One plan, six coordinated disciplines.
Financial planning at Atlas Meridian Capital is designed as a single integrated engagement across investment, retirement, tax, risk, estate, and education planning. The disciplines are consistent. The lens changes with the client.
Comprehensive by design, not by accident.
Financial planning is not a product or a static document. It is the ongoing coordination of the major decisions that shape wealth, family, and optionality over time.
Every client engagement considers all six disciplines below. A founder on the edge of a sale will spend more time in tax and estate strategy. A mid-career creative may live in retirement and risk planning. The full architecture stays in view either way.
Investment Planning
Deploy capital against goals, spending needs, and risk tolerance with a disciplined portfolio structure.
Retirement Planning
Build financial independence with plan design, contribution strategy, and tax-aware distribution sequencing.
Tax Planning
The discipline of making every investment, compensation, and structural decision tax-aware before it's executed — not after the return is filed.
Risk Planning
Protect the plan against disability, liability, catastrophic loss, and the other risks that derail wealth.
Estate Planning
Coordinate wealth transfer, stewardship, and tax efficiency across generations and institutions.
Education Planning
Fund education in ways that work with gifting, estate structures, and long-term cash-flow realities.
Discipline 01Investment planning
The question is not what to buy. It is what portfolio, in which structures, funded in which sequence, helps carry a family from where they are to where they want to be.
How we build portfolios
We begin with the entire household balance sheet: managed accounts, concentrated stock, business interests, real estate, and tangible assets. Portfolios built without that context are incomplete by definition.
From there we set target allocations across public equity, fixed income, alternatives where appropriate, and cash. The goal is not theoretical optimization. The goal is a portfolio the client can actually hold through market stress while still meeting liquidity needs and long-term objectives.
Rebalancing is rules-based and documented in advance so it happens when discipline matters most, not only when markets feel comfortable.
The tax overlay
Investment planning that ignores tax leaves money on the table. Asset location — which investments sit in taxable accounts, which in tax-deferred, which in Roth — often matters more than which investments are chosen.
Tax-loss harvesting and lot selection are handled as ongoing portfolio disciplines, not as occasional clean-up work.
For concentrated positions, inherited stock, and post-sale proceeds, we design diversification sequences that balance tax cost, concentration risk, and optionality.
- Household-level allocation across accounts and entities
- Asset location by taxable, tax-deferred, and Roth buckets
- Public equity and fixed income construction
- Alternatives review where appropriate
- Cash reserve and liquidity tier design
- Tax-loss harvesting and gain deferral strategy
- Concentrated-position risk management
- Rules-based rebalancing
Discipline 02Retirement planning
For many Atlas Meridian clients, retirement is less about stopping work and more about reaching the point where work becomes optional.
Accumulation strategy
During high-earning years, plan design is often the most powerful lever. A self-employed creative or business owner may have dramatically more contribution capacity than a standard workplace plan suggests.
Solo 401(k)s, SEP-IRAs, cash balance plans, and defined benefit structures each have a narrow fit. Choosing correctly early can compound into a material long-term difference.
Distribution strategy
The harder planning work is not just getting money into accounts. It is getting money out in the right sequence, from the right buckets, at the right tax cost.
We model taxable, tax-deferred, and Roth withdrawals alongside Roth conversion windows, RMD exposure, survivorship tax shifts, and Medicare surcharges.
- Plan selection across SEP, Solo 401(k), cash balance, and DB structures
- Contribution optimization across high- and low-income years
- Roth versus traditional decision frameworks
- Roth conversion sequencing
- Distribution planning by account type
- Social Security timing
- Medicare IRMAA awareness
- Survivor-spouse planning
Discipline 03Tax planning
For many clients, a CPA files the return based on what has already happened — when it's too late to optimize. Tax planning happens throughout the year, well before the return is due, so that it reflects a strategy rather than a set of disconnected decisions. It is the discipline with the highest return on time for nearly every private client we serve.
What tax planning covers
We look at three time horizons at once: current-year optimization, multi-year sequencing, and structural planning that affects decades of returns.
That includes income timing, Roth conversions, charitable planning, entity review, and state-residency decisions when the facts support it.
How we work with your CPA
We do not prepare returns. We coordinate the model behind them. That means scenario analysis before a sale, gift, conversion, or residency move is executed.
For complex households, including multi-state or international situations, we work with specialist CPAs when needed and keep the financial plan aligned with the tax plan.
- Multi-year tax projections
- Income and deduction timing
- Roth conversion planning
- Charitable timing with DAF, CRT, and CLT structures
- Entity structure reassessment
- State-residency planning
- Pre-sale planning
- Tax-aware retirement withdrawals
Discipline 04Risk planning
Risk planning is the layer that protects every other part of the plan when markets, health, liability, or life itself turns unexpectedly.
The exposures we diagnose
Mortality, disability, liability, casualty, and longevity risks are the core exposures, but their weight differs sharply by household and profession.
For creators, owners, and collectors, insurance needs often extend well beyond standard consumer templates.
How coverage is approached
We are not product-driven. We identify which risks should be retained, transferred, or structurally reduced, then coordinate with specialist brokers when coverage is warranted.
In practice, that often means correcting both over-insurance and under-insurance at the same time.
- Life insurance needs analysis
- Own-occupation disability review
- Long-term care strategy
- Umbrella liability sizing
- Property and casualty review
- Key-person and buy-sell coverage
- Professional liability and E&O review
- Cyber and identity protection
Discipline 05Estate planning
Estate planning is the architecture of transfer, stewardship, and control. A will is only one instrument inside that larger design.
What good estate planning does
A strong estate plan transfers assets as intended, reduces transfer tax where appropriate, preserves stewardship, and protects beneficiaries from unnecessary risk.
The families we serve often need more than document creation. They need financial modeling around how structures interact with the rest of the balance sheet.
The structures we model
Revocable trusts, irrevocable trusts, SLATs, GRATs, IDGTs, dynasty structures, and charitable vehicles all have a place when facts support them.
We coordinate closely with estate counsel so trust design, business succession, and liquidity planning are integrated rather than siloed.
- Lifetime exemption strategy
- Revocable and irrevocable trust funding
- SLAT, GRAT, IDGT, and dynasty trust review
- Charitable remainder and lead trust planning
- Business succession architecture
- Beneficiary designation coordination
- Trustee and governance design
- Estate tax liquidity planning
Discipline 06Education planning
Education planning is usually a smaller line item than tax or estate work, but the right structure compounds over decades and can support broader family goals.
The 529 decision
For most families, 529 plans remain the core vehicle: tax-free growth, tax-free qualified withdrawals, and broad beneficiary flexibility.
The planning work is in sizing, front-loading, and coordinating ownership with gift-tax and financial-aid considerations.
Beyond the 529
Larger families and more complex wealth plans often need additional layers such as UTMA accounts, education trusts, and direct tuition-payment strategies.
We coordinate education planning with broader transfer structures so dollars can work efficiently across generations.
- 529 selection and funding
- Superfunding strategy
- Grandparent- versus parent-owned account planning
- UTMA and UGMA use cases
- Education trust design
- Direct tuition-payment strategy
- Financial-aid positioning where relevant
- Coordination with multi-generational wealth transfer
Financial planning designs the architecture. Wealth management runs it.
The plan defines what the portfolio needs to do. Wealth management is the disciplined implementation of that plan over time.
See Wealth ManagementOne advisor. Six coordinated disciplines. A plan that actually fits together.
Start with a conversation. No product pitch. No pressure. Just a real assessment of whether coordinated planning would improve the decisions in front of you.