Frequently Asked Questions

FirsTrust was founded in 1995 by advisors who left Wall Street to build an independent, fee-only firm where the only financial relationship is between advisor and client. Thirty years later, that founding principle still governs every engagement.

Our advisory team includes a financial planner (CFP®, ChFC, MBA), a Chief Investment Officer (CFA), a trust and estate specialist (CFP®, JurisMaster in Law), and a tax strategist (CFP®, M.Tax). They coordinate across your full financial picture rather than working in isolation.

Yes. Every registered investment adviser is technically a fiduciary, but many also hold broker licenses that allow them to receive commissions. FirsTrust holds no such license. Our sole compensation is the advisory fee you pay directly, and we have no corporate affiliation that influences our recommendations.

“Independent” means we are not obligated to the shareholders of any bank, brokerage, insurance company, or product manufacturer. “Fee-only” means we are compensated only by client fees;not sales commissions, marketing incentives, or third-party compensation for recommending investments or financial products.

FirsTrust serves clients locally and across the country through secure virtual meetings. Many of our clients live in Florida and the Southeast, and we work with families in multiple states who value a fee-only fiduciary relationship and our team-based approach.

Business owners, executives, and multigenerational families whose success has created complexity, typically with $3M or more in investable assets. Our minimum annual fee is $15,000.

There is no account minimum. Our minimum annual fee is $15,000, or $3,750 per quarter. This ensures every client receives the full depth of our FinancialTeam's expertise.

If you’re earlier in your wealth journey, FirsTrust may be overkill for your situation. Our team is built for families navigating meaningful complexity—estate coordination, multi-entity tax strategy, business succession, or multigenerational planning. If we’re not the right fit, we’re happy to point you to other resources or advisors who may better match your needs.

Yes. Many clients come to us during or after significant life events such as divorce, the loss of a spouse, an inheritance, legal settlement, or the sale of a business. Our role is to bring clarity, organization, and structure to complex decisions during transitional periods.

Your team integrates investment management, financial planning, tax coordination, and estate implementation under a single advisory relationship. Comprehensive Wealth Management clients work with a lead advisor who coordinates specialists as needed. Private Family Office clients have direct access to dedicated specialists across each discipline.

Yes. Your financial plan enables us to model “what-if” scenarios; retirement dates, Social Security timing, second homes, career changes, Roth conversions, spending changes, and more, so you can see potential long-term effects before you decide. We also analyze cash flow, reserves, insurance coverage, and other risk points as part of your plan.

Beyond wills and trusts. With nearly 40 years of experience and credentials spanning psychology, finance, and law, our Trust & Estate Specialist simplifies intricate trust structures, anticipates issues, mediates sensitive family interactions, and crafts tax-efficient, multigenerational strategies.

We are paid exclusively by the fees our clients pay us directly — a single flat percentage of assets under management. We receive no commissions, kickbacks, referral fees, or any other third-party compensation. This fee-only model reduces conflicts of interest and keeps our advice fully aligned with your goals.

Yes. Our pricing is transparent and plain-English, with no add-on charges that make your true cost hard to identify. Before you become a client, you’ll receive a clear explanation of your fee structure and what it covers.

Fees are based on your investment account values, deducted directly from those accounts quarterly in advance. You will always see a clear line item on your custodian statement showing exactly what was charged.

FirsTrust has no hidden fees. Your quarterly management fee is all we charge. We also work to reduce your costs outside of our firm, such as investment expense ratios. We factor everything, including our fee, into your total return strategy and financial planning.

Our fees begin at 0.85% for Comprehensive Wealth Management, with a minimum fee of $3,750/quarter. Private Family Office engagements are individually proposed based on complexity. We’re happy to discuss specifics in an introductory conversation.

Your fee reflects the complexity of your financial life and covers your full service tier. There are no add-on charges, hourly billing, transaction fees, or hidden costs. Financial planning, tax coordination, investment management, and estate implementation are all included.

We review progress with you on a quarterly basis, and your advisory team is accessible between scheduled reviews for questions or time-sensitive decisions.

We aggregate data from your accounts at multiple institutions into a single system that can generate detailed analytical reports. Your consolidated reporting also provides continuously updated account values, plan projections, and a secure document vault.

For an initial call, bring nothing but your questions and a sense of what you want to accomplish. If we decide to move forward, we’ll then ask for items like recent account statements, tax returns, and estate documents so we can organize your complete financial picture.

Yes. We can provide a list of CPAs and attorneys who know our work and are willing to recommend us based on their experience collaborating with our FinancialTeam. Contact us and we'd be happy to provide them for you.

You start by scheduling a brief introductory conversation. Together we’ll discuss your situation, confirm fit, and recommend the appropriate service tier before you decide to move forward.

FirsTrust is often a good fit if you want fee-only advice from a seasoned team with no product incentives, value transparency and independence over product sales, and have enough complexity within retirement income, taxes, trusts, or multi-account portfolios, that you prefer a coordinated, long-term strategy rather than one-off transactions.

Each portfolio is designed to pursue your specific objectives while seeking the highest reasonable probability of success with the least expected risk, tax drag, and cost. Your investments align with your financial plan, time horizon, and comfort with risk, then adjust as your life and markets evolve.

We start by defining risk in terms that matter to you: the ability to fund your lifestyle and long-term goals without taking more risk than necessary. Using institutional tools and quantitative risk analysis, we stress-test portfolios across different market environments, align investments with your written investment guidelines, and monitor risk factors like volatility, concentration, and sequence-of-returns risk over time.

Many clients come to us with significant single-stock positions or highly appreciated holdings. Working closely with our Chief Investment Officer and your tax professional, we design a gradual, tax-aware transition using tools like staged sales, diversification strategies, or charitable techniques, reducing concentration risk while managing the tax impact.

The answer depends on your goals, tax situation, and account size. We may use a mix of individual securities, mutual funds, and ETFs to build the right combination of diversification, tax efficiency, and cost control. Every recommendation is driven by your objectives and our research.

Taxes are a core design constraint in every portfolio decision. We look at asset location (which investments go in which accounts), holding periods, gain/loss harvesting opportunities, retirement income sourcing, and estate goals when we make recommendations. Strategic Tax Planning at FirsTrust is a year-round process that connects your portfolio management with your broader tax picture.

Your money is never held at FirsTrust. Accounts are kept at an independent, third-party custodian, often a major brokerage such as Charles Schwab, in your name or your trust’s name. You receive statements and online access directly from the custodian.*

* FirsTrust and its employees are independent of and are not employees or agents of Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (“Schwab”). Schwab does not prepare, verify, or endorse information distributed by FirsTrust.

Most “fee-based” advisors are dual-registered: they can charge fees and earn commissions or incentives from products they sell. FirsTrust is fee-only and does not hold brokerage sales licenses. We accept only client-paid fees for advice and service.

You don’t have to take our word for it. You can:

• Review our Form CRS and ADV on the SEC’s adviser information site, and
• Confirm that we’re not also registered with FINRA as brokers.

If an advisor is both an SEC-registered adviser and FINRA-registered broker, they are dual-registered and allowed to receive product-based compensation in addition to fees.

No. As a matter of philosophy and policy, we do not accept sales commissions, revenue-sharing payments, or marketing incentives from product providers.

No. 'Fee-based' means the advisor charges fees and may also receive commissions. FirsTrust is Fee-Only. The only compensation we receive is the fee you pay.

The regulatory framework allows advisors to hold multiple licenses simultaneously, which is why independent verification matters. FirsTrust holds no broker license and accepts no third-party compensation.

Go to BrokerCheck and enter the adviser’s name and city/state. If they’re listed as a Broker, or as both a Broker and an Investment Adviser, they’re licensed to receive commissions.

An independent firm has no obligation to any bank, brokerage, or product manufacturer. That means every recommendation reflects your situation and objectives, with no outside commercial relationships influencing the advice.

There is no universal standard. At FirsTrust, our team holds CFP®, CFA, ChFC, JurisMaster, Master of Taxation, and CISM credentials with an average of 32+ years of experience. We believe the depth of the advice should match the depth of the credential.

A will is just one piece of an estate plan. A complete plan can also include powers of attorney, healthcare directives, beneficiary designations, and sometimes trusts. Together, these documents help protect you if you’re alive but incapacitated, and ensure your wishes are carried out efficiently after you’re gone.

A will is a list of your instructions to a probate court for how you would like your property to be inherited. A trust is a legal arrangement that holds title to certain assets during your lifetime and then instructs a Trustee how to distribute them after you're gone. Because no probate court is required, it affords you greater privacy, fewer post-mortem costs and delays, and the flexibility to add tax and asset protections.

It's not just about estate taxes. The higher, now-permanent federal exemption (rising to $15 million per person / $30 million per couple in 2026) means fewer families will owe federal estate tax, but many states still have their own estate or inheritance taxes with much lower thresholds. Planning is still essential for asset protection, some states' estate taxes, income taxes on heirs, business succession, and making sure wealth is used wisely across generations.

Yes. The ownership of your business is a taxable asset of your estate, and that ownership must transfer according to your estate plan to be valid and effective. True business succession also requires extra attention and documentation, such as buy-sell agreements, updated operating or shareholder agreements, and carefully coordinated trust and beneficiary designations, to help ensure the enterprise itself continues smoothly.

Yes. With the right asset-protection planning, you can leave assets to your children in a way that shields those funds from future risks such as divorce, lawsuits, or creditor claims. By using properly structured trusts and carefully drafted distribution rules, you can give your children access to the inheritance while keeping the underlying assets better protected than if they received everything outright in their own names.

Your tax plan incorporates strategies across deferral, gain and loss harvesting, deduction optimization, income recognition timing, withdrawal sequencing, and estate tax mitigation. Applied consistently, these strategies reduce your lifetime tax burden.

Your tax plan is coordinated across your CPA, attorney, and investment team. Relevant data and strategies are shared so each professional works from the same foundation.

Send your most recent federal tax returns and any supporting schedules/K-1s. We perform an efficiency review of your return and monitor changes in income, deductions, brackets, exemptions, and credits throughout the year.

Tax coordination is included in every Comprehensive Wealth Management and Private Family Office engagement. For families with multi-entity structures or advanced complexity, your team includes a dedicated tax specialist.

Tax-efficient portfolio management targets the gap between gross and net returns. This includes harvesting losses to offset gains, minimizing the tax impact on cash flows, and positioning assets across taxable and non-taxable accounts to keep your portfolio optimized over time.

There’s no accurate rule-of-thumb or magic number. FirsTrust builds a personalized retirement plan that considers your lifestyle, fixed and flexible expenses, pensions, Social Security, healthcare, and legacy goals. From there, your team can project different scenarios to see what’s sustainable for you.

No. Many people first seek help in their 60s or after they’ve already stopped working. Your team can still help organize accounts, design a tax-wise withdrawal strategy, and align investments and estate documents with your current reality.

It's an important decision that we can help you make with confidence. Claiming too early or too late can significantly affect your lifetime income and tax picture. FirsTrust incorporates Social Security into your broader retirement plan—running comparisons of different claiming ages in the context of your savings, longevity assumptions, and tax profile.

Yes. Healthcare and potential long-term care needs are built into your retirement projections. Your team helps estimate costs, evaluate coverage options, and test how different scenarios might affect your income and legacy over time.

Executive financial planning is a comprehensive approach that addresses the unique financial challenges facing corporate leaders and high-earning professionals. This includes managing complex compensation packages, equity awards, stock options, deferred compensation, and executive benefits—while coordinating tax planning, investment management, and estate planning into a unified strategy.

There is no universal answer—it depends on your tax situation, the stock outlook, your concentration risk, and your overall plan. Your team models different exercise scenarios against AMT, ordinary income, and capital gains to find the approach that fits your full picture.

Diversification is essential, but timing and method matter. We build multi-year strategies that may include systematic sales, charitable giving, exchange funds, or hedging structures, always coordinated with your tax plan to minimize the impact.

Yes. With your written authorization, we routinely collaborate with clients’ CPAs, attorneys, and benefits administrators. We share data, coordinate strategies, and ensure everyone is working from the same foundation to serve your best interests.

FirsTrust is fee-only and legally obligated to act in your interest across your full financial life, not just company benefits. We do not receive commissions, marketing incentives, or sales bonuses of any kind.

Legacy planning is driven by complexity, not a specific net worth threshold. If your family has estate planning needs, tax coordination across generations, or wealth transfer goals, your team can build a plan around those objectives.

The Trust & Estate specialist on our FinancialTeam has a formal education in both finance and law plus nearly 40 years of experience in this particular field. We work with you to create the plan, an estate planning attorney (your own lawyer or we can refer you to one that we have vetted) will draft the documents, and we will help you put it all together in a manner that solidifies your legacy intentions.

Research shows that most family wealth fails to survive to the third generation, and it is rarely because of poor investments. It is usually due to lack of communication, unprepared heirs, or family conflict. Your team helps build governance frameworks, educate the next generation, and structure trusts in ways that encourage responsibility.

A dynasty trust is designed to hold assets during your lifetime, generate income during your retirement, and transfer them to your heirs in a manner you specifically authorize, with built-in protection and federal estate tax sheltering across multiple generations. Whether it fits your situation depends on the size and structure of your estate, your state of residence, and your multigenerational goals.

Yes. FirsTrust plans for the entire lifecycle, not just document creation. When the time comes, your team helps trustees and heirs execute the plan, navigate around probate, coordinate asset transfers, and ensure the transition happens according to your documented wishes.