Financial Planning at Dunham Associates CPAs

Dunham’s CPAs witness financial folly and success regularly; they owe their clients opportunity to meet with fee-only advisors who really know their clients and place their interests first. Our accountants are trained and motivated to give advice as fiduciaries in real estate investing, insurance and risk analysis, the tax aspects of retirement planning, and estate planning. We listen with empathy and understanding and analyze problems with accounting that is both honest and creative; we can make you money as we save you money.

Integrated financial planning involves identifying and establishing long-term goals and developing strategies that systematically identify and fulfill the client’s objectives. Our recommendations consider diverse financial assets coupled with long-term goals. Because we don’t sell insurance, realty or even legal contracts, we can, for instance, objectively compare various business retirement plans to Charitable Remainder Trusts or realty investments with 1031 exchanges as means of protecting wealth. Once we know your objectives, we can take advantage of limitless, interrelated, means to achieve them.

Dunham CPAs provide unsurpassed business and tax advice for all aspects of financial planning but wealth management and securities analysis. Together, while complying with your chosen risk tolerance, we identify each client’s specific goals and objectives and then construct planning and investment strategies to achieve those goals. Just click on any of the following to find out more about…

Financial Planning for Business and Real Estate

Dunham associates know all the right formulas to assess your business’s or rental’s performance as it relates to your prosperity. We can help you make use of corporate employee benefits, deductions from pass-through entities (S-Corps, LLC’s and Partnerships) and passive income. Only lawyers can write legal documents for trusts and corporations, but CPAs can analyze entity selection, tax savings and lawyers’ fees to ensure objectivity. As fee-only advisors, we can compare your personal business and realty opportunities to market and insurance options while assessing earnings potential and risk to help you provide for key employees, retirement, charity and your family.

Tax Accounting for Financial Planning

Most of our tax planning clients come in to ask about withholding issues related to stock options or real estate sales; we provide accurate and up to date projections for them. We can also go well beyond the taxpayer’s needs for the next year. Tax concerns can and do influence our financial planning advice in asset distributions, QDRO’s, retirement plans etc., and we can tell you if you really need an LLC for business, an IRA for realty, a CRT for Charity or a Dynasty Trust for your family. Thinking outside the box, our CPAs see how long term planning can meet your investment and personal goals.

Retirement Planning from a Tax Perspective

Dunham Associates CPAs can advise clients on the selection of retirement plans for their businesses and the tax consequences of those plans for both the business and the owners. We can discuss Social Security taxation and benefits and tax aspects of withdrawals from pension plans and IRAs. We can be more objective about these matters because we do not market related products.

Risk Management in your plan

Dunham CPAs have sufficient business experience to gauge the type of insurance you or your business needs (e.g. Health, Disability, Life, Long Term Care, Business liability) and compare insurance costs without selling you too much of anything—because we are not insurance salespeople. We gladly consider alternative strategies of risk management. Cost analysis resolves arguments that about commissions and the risks of investment through insurance.

Estate Planning and Charitable Planning

Determining how one wants their wealth distributed can be a challenging and daunting process. Clients can express how their estate will be distributed and we can assist in preparing a well thought out and designed estate plan, including managing multi-generational client relationships. We bring in outside experts such as estate planning attorneys when needed. As part of the estate planning element, charitable giving can be an effective strategy and can discuss Charitable Remainder Trusts and Donor Advised Funds to accomplish one’s charitable gifting goals.