Pricing

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

Flat fees for the planning work. Most clients begin through tax-smart retirement planning or financial planning for business owners. Roth conversion and retirement tax-window questions are usually part of the retirement planning work. A transparent assets-under-management fee applies if you continue into ongoing advisory.

Why planning comes first.

Every important financial decision eventually creates side effects. 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 understanding the whole picture. The Keystone Method is a structured six-month engagement where we map it together, and plenty gets implemented along the way. Once the full picture is understood, I can truly act as a fiduciary of 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 and the decisions need to start happening.

Included in Keystone Personal

  • Usually four to five meetings at most over roughly six months, with most of the work done for you between them
  • Order across your whole picture: a working system for your money, written down, with the understanding that makes it yours
  • Retirement income plan with timing, withdrawal sequencing, Social Security, Medicare, and sustainability decisions mapped
  • Multi-year Roth conversion and tax-window plan with the first-year actions identified
  • Forward-looking tax projection with strategy, estimated-payment, and year-end planning steps coordinated to the plan
  • Investment allocation rebuilt around the retirement income, tax, cash-flow, and risk decisions the plan requires
  • Estate planning process led from goals and document review through execution steps, beneficiary updates, and account/title coordination
  • Risk and protection work: insurance gaps, umbrella coverage, disability, long-term care exposure, and what should actually change
  • Between-meeting analysis, forms, coordination, and open-loop tracking handled by our team so the work keeps moving

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 need to be turned into an executable plan.

Included in Keystone Owner

  • Everything in Keystone Personal, plus:
  • Entity-level planning across the business, household cash flow, tax return, and personal balance sheet
  • Owner compensation plan covering salary, distributions, reasonable-compensation pressure, retirement contributions, and cash reserves
  • Business tax strategy with pass-through planning, timing decisions, estimated payments, and implementation steps coordinated through the year
  • Retirement plan design review across SEP, Solo 401(k), defined benefit, or employer plan options when relevant
  • Owner-pay system for deciding what stays in the business, what comes home, and what gets invested outside the company
  • Succession, sale, or continuity questions surfaced early enough to shape tax, estate, and personal planning decisions
  • Coordinated follow-through across personal, entity, and family balance sheets so business decisions do not sit apart from the plan

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.

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 is rare: more than one major transition landing at once, scoped individually. If that might be you, bring it to the call and we will sort it out together.

Whichever tier sounds like you, the next step is the same 15-minute call.

Schedule an Explore Call

If you already have an advisor.

Most people who come to us are already paying someone. Some have been managing it themselves. Either way, the fee schedule on this page can read like it stacks on top of whatever you are doing now, so here is the math, plainly. It does not stack.

If you move your accounts here, Ongoing Advisory replaces the fee you are paying today, which makes the Keystone fee the only new money. One fee covers your planning, your strategy, and your investment management. You are not keeping your current advisor's fee and adding ours to it. And if part of your money has no advisor on it today, a 401(k) still sitting at work is the usual case, the schedule below is the whole cost of it. Nothing rides on top.

Before I take any engagement, it has to pass my own test: I need to be confident the work will save you several multiples of the fee. If your situation does not have that much in it, I will say so, because the first piece of advice I give you cannot be bad advice.

And Keystone stands on its own. Some people finish it, take the system and the understanding home, and stay right where they are. If your current advisor already keeps your taxes, your investments, and your retirement income working as one plan, you are in good hands, and I will tell you that too.

Ongoing Advisory

Most clients continue with us after Keystone is complete. By then we have wrapped our minds around your full picture together, and that is what makes real stewardship possible: the plan 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.

Choose one, the other, or both.

Ongoing Advisory Tax Membership Financial planning Investment management Tax return preparation Implementation Tax strategy

Investment advisory fee

1.00% on the first $2M

Declining brackets above $2M. 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.

After Keystone

Ongoing advisory is the price of keeping the plan owned.

Ongoing Advisory covers your planning, your strategy, and your investment management: tax-aware decisions, retirement income, business-owner planning, and follow-through kept in one rhythm by the team that already knows your whole picture.

First $2M

1.00%

$4M-$10M

0.50%

At $10M

0.65%

blended

The full schedule is public for transparency, but the decision to continue comes after the plan is built.

Review ongoing advisory fees

Tax Membership through Talley Tax is the second path after Keystone: tax strategy implementation, tax preparation, and the tax side of your cash flow handled through the year. It is optional and priced separately, and many families choose both, because when strategy, investments, and the return itself are coordinated, the planning gets tighter and the surprises get fewer.

See the advisory fee schedule 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 where we come to understand your whole picture, and where a good deal of the work actually gets done. Managing your investments without that understanding would mean acting on a picture we have not fully seen.

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?

Ongoing Advisory covers your planning, your strategy, and your investment management, with about two structured planning meetings a year and additional touchpoints as life decisions come up. Tax Membership through Talley Tax is optional and priced separately, and many families choose both.

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 $2M in managed assets. The full schedule is public, and it is also reviewed before you make any decision about ongoing advisory.

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