Pricing

What it costs, and why it's structured this way.

Flat fees for the planning work. Most clients begin in one of two lanes: retirement-transition planning or business-owner strategy. A transparent assets-under-management fee applies if you continue into ongoing advisory.

Why planning comes first.

Every important financial decision eventually touches another one. A tax move affects the investments. A retirement date changes the estate plan. A business decision changes personal cash flow. Trying to manage any single piece without understanding the rest is where good intentions go sideways.

So I don't start by managing money. I start by building the plan. The Keystone Method is a structured six-month engagement that maps the whole picture together. Once the plan is real, everything else calibrates to it.

Keystone Method™ Fees

Three tiers. One framework. Depth flexes to your situation.

Keystone Personal

$6,000

flat fee · six-month engagement

Fully refundable. Any reason, any time during the engagement.

For households where the pieces are mostly personal, especially the years when retirement stops being theoretical.

Included in Keystone Personal

  • Four to five working meetings over roughly six months
  • A written financial plan built around your actual goals, not a generic template
  • Retirement income analysis: timing, sequencing, and sustainability
  • Multi-year Roth conversion analysis
  • Tax projection and strategy coordinated with the plan
  • Investment review and allocation recommendation calibrated to the plan
  • Estate review: beneficiaries, documents, and coordination
  • Risk and protection review: insurance gaps, umbrella coverage, disability
  • All analysis and coordination between meetings handled by our team

Who this fits

Keystone Personal is the usual starting point for families approaching retirement who need income, taxes, investments, Social Security, Medicare, and estate decisions to line up. It can also fit complex personal situations where the business side is not central.

Keystone Owner

$12,000

flat fee · six-month engagement

Fully refundable. Any reason, any time during the engagement.

For business owners where tax, cash flow, owner pay, retirement plans, entity decisions, and personal wealth all affect each other.

Included in Keystone Owner

  • Everything in Keystone Personal, plus:
  • Entity-level analysis across your business and personal finances
  • Owner compensation strategy: salary, distributions, retirement plan design
  • Business tax strategy, including pass-through optimization
  • Retirement plan review: SEP, Solo 401(k), defined benefit if applicable
  • Succession and exit-readiness considerations
  • Coordinated planning across personal, entity, and family balance sheets

Who this fits

Keystone Owner is the right engagement when business decisions materially shape the personal outcome. Owners with meaningful profit. Owners trying to reduce tax surprises. Owners thinking about an exit. Families where the entity structure has quietly become complicated.

Keystone Custom

Starts at $20,000

scoped individually · six-month engagement

Fully refundable any time, for any reason.

For unusually layered situations where the scope needs to be designed around the work.

How Custom works

Custom is not a third kind of client. It is a scope for unusually layered work: a business sale alongside an inheritance, a concentrated stock position with estate-planning implications, or a divorce that intersects with retirement timing. The fee is scoped after we talk. The six-month timeline and refund policy are the same as the other two tiers.

Schedule an Explore Call
Learn more about the Keystone Method™

Which one is me?

If the main question is retirement, income, taxes, and investments, Keystone Personal is almost certainly right. If you own a business, have meaningful K-1 income, or manage entities alongside personal wealth, Keystone Owner is the fit. When it is not obvious, that is what the Explore Call is for. I'd rather we figure it out together than improvise.

Keystone Custom makes sense if...

  • You're navigating more than one major financial transition at the same time
  • You have a business sale, inheritance, divorce, or concentrated equity position with tax implications that need a custom scope
  • You have been told by another advisor that your situation is outside their normal practice

If you're not sure whether your situation is Owner or Custom, that's a reasonable question to bring to the Explore Call. We'll sort it out on the call.

Schedule an Explore Call

Ongoing Advisory

Most clients continue with us after Keystone is complete. The work shifts from build mode to maintenance mode. The plan we built together stays current as your life changes, the investments stay calibrated to it, and tax strategy stays woven through the year rather than reviewed once in April.

Investment advisory fee

1.00% on the first $1M

Declining brackets above $1M. Tiered so larger relationships pay proportionally less.

Annual minimum

$5,000

Clients below roughly $500K in managed assets pay the minimum directly until AUM crosses that threshold.

Meeting cadence

About twice a year

Plus touchpoints as life decisions require. Most of the work runs in the background.

Tax preparation through Talley Tax is optional and priced separately. Most ongoing clients add it, because when strategy, investments, and the return itself are all coordinated inside one engagement, the planning gets tighter and the surprises get fewer.

See the ongoing advisory rhythm See the Tax Membership rhythm

How we're compensated, in full.

Flat fees for the Keystone Method. An advisory fee for the ongoing investment work, based on assets under management. Both of those are clearly disclosed before anything begins.

There's a third category worth naming directly. For a small number of situations, an insurance or investment product genuinely fits the plan, and in those cases we're compensated by commission on the product. When that's true, I'll tell you directly, walk through the math, and explain why that specific tool is the right one. Nothing gets recommended that way unless the plan calls for it.

Common questions about pricing.

Do I have to do Keystone before working with you?

Yes. Keystone is how every relationship starts. It is the engagement where we build the plan. Jumping straight into investment management without it skips the part that makes the rest of the work actually useful.

What if I only want a second opinion, not a full engagement?

Reach out. A one-time consulting conversation is not the standard offering, but if that is genuinely what you need, I would rather have that conversation than sell you something bigger than what fits.

Is the Keystone fee refundable if we don't finish?

Yes. If at any point during the six months you decide Keystone is not the right fit, you get the fee back. No questions, no friction, no proration. The reason this exists is not marketing posture. It is that the work is high-trust and the only way to make the trust real is to take the financial risk off the table.

What does the ongoing fee actually cover?

Investment management, plan maintenance, and about two structured planning meetings a year with additional touchpoints as life decisions come up. Tax preparation through Talley Tax is optional and priced separately.

Why is there a $5,000 minimum?

Because meaningful advice takes real time, and the minimum reflects the actual cost of doing the work well. Below that level, the economics do not work for either of us, and the client is usually better served by something simpler.

Do fees get discounted for larger portfolios?

Yes. The advisory fee brackets decline above $1M in managed assets. The exact schedule gets shared before you make any decision about moving forward.

Not sure which fits? That's what the call is for.

Fifteen minutes on the phone. I'll ask a few questions about your situation and we'll work through whether Keystone Personal, Owner, or Custom is the right starting point. Or whether we should be working together at all.

Schedule an Explore Call