Frequently Asked Questions

We work with individuals and couples at every stage of the financial journey — from young professionals in their first jobs building the foundations of long-term wealth, to pre-retirees in the critical decade before retirement, to retirees managing their financial lives for thirty years or more. We also work with the adult children and grandchildren of existing clients who are beginning their own financial lives.

Our clients are people who take their financial lives seriously, want to understand what is happening and why, and are looking for a long-term advisory relationship built on trust and thorough planning — not a product sale.

We do not have a formal asset minimum. We work with clients across a wide range of financial circumstances. That said, We work best with clients who face genuinely complex planning decisions — people approaching or navigating retirement who want a long-term advisory relationship, not a one-time transaction. For clients with smaller portfolios, we are happy to discuss what an engagement might look like and whether our approach is the right fit.

Both, and intentionally so. Some of our most rewarding long-term relationships began with clients in their late twenties or early thirties, often the children of existing clients entering their first professional roles. The financial habits and structures built in the accumulation years have a direct and lasting effect on what becomes possible at retirement. The earlier we begin working together, the stronger the foundation we can build.

It is never too late. We work with clients who are newly retired, long retired, and at every point in between. A significant portion of our client base is in what we call the Decumulation stage — managing portfolio withdrawals, coordinating Social Security and Medicare, navigating Required Minimum Distributions, Roth conversion opportunities, and estate planning decisions. For clients who arrive without prior planning work, we build the analytical foundation from scratch. For clients who have some planning in place, we assess what’s working and what needs attention.

The first conversation is complimentary and carries no obligation. We use it to understand where you are in your financial life, what brought you to us, and what you’re hoping to accomplish. You’ll have the opportunity to ask questions about our process, our fees, and our approach. We’ll be honest about whether we think we’re the right fit for your situation, and we expect you to be honest with us too.

There is no paperwork to sign at the first meeting. The goal is a genuine conversation, not a sales pitch.

For Transition-stage clients — those approaching retirement within five to ten years — the initial planning process typically takes most of the first year. It involves building a comprehensive balance sheet, analyzing cash flows, mapping the lifetime tax landscape, conducting a retirement risks analysis, constructing the Household Balance Sheet, and restructuring the portfolio. This is not work that should be rushed, and we don’t rush it.

For accumulation clients, the initial engagement is less intensive — we focus on building the foundational tools, establishing automation, and constructing the portfolio. That work typically comes together within the first two to three meetings.

For clients who arrive already retired, the process depends on how much prior planning work exists. For some, we pick up a well-built plan and maintain it. For others, we build from the ground up.

Nothing is required for the initial conversation. If you’d like to come prepared, it’s helpful to have a general sense of your assets and liabilities, your income sources, and the questions that are most pressing for you right now. After the first meeting, if we decide to move forward together, we’ll provide a comprehensive document request list that gives us everything we need to build the plan.

We typically meet with clients every three to six months, depending on the stage of the relationship and the complexity of the situation. Accumulation clients in the early stages of the relationship may meet more frequently as we build the initial plan. Transition and Decumulation clients often have a structured annual calendar of meetings — tax return review in the spring, planning review mid-year, Medicare and portfolio review in the fall. Between meetings, we are available by phone and email. When something changes, you reach out.

Yes. Our planning work produces a set of analytical documents and models that together constitute the financial plan. For Transition clients, this includes the Household Balance Sheet, the retirement readiness analysis, the lifetime tax landscape, the Life Cycle Capital display, the retirement risks analysis, and the portfolio construction and asset location summary. We don’t produce a hundred-page binder that sits on a shelf. We produce a living set of documents that we update and revisit together over time.

We charge in two ways, depending on the nature of the engagement:

Flat annual fees for comprehensive financial planning. These fees cover the planning relationship — meetings, analysis, ongoing review, and advisor availability — and do not depend on the size of your portfolio. Our flat fees range from approximately $4,000 per year for early accumulation clients to $25,000 or more per year for complex Transition-stage engagements. The specific fee is discussed and agreed upon before we begin work together.

Asset-based fees for investment management. For clients who engage us to manage their investment portfolios, we charge a percentage of assets under management. This fee is separate from the planning fee for some clients, combined in a hybrid structure for others, and included in the flat annual fee for still others; all depending on the nature of the engagement.

For straightforward questions or one-time planning projects, we also offer hourly and project-based engagements, typically with an upfront retainer.

Everything described on our How We Work pages — the analytical workflow, the planning meetings, the ongoing review cycle, and advisor availability between meetings. There are no additional charges for phone calls, emails, or questions that arise between scheduled meetings.

The fees we charge are separate from the internal costs of the investment products we use — primarily low-cost, market-wide and factor-tilted ETFs with very low expense ratios. We select investments with total costs in mind and are explicit about all costs when presenting investment recommendations. There are no hidden fees, no commissions, and no referral arrangements.

We build diversified, low-cost investment portfolios using exchange-traded funds — ETFs — as the primary investment vehicle. We favor market-wide ETFs that capture broad market returns systematically, and we incorporate factor-tilted ETFs that provide deliberate exposure to characteristics the academic evidence supports as sources of persistent, risk-based return premiums: smaller companies, companies with lower relative valuations, and companies with stronger profitability. We do not use actively managed funds as a general matter, because the evidence on active management’s long-term performance after fees and trading costs does not support the premium most active managers charge.

No. We do not use market timing, sector rotation, or tactical allocation. These strategies have not demonstrated consistent outperformance after fees and trading costs over time, and they introduce behavioral risks — the temptation to act on short-term volatility — that we believe are more damaging than the market movements they’re trying to avoid. We build portfolios designed to be held through volatility, not adjusted in response to it.

At Epsilon, we review each client’s portfolio on a systematic quarterly schedule, evaluating whether rebalancing is required based on the allocation parameters we establish for that client at the outset. We also monitor for disruptive market events — significant short-term price movements that create discounted entry opportunities — and use those moments to evaluate whether an additional rebalancing is warranted outside the regular cycle. This disciplined, opportunity-driven approach to rebalancing is one of the ways we work to maintain the intended risk profile of the portfolio and take advantage of volatility rather than react to it emotionally.

We stay invested, and we help you stay invested. Market declines are a normal and expected feature of investing in growth assets, and the historical record is clear that trying to avoid them by moving to cash typically costs more than the decline itself. For clients in or near retirement, the portfolio structure we build — with essential spending funded by Social Capital and fixed income rather than the equity portfolio — is specifically designed to make it easier to stay invested during volatility, because the money you need in the near term is not at risk.

We manage client portfolios directly using ETFs as the primary investment vehicle. We do not outsource investment management to third-party managers or model portfolios. Every allocation decision is made by our team, specific to each client’s situation, tax circumstances, and stage of life.

The Social Security claiming decision is one of the most consequential and least reversible decisions in retirement planning. The difference between an optimal and a suboptimal strategy can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars over a retirement lifetime, especially considering the implications for income taxes.

We like to begin the Social Security analysis when the older spouse is approximately sixty years old — well before any filing decision needs to be made. Starting that early gives us time to model the full range of claiming scenarios, shape expectations, and make any adjustments to the overall retirement plan that the analysis calls for. Too many people file for Social Security benefits without a deliberate strategy — sometimes simply because the option became available. Having the conversation early means that when the time comes, the decision is informed and intentional, not accidental.

Medicare’s coverage of long-term care is more limited than most people realize. Medicare does not cover long-term care in any meaningful ongoing sense. It covers short-term skilled nursing following a qualifying hospitalization, under specific conditions, for a limited number of days. The cost of sustained care — in-home care, assisted living, or memory care — falls almost entirely to the individual and their family. Costs vary considerably by geography and level of care, but a long-term care diagnosis requiring ongoing professional care commonly runs $150,000 to $175,000 or more per year. At Epsilon, we include long-term care as a named component of the retirement risk analysis for every Transition-stage client, and we help clients evaluate the full range of planning and insurance options.

Required Minimum Distributions are mandatory annual withdrawals from pre-tax retirement accounts — traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, and similar accounts — that the IRS requires beginning at a specified age. Under the current rules, that age is seventy-three for individuals born before 1960, and seventy-five for individuals born on or after January 1, 1960. The amount is calculated annually based on your account balance and your life expectancy factor. RMDs are taxed as ordinary income, and failing to take them results in significant penalties. We manage the RMD calculation, incorporated with the clients’ annual cash flow needs, and integrate them into the broader withdrawal and tax strategy for all of our Decumulation-stage clients.

A Roth conversion is the process of moving money from a pre-tax retirement account — where you received a tax deduction when you contributed and will owe taxes when you withdraw — into a Roth account, where future growth and withdrawals are tax-free. You pay taxes on the converted amount in the year of conversion.

Whether a conversion makes sense depends on your current and expected future tax rates, the size of your pre-tax accounts relative to your Roth and taxable accounts, your age, your other income sources, and your legacy intentions. The years immediately after retirement — before Social Security begins and before Required Minimum Distributions start — are often the most valuable window for Roth conversions, because income tends to be at its lowest point. We analyze this opportunity annually for all of our retirement-stage clients.

The death of a spouse triggers a series of financial and tax changes that require prompt attention. Filing status changes from married filing jointly to single, often resulting in dramatically higher effective tax rates on the same income — a situation known as the Widow’s Tax. Social Security income may change. The estate plan may need to be updated. Beneficiary designations require review. We work with surviving spouses through this transition carefully and with full attention to both the immediate practical decisions and the longer-term restructuring of the financial plan.

The best way is to have a conversation. We are a good fit for people who want a long-term planning relationship built on transparency and genuine accountability — people who take their financial lives seriously and want to understand what is happening and why, not just receive instructions to follow.

We are particularly well-suited to clients in or approaching the Transition stage, where the complexity of the planning work is highest and the stakes of getting it right are most significant. But we work with clients at every stage, from their first professional roles to their final years.

You don’t need to be certain before reaching out. Many of our clients spent months thinking about it before they called. A few called within days of finding us. Both are completely fine. The first conversation is complimentary, carries no obligation, and can be as focused or as wide-ranging as you’d like.