Every client brings a different mix of personal goals, professional decisions, and financial complexity. These three illustrative case studies focus on business owners and equity stakeholders and show how Rapport Financial approaches that complexity through coordinated financial planning and wealth management.
These case studies are composites based on the experiences of multiple clients. Names, identifying details, and certain facts have been changed or combined to protect client privacy. They are provided for illustrative purposes only, do not represent any single client, and are not a guarantee of future results.
A sabbatical, a company sale, and a net worth that changed almost overnight. They needed a plan that could keep pace with all of it.
Read Their StoryAn eight-figure net worth, two blended families, and five adult children. They needed more than investment management, they needed a holistic plan for legacy.
Read Their StoryLeaving BigLaw to launch his own firm created extraordinary opportunity, and extraordinary complexity. They needed a plan for both.
Read Their StoryJon spent his career in financial services in competitive sales roles, and Laura spent over 15 years in Human Resources. Both diligent savers through their employer retirement plans, they stepped away from work for a year to travel, then pursue entrepreneurship and start planning for a family, a pause that set the stage for a payout neither of them was fully prepared for.
Jon and Laura came to Rapport wanting a plan to protect one another and fund a clear set of goals: a home purchase, an annual travel budget, providing for children, and early retirement. While Jon was between ventures, Rapport identified an opportunity to evaluate Roth conversions during a lower-income year. The strategy balanced the immediate tax cost against the potential long-term benefits of shifting a portion of their retirement assets from tax-deferred to Roth accounts.
Jon returned from his sabbatical and co-founded a fintech company, growing it through the pandemic until it was acquired by a publicly traded company. The deal delivered a seven-figure payout across cash, stock, and revenue earn-outs, transforming their financial picture almost overnight.
Neither Jon nor Laura came from wealth, and the sudden change in their financial circumstances felt overwhelming. They wanted to remain actively involved in their decisions, but they did not want to navigate the complexity alone. They sought an experienced advisor who could coordinate the tax, estate, insurance, investment, banking, and charitable-planning decisions surrounding the transaction.
Dr. Tom Horowitz has been a family physician in private practice for over 40 years and serves as CFO of a Medical Group. He and his wife Leslie manage short-term rentals and together have built an eight-figure net worth, but needed a holistic partner to plan across two blended families and a complex estate.
Dr. Horowitz and Leslie built their wealth through frugality, maximizing retirement plan contributions, strategically acquiring income-generating vacation rental real estate, and aggressive long-term investing.
Coming to Rapport later in life with a sizable net worth, their concerns weren't running out of money, they wanted clarity on how much income their investments and Social Security would need to generate, and a coordinated strategy for helping their five adult children with home purchases.
Tom and Leslie were accustomed to working with advisors who focused entirely on managing their investment portfolio. They came to Rapport seeking an advisor who could see and coordinate their entire financial picture, including investments, taxes, estate and gifting strategies, retirement, risk management, cash flow, and planning for their five adult children.
Rapport designed an overall asset allocation strategy across dozens of accounts at multiple financial institutions, taxable and tax-deferred, and coordinated with their estate attorney on a plan that carries out their legacy wishes.
At 70, Tom is also beginning to think about stepping back from his CFO responsibilities at the practice. Rapport is coordinating with the group's leadership on a succession timeline, and factoring his equity interest in the practice into their broader retirement income and estate plan.
Miles spent over a decade building his career at a prestigious San Francisco law firm. When he decided to go independent and launch his own boutique practice, it triggered a cascade of financial decisions, lost benefits, deferred compensation, startup costs, and a growing family, all at once.
Miles spent over a decade at a BigLaw firm, building a strong book of business as an estate, trust, and probate litigator. Sophia has worked in education for 15 years. Both had diligently saved through their employer retirement plans, but when Miles decided to leave the firm and launch his own boutique practice, everything changed at once.
The transition triggered a lump-sum deferred compensation payout, creating a significant one-time income event with major tax implications. At the same time, Miles lost access to the firm's group health, disability, and life insurance plans, and faced the immediate costs of standing up a new practice: office space, malpractice coverage, staff, and technology.
Miles and Sophia came to Rapport knowing they needed more than investment advice, they needed someone who could think through the full picture of a major career transition alongside the personal financial goals they'd been building toward for years.
Rapport worked with Miles's CPA to model the tax impact of the deferred compensation payout and design a multi-year strategy to manage the spike in taxable income. We also had the CPA evaluate whether it made sense for the firm to be taxed as an S-Corp, weighing the potential self-employment tax savings against the added costs of payroll and compliance, alongside designing a retirement plan for a self-employed attorney and rebuilding their personal insurance coverage from the ground up.
Because Miles was now the sole attorney behind the firm, we also built out a succession and continuity plan for the practice, addressing what would happen to his clients and casework if he were ever unable to practice, whether temporarily or permanently. That meant identifying a trusted colleague to step in on an interim basis, documenting client files and firm procedures so a transition could happen smoothly, and coordinating the plan with the disability and life insurance coverage in place.
Every family we work with comes to us with a different story. Let's start with a conversation about yours.