-backed, tax-conscious, and impact-focused approach allows our clients to achieve the best of both worlds: exceptional performance while doing good in the world.

What It Costs​

We offer investment management and comprehensive financial planning services to our clients. Our fee has two components: one based on the size of the portfolio we manage for you and the other is based on the complexity of your other financial planning needs.

We simply add Component 1 and Component 2 to arrive at your fee.

Component 1

We manage our clients’ investments using our impact-informed, tax-smart process for a fee of:

Portfolio Size Annual Rate
Up to $3 Million
1.00%
Between $3 Million and $6 Million
0.75%
Above $6 Million
0.50%

+

Component 2

The financial planning fee component varies depending on what’s going on in your financial life, but typically start at:

  • $6,000 for an individual
  • $8,000 for a couple
  • $10,000-$12,000 for business or rental property owners (financial planning for business owners is often tax deductible)

We simply add Component 1 and Component 2 to arrive at your fee.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Values Added compare to other investment firms?

Take a look at our detailed chart and see how we stand out from others!

How do Values Added's fees compare with other firms?

We aim to offer exemplary service by being more comprehensive, more responsive, and more values-oriented than other firms who charge a similar fee. Since we typically provide comprehensive services both fee components apply in most client circumstances.

Some advisors only work with people who have more than $1 million, do you have a minimum portfolio size like that?

No we don’t. Anyone can work with us regardless of the amount of money they have. We’ll help you figure out if our fees provide good value to you.

What if I have a large amount of wealth but it’s in real estate, equity in the company where I work, or something that isn’t a typical investment portfolio?

For clients with high net worth or non-liquid investments, we may be able to offer a pricing accommodation, so please reach out.

Can you give an example of how the investment management percentage fee works?

Fee tiers are applied marginally. For example, a household with $3.5 million under management would pay 1.00% on the first $3 million and 0.75% on the remaining $500,000.

Okay, I get how the percentages work but what are they applied to? Does that include my workplace retirement account?

We include all accounts that Values Added manages for you directly through our custodian Charles Schwab. This typically includes taxable brokerage accounts/trusts and IRAs. We typically exclude 401(k)s at your current employer and 529s but will still advise on those even if we can’t manage them for you.

You mentioned that the financial planning component is usually less than $12k per year. Is it ever more?

Sometimes a particularly complex situation necessitates a financial planning fee of more than $12,000 per year. Those are generally cases where the client has significant held-away assets, family trusts, family partnerships, and/or private, illiquid, or non-marketable assets that we advise on, but do not directly manage. The financial planning fee also will generally reflect assets we advise on, but are not included in the investment fee.

We want to make your life better and we want to make the world better too.​

That’s why 20% of our profits go to supporting organizations fighting for a better world. It’s like the 1% for the planet approach but twenty times as much! We also work personally in our communities and if you have causes you care about, we’d love to learn about them.

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We don’t just invest in the big companies on stock exchanges, we invest in reducing the racial wealth gap & sustainable energy

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Would you like your (charitable) giving to be mindful, tax-efficient, effective, and fun?

We have created a 5-day series that covers the how, why, who, and when of incorporating a giving practice into your daily life.