Advisor Spotlight: Brandon
A Bit About Brandon
Brandon is a passionate financial advisor with over a decade of experience—on top of a degree in Finance and a CFP designation. We asked him a few questions to help you get to know him and to highlight what makes him an invaluable financial advisor to have on your side.
Brandon, tell us a few things to know about yourself!
“I love playing basketball and play in leagues twice a week to stay healthy. My partner and I enjoy Scuba diving and make it a point to choose our travel destinations based on the best spots to dive. I also have two dogs that take up the majority of my free time—one golden retriever named Gryffin and a German shepherd named Luna. Each of them is over 80 lbs!”
Brandon, What does “Financial Wellness” mean to you?
“Financial wellness, to me, means establishing a plan that helps clients focus on what’s important in life and not feel like they have to worry about money in the future.”
If I were new to my financial wellness journey, what is some advice you would share?
“A couple quick things: first off, don’t just wing it! Set life goals and align them with long-term strategies to build your wealth to achieve them. And secondly, there are no stupid questions so make sure to clarify your understanding along the way so you can be confident in your plan.
Having a financial advisor give you their objective yet informed opinion can help you overcome your anxiety around financial decisions and cut out the noise from everything you hear you should be doing from media sources.”
Do you have an exciting client success story you can share?
“Yes! One story that comes to mind was helping a client through a complicated Incentive Stock Option (ISO) strategy. I had guided them through a multi-year exercise where they actually had to pay some AMT to be able to fully exercise their options given that the guidance for the company was very positive.
We tracked the time periods for those shares closely and executed sales in a prompt and systematic way when the company went public and they had qualified for long-term capital gains.
By doing this, my client was able to take advantage of the initial hype around the stock and sell at a great price while earning an estimated ~17% more than just the appreciated value given the tax savings afforded by the ISO strategy.
We then were able to use those proceeds to help them purchase their first home and invest the rest in a well-diversified long-term portfolio.”
