Services
Four disciplines, one strategy
Most financial lives fail at the seams. The portfolio doesn't know what the tax return is doing, and the estate documents contradict both. Our work is keeping all four disciplines pointed at the same plan.
Financial planning
The plan is the product
A living plan, tested in scenarios, for retirement readiness, education funding, big purchases, and the what-ifs in between. We revisit it every year instead of printing it and shelving it.
Financial planning, in detail (how it works, who it's for, common questions)A couple, 54 and 56, wanted to know if one of them could step back to part-time. We modeled it three ways and found the honest answer: yes, if they delayed one pension by two years.
A composite example for this sample site. Details changed, arithmetic kept honest.
What this includes
- Retirement readiness in three honest scenarios
- Cash-flow, savings-rate, and debt strategy
- Education and major-goal funding plans
- Insurance and risk-gap review (we sell none of it)
- Equity compensation and concentrated-stock strategy
Investment management
Diversified, low-cost, disciplined
Globally diversified portfolios built from low-cost funds, sized to your plan rather than to a market forecast, and rebalanced with discipline instead of adrenaline.
Investment management, in detail (how it works, who it's for, common questions)In a down year, the disciplined version of our job is unheroic: harvest the losses, rebalance into the decline, and talk a family out of selling at the bottom. That year matters more than the up ones.
A composite example for this sample site. Details changed, arithmetic kept honest.
What this includes
- An Investment Policy Statement you can actually read
- Global diversification across stocks, bonds, and real assets
- Scheduled rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting
- Assets held at an independent custodian, in your name
- No house products. Nothing we're paid to place.
Tax coordination
It's what you keep that compounds
We work with your CPA so the plan, the portfolio, and the tax return act like one strategy: asset location, withdrawal order, Roth conversions, and charitable timing.
Tax coordination, in detail (how it works, who it's for, common questions)A retired client's low-income years between 62 and 70 became a series of measured Roth conversions. Same lifetime income, meaningfully less lifetime tax, and no product was sold to do it.
A composite example for this sample site. Details changed, arithmetic kept honest.
What this includes
- Asset location across taxable, tax-deferred, and Roth accounts
- Multi-year Roth conversion analysis
- Withdrawal order in retirement
- Charitable strategy: donor-advised funds, appreciated stock, and qualified charitable distributions
- A yearly coordination call with your CPA before year-end
Estate coordination
The plan should outlive its authors
We make sure the documents your attorney drafts match how your accounts are titled and who your beneficiaries are. Then we help the next generation understand the plan.
Estate coordination, in detail (how it works, who it's for, common questions)After a client passed, her daughter's first call was to us. Not because anything was complicated, but because nothing was: the documents, titles, and beneficiaries all said the same thing.
A composite example for this sample site. Details changed, arithmetic kept honest.
What this includes
- Estate document and beneficiary alignment review
- Account titling and trust-funding follow-through
- Family meetings, on your terms and at your pace
- Charitable legacy and gifting strategy
- A letter-of-instruction framework your family can follow
Who we serve
Families with more at stake than at leisure
Most Cornerstone families are professionals, founders, and retirees in and around New England: people whose financial lives outgrew a brokerage app but who have no appetite for being sold to. Common reasons they first call:
- A retirement date that just became real
- Equity compensation concentrating faster than it's diversifying
- A business sale on the two-to-five-year horizon
- An inheritance, a loss, or another sudden transition
- A portfolio scattered across five custodians and two decades
Still building? Our flat-fee Foundations planning engagement carries no minimum at all. See how it worked for others in our client stories.
The first step is free
Not sure which discipline you need first?
That's exactly what an introduction is for. Bring the mess: scattered accounts, old documents, half-finished plans. We've never once been shocked.