The greatest source of long-term value isn't found in any single investment. It's found in how investments, taxes, estate planning, liquidity, insurance, and family decisions work together. So that's what we're paid to do.
Here's a simple test. If markets returned nothing for the next three years, would Driftwood still create real value? The answer is yes, and it isn't close.
In a flat market we might still save six figures in taxes through better withdrawal sequencing, convert to Roth at depressed valuations, restructure a trust, coordinate a business sale, and catch an estate problem years before it forces a sale. A fee that only rises and falls with the market would measure none of that.
You aren't buying market exposure. You're buying decision architecture, and the fee should reflect that.
Managing money is one layer of the work. There are four, and only one of them is the portfolio.
The strategy and the big calls. Sell the business this year or next? Convert to Roth before retirement? Gift the stock or hold it for the step-up?
The role no one owns today. Running the meetings, working with your CPA and attorney, keeping every decision aligned with the others.
Portfolio construction, trading, rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting, asset location.
The long arc. Family governance, preparing heirs, updating the plan, and the operating manual that keeps it all current across the years.
Most firms price the whole relationship as if it were the third box. We price the other three as the product, and treat the portfolio as one module inside it.
So the work is priced as two clear, separate things. You can take the first on its own; most clients take both.
The standing seat that owns how it all fits together.
When you'd like us to run the portfolio, too.
A $6M single brokerage account and a $2.5M business owner with entities, a trust, and multi-state taxes are not the same amount of work. The second creates far more coordination, and far more value to capture. So the engagement fee follows coordination demand, not just assets. We assess it with a short, transparent review of the drivers that actually generate work:
Your coordination demand reads as opportunity, not a surcharge. A higher tier means more places coordination can create value, and every assessment comes with the register of opportunities it surfaced.
Not meetings, emails, or calls. The assurance that no important financial decision is made without its interactions being considered first, and that one accountable party is watching the whole board.
We don't replace the professionals you trust. We make sure their work and your portfolio move as one plan.