frequently asked questions

 

Got questions? Good. We think the more you know about how financial planning works — and how we work — the better decisions you’ll make. Here are the ones we hear most often.

getting started

  • We call it our “first blind date” and we mean that in the best way. It’s a complimentary introduction meeting where we get to know you, you get to know us, and we figure out together whether there’s a good fit. We’ll ask about where you are financially, what you’re trying to accomplish, and what’s keeping you up at night. We’ll explain how we work, how we get paid, and what the engagement looks like. By the end, we usually have a clear sense of whether we should move forward or part ways as friends. No pressure.

  • We offer two primary ways to engage with us. Fundamental Financial Solutions (Traditional) is designed for clients who want help with a specific financial need, think insurance planning, investment setup, or a one-time financial review. Strategic Financial Planning (Ongoing) is for clients who want a long-term partner to help manage and evolve their financial life over time. This includes regular check-ins, proactive planning, and coordination across all the moving parts of your financial picture. Which one fits you best usually becomes clear in our first conversation.

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the bASICS

  • A CFP® is a financial planner who has passed rigorous education requirements, a comprehensive exam, and is held to ongoing continuing education standards. More importantly, a CFP® is required to act in your best interest not their own or their firms. At Rice Financial Group, Ian Rice, Kasey Closs, and Shane Allen all hold the CFP® designation, along with additional credentials like AEP® (Accredited Estate Planner®) and others. When you work with a CFP®, you’re working with someone who has proven they can handle the full picture: retirement, taxes, investments, insurance, estate planning, and everything in between.

  • A fiduciary is legally and ethically required to put your interests ahead of their own. That sounds like it should be the standard for everyone in finance — but it’s not. Many advisors operate under a “suitability” standard, which means they only have to recommend something that’s reasonably appropriate for you, even if there’s a better or cheaper option, they’d personally benefit from more. Our advisory services are provided through Cambridge Investment Research Advisors, Inc., a Registered Investment Adviser. That means when we’re providing investment advice, we’re bound to act as fiduciaries. We’re glad to walk you through exactly how this applies to our engagement with you during our first meeting.

  • Advisors at banks and insurance companies often work within a limited menu of products their company offers — and they may earn commissions or bonuses for recommending certain products. We’re an independent firm. That means we’re not beholden to any single company’s product lineup. We can look across the market, find what actually fits your situation, and recommend it without a hidden incentive pulling us in another direction. Our focus is on building long-term relationships with families and businesses — not selling a product and moving on

  • We believe in complete transparency about how we’re compensated, it’s part of the fiduciary relationship. Depending on the type of work we do together, we may charge a flat fee, an hourly fee, or a percentage of assets under management. We also hold licenses that allow us to receive commissions on certain insurance or investment products. We’ll walk you through exactly how we’re compensated in our very first meeting so there are no surprises. You can also visit our Plans & Pricing page to get a general sense of our fee structure before we even speak.

WORKING WITH US REMOTELY

  • Not at all. Many of our clients never set foot in our Wilsonville, Oregon office and that’s completely done by design. We’ve built our practice around flexible, technology-enabled meetings that fit your schedule. Whether you prefer video calls, phone meetings, or secure document sharing from your home or office, we handle it all virtually with the same level of care and attention you’d get in person. For busy professionals and executives, this means financial planning that actually happens instead of getting pushed to the bottom of the calendar because you can’t carve out a two-hour block to drive across town.

  • We use secure video conferencing so we can share screens, walk through documents, and have a genuine face-to-face conversation without leaving your home or office. Before each meeting we send you a calendar invite with a secure meeting link, usually Zoom or Teams. Documents are exchanged through secure, encrypted portals or secure emails.

  • Yes. Our team holds licenses in more than 25 states including Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Texas, Washington, and more. We serve clients up and down the West Coast and across the country, and our virtual-technology and systems means geography is rarely a barrier. Many of our out-of-state clients came to us through referrals from existing clients and they’ve found that working with a team they trust, regardless of location, is far more valuable than working with whoever happens to be nearby.

  • Security is not an afterthought for us. Sensitive documents, account statements, tax returns, estate documents, beneficiary designations are shared through encrypted, password-protected client portals or email. Our investment custodians and broker-dealer operate under strict regulatory and cybersecurity standards. We don’t discuss account specifics over unsecured channels, and we regularly review our data handling practices. If you have specific concerns about how your information is stored or shared, we’re happy to walk through our protocols in detail.

FOR YOUNG PROFESSIONALS & FAMILIES

  • We do, and we believe in it deeply. Kasey Closs is a third-generation financial advisor who learned early that it’s never too soon to start building good financial habits. Getting the fundamentals right early insurance, debt management, savings rates, investment allocation, and beneficiary designations pays dividends for decades. We often work with clients’ children and grandchildren, because we believe in building relationships, good financial habits, and guiding principles across generations.

  • That’s exactly what comprehensive financial planning is for. Most families in their 30s and 40s feel like they’re being pulled in five directions at once mortgage, childcare, college savings, retirement accounts, emergency fund. The problem is that without a clear plan, you end up making reactive decisions rather than intentional ones. We help you build a strategy that coordinates all these goals, prioritizes them, and gives you a realistic roadmap. It doesn’t mean doing everything at once, it means knowing what to do first and why.

FOR BUSINESS OWNERS

  • Absolutely. Business owners face a layer of financial complexity that most advisors aren’t equipped to handle well — from entity structure and key-person protection to buy-sell agreements, business succession, and eventually transitioning or selling. We work with business owners as a whole picture, connecting your business finances and your personal finances into a coherent long-term plan.

  • Business succession planning is the process of deciding what happens to your business when you’re ready to step back — whether that means passing it to a family member, selling to a partner or third party, or a managed wind-down. The short answer on timing: sooner than you think. Most business owners wait too long and find themselves scrambling. A well-designed succession plan can take years to execute properly, and the tax and legal implications of how you exit can be significant. We help you think through your options early, so you’re choosing your exit on your terms.

FOR PRE-RETIREES & RETIREMENT PLANNING

  • It’s rarely as late as it feels. The 50s are actually one of the most impactful decades for retirement planning — you’re in peak earning years, your kids may be approaching financial independence, and the IRS gives you “catch-up contribution” allowances for retirement accounts that let you save more than younger workers. What matters most isn’t where you’re starting from; it’s having a clear strategy going forward. That’s exactly what we help with — taking stock of what you have, building a realistic income plan for retirement, and identifying opportunities to close any gaps.

  • Retirement income planning is a specific area of deep expertise for our team. We look at all your income sources — Social Security, pensions, investment accounts, real estate, annuities and build a coordinated strategy that’s designed to last as long as you need it to. We also factor in taxes, healthcare costs, inflation, and legacy goals. Retirement planning isn’t just about saving ‘enough’ it’s about distributing or drawing it down in the right way.

PRIVACY FOR HIGH NET WORTH & ULTRA HIGH NET WORTH CLIENTS

  • We understand that for high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals, privacy isn’t a preference, it’s a necessity. We treat every client relationship with strict confidentiality. We do not discuss client names, assets, or strategies with third parties without explicit authorization. Our team operates under a formal privacy policy and is trained accordingly. We also understand that complex wealth often involves entities, trusts, LLCs, and family partnerships that are specifically structured to provide an additional layer of privacy and asset protection. Working with those structures thoughtfully is part of what we do.

  • Yes, and for high-net-worth clients especially, this coordination is essential. No single professional has the full picture on their own, and gaps between your legal, tax, and investment strategies can be expensive. We actively collaborate with your existing attorney and CPA, or we can help connect you with trusted professionals in those areas if you need them. Our role is to make sure all the pieces of your financial life are working together, not in separate silos. That collaborative, thinking partnership, team-based approach is one of the things our clients value most about working with us.

  • We work with successful business owners approaching or planning an exit, executives with complex equity compensation, multi-generational families managing inherited wealth, and individuals with substantial investment portfolios who want a more intentional, coordinated strategy. At this level, the financial planning conversation shifts, it becomes less about accumulation and more about preservation, tax efficiency, legacy, and making sure wealth transfers in the way you intend. Our team’s advanced professional designations and business succession credentials make our team well suited for this kind of work.

TAX REDUCTION & PLANNING STRATEGIES

  • Tax efficiency is woven into everything we do — it’s not a separate conversation. On the investment side, we think carefully about asset location (which accounts hold which investments), tax-loss harvesting, capital gains management, and the tax treatment of different income sources. For business owners and executives, there are often additional levers: retirement plan design, timing of income and deductions, and entity structure. We work in close coordination with your CPA to make sure our investment and planning decisions aren’t creating unintended tax consequences. The goal isn’t just to grow wealth, it’s to keep as much of it as possible from being eroded by taxes, inefficient financial tools or bad strategies.

  • A Roth conversion involves moving money from a traditional IRA or 401(k) where contributions were made pre-tax into a Roth IRA, where future growth and withdrawals are tax-free. You pay income tax on the converted amount now, in exchange for tax-free income later. Whether it makes sense depends on your current tax bracket, your expected future bracket, your timeline for retirement, and your estate planning goals. For many pre-retirees and high earners, a strategic multi-year conversion plan can significantly reduce lifetime tax burden, especially if tax rates rise in the future. It’s one of the more powerful planning tools available and one we model carefully for clients.

  • Federal estate tax currently applies to estates above the federal exemption threshold, which as of 2026 is over $15 million per individual. For families with significant wealth, this is a mandatory planning topic. Strategies we help clients explore include (but not limited to) irrevocable trusts, spousal lifetime access trusts (SLATs), grantor retained annuity trusts (GRATs), family limited partnerships, intentional use of the annual gift exclusion, and intentionally planning what state you reside in at death. These tools and strategies can meaningfully reduce your taxable estate while keeping assets working for your family. The earlier you act, the more flexibility you have.

GIFTING & CHARITABLE GIVING STRATEGIES

  • The IRS allows each person to give up to a set annual exclusion amount per recipient per year — currently $19,000 per person in 2026 — completely free of gift tax and without using any of your lifetime exemption. A married couple can combine their exclusions to give $38,000 per recipient per year. For a family with multiple children and grandchildren, this adds up quickly and can move significant wealth out of your estate over time. There are also exclusions for direct payments of tuition and medical expenses on someone’s behalf, which are unlimited and separate from the annual exclusion. Gifting strategically within these rules is one of the simplest, most effective estate planning tools available.

  • A donor-advised fund is essentially a charitable giving account. You contribute assets — cash, appreciated stock, even business interests — take an immediate tax deduction, and then recommend grants to the charities of your choice over time. The assets in the DAF grow tax-free in the interim. For high earners, the strategy of “bunching” multiple years of charitable gifts into a single DAF contribution in a high-income year is particularly powerful — you get a large deduction when you need it most, then distribute the grants on your own timeline. It’s one of the most flexible and tax-efficient ways to give, and it’s become a cornerstone of charitable planning for affluent families.

  • Absolutely — and this is one of the most underused strategies we see. If you donate appreciated stock directly to a charity or donor-advised fund, you avoid paying capital gains tax on the appreciation entirely, and you still receive a charitable deduction for the full fair market value of the shares. Compare that to selling the stock, paying capital gains tax, and then donating the cash — you’d have significantly less to give and a smaller deduction. For anyone sitting on appreciated positions — in a brokerage account, as part of a business exit, or through employee stock options — this is often a far more efficient way to fulfill your charitable intentions.

  • A charitable remainder trust allows you to donate an asset — often appreciated property or stock — into a trust that then pays you (or another beneficiary) an income stream for a set period or for life. At the end of the trust term, the remaining assets pass to the charity of your choice. The benefits can be significant: you avoid immediate capital gains on the contributed asset, receive a partial charitable deduction upfront, and generate ongoing income. It’s a particularly useful tool for clients who want to convert a concentrated, low-basis position into a diversified income stream while also fulfilling a charitable intent. It won’t be the right fit for everyone, but for the right situation it’s remarkably effective.

  • Yes, this strategy is called a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD), and it’s one of the most efficient giving tools available to retirees. If you’re 70½ or older, you can direct up to $105,000 per year (as of 2024 and indexed for inflation) from your IRA directly to a qualified charity. The distribution counts toward your Required Minimum Distribution but is excluded from your taxable income entirely — which is better than taking the RMD, paying tax on it, and then donating the after-tax amount. For charitably inclined retirees who don’t need all their RMDs for living expenses, the QCD is a straightforward, high-impact strategy we discuss with clients every year.

ESTATE PLANNING & LEGACY

  • The AEP® (Accredited Estate Planner®) is an advanced designation held by both Ian and Kasey that focuses specifically on estate planning meaning, what happens to your assets and your family when you’re no longer here. It goes beyond writing a will. Estate planning involves beneficiary designations, trust structures, business interests, charitable giving, tax implications of transfers, and coordinating with your attorney and CPA. Our goal is to make sure your wishes are carried out and that your family isn’t left with a mess to sort out.

  • A will is one piece of the puzzle and often a smaller piece than people realize. Many assets pass outside of a will entirely, through beneficiary designations on retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and transfer-on-death accounts. If those designations are out of date (an ex-spouse, a deceased parent, or simply never updated after a major life change), a will can’t override them. Estate planning is about making sure all the pieces work together. If your will is more than a few years old, or if your life has changed significantly since you wrote it, it’s worth a review.

STILL HAVE QUESTIONS?

The best next step is a complimentary introduction meeting — no obligation, no pitch. We’ll get to know each other, answer whatever’s on your mind, and figure out together if we’re a good fit.

START THE PROCESS