FAQs
What types of clients does Pacific Financial Partners work with?
We offer tailored financial guidance to both individuals and business owners. For individuals, we focus on helping you build wealth, protect your family, and preserve your long-term assets. For business owners, we provide help merging company goals with personal wealth strategies. Core business planning services include cash flow management, retirement and employee benefit design, risk management, tax reduction strategies, and succession or exit planning.
Are you a fiduciary? Whose interests come first?
Yours. As a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional, I am required by CFP Board's Standards of Conduct to act as a fiduciary whenever I provide financial advice. That means putting your interests ahead of mine, disclosing conflicts of interest, and following your instructions. I also work in what the industry calls a fee-based model, through a broker-dealer. Some products, particularly insurance, pay commissions. When I recommend something like that, I am held to the SEC's Regulation Best Interest standard and I will tell you plainly what I earn from it.
How are you paid, and what will this cost me?
Two ways, and you will know which one applies before you agree to anything. An ongoing advisory fee on the assets I manage, charged as a percentage per year and deducted from the account. This is how most of my client relationships work. Commissions on certain products, mainly insurance, paid by the product company rather than by you directly. You do not write a check, but the cost is embedded in the product. Ask me for a written breakdown of every dollar I will earn from working with you. I will produce it.
Do I need a certain amount to work with you?
My general guideline is $250,000 minimum in investable assets. There is no income requirement. But reach out before you decide you do not qualify, because the guideline is a starting point rather than a wall. Situations where I will always take the conversation regardless of current balances: You own a business, whatever your personal accounts look like. Your assets are about to change because of a sale, an inheritance, or a liquidity event. You have significant equity compensation that has not vested yet.
What do your credentials mean?
Anyone can call themselves a financial advisor. The title is often misused. Here is what my credentials required. CFP® (CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™). A bachelor's degree, coursework across the full financial planning curriculum, a comprehensive board exam, 6,000 hours of experience, ongoing continuing education, and a fiduciary obligation when giving advice. Obtain and maintain FINRA securities licenses. Series 6, 7 and 63. You can verify all of it yourself. Look me up on FINRA at brokercheck.finra.org and on the CFP Board's site.
What do you actually do for me?
Not just pick investments. That is one piece of it. The work starts with a plan. Where you are, where you want to be, and what has to happen in between. From there: investment management, retirement and tax strategy, business owner planning including company retirement plans and succession, equity compensation, insurance and risk, and estate coordination. The mix depends on you. A business owner needs different work than an executive with RSUs, and a high earner still building assets needs something different again. We sort that out in the first conversation.
What happens in the first meeting?
First conversation, 30 min. You tell me what is going on and what you are trying to figure out. I tell you how I work and what it costs. We both decide whether it makes sense to keep talking. No cost, no obligation.
How often will we talk?
Semiannual planning and investments reviews, typically in the Spring and Fall months with availability in between. Life events matter more than the calendar. A business sale, a vesting date, a birth, a death, a job change, or an inheritance should generate a call regardless of when we last met. You will be able to reach me anytime when something changes or if you need support.
Yes, and I prefer to. Most financial mistakes I see are not caused by bad advice. They are caused by good advice that nobody coordinated. Your attorney drafts a trust and nobody re-titles the accounts. Your CPA finds a deduction that conflicts with your retirement plan design. Everyone does their job well and the plan still fails at the seams. If you do not have a CPA or an estate attorney, I can point you toward professionals and solutions. I do not receive compensation for referrals.
Will you work with my CPA and my attorney?
Who actually holds my money?
Not me, and not my firm. Your accounts are held at an independent third-party custodian. I have limited authority to place trades and deduct the agreed-upon fee. I never take possession of your money. You receive statements directly from the custodian, not just from me, and you can log into the custodian's website on your own to see your accounts at any time. Our Broker Dealer is OSAIC Wealth Inc and our custodian is National Financial Services LLC (Fidelity Investments).
