WEALTH MANAGEMENT IN SEATTLE FOR FAMILIES, PROFESSIONALS, AND BUSINESS OWNERS

Your family CFO in the Seattle area

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LRVS Advisory Group works with people whose wealth has outgrown ordinary planning. From our Bellevue office we advise families, professionals, and business owners across the Seattle area and the Pacific Northwest. You are past wondering whether you will be all right. What is left is harder and quieter: how much of this survives the transfer, what your children will be ready for, and what you want the money to have done while you were here to watch it.

We want it to grow and to end up where you mean it to. And you should be able to stop carrying it.

Talk to Our Seattle Area Team

Bellevue office

3326 160th Ave SE, Suite 450, Bellevue, WA 98007

(206) 643-6065

[email protected]

Get In Touch

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Coordinating Your Financial Life

Each of these decisions changes the others. What you elect in the retirement plan changes your taxable income, and that changes what the tax planning can do and what is left to invest. We make them together, so that a decision in one place is not quietly undoing a decision in another.

Your Benefits and Compensation

Large healthcare systems offer a wide set of benefits with little guidance on how to use them. We bring an in-depth understanding of complex employer benefits to the elections you are asked to make each year:

  • What to elect in your retirement plan, and how much to contribute
  • Whether a 403(b), a 457(b), or both make sense for you
  • What to do with the accounts left behind at previous employers and training programs

If you own or are buying into a practice, the questions change. What you pay yourself, how the practice retirement plan is designed, and the terms of a buy-in all shape what you can put away and where. We plan those together, so that the practice and your own retirement are not competing for the same dollar without anyone noticing.

Tax
Planning

Most of what can be done about tax has to be done before the year closes, not when the return is prepared. Through the year we work alongside your accountant on:

  • Retirement contributions and deferred compensation elections
  • When to take investment gains, and what can offset them
  • Charitable giving in a year when your income runs high
  • Practice entity structure, owner distributions, and equipment purchases

Each of these has a deadline, and the cost of missing one appears months later on a return that can no longer be changed.

Investment Management

We manage your portfolio, and for most doctors the first task is pulling it together. Accounts tend to sit in several places:

  • A 403(b), a 457(b), or both
  • Plans left behind at training programs and previous employers
  • A practice retirement plan
  • Whatever sits in a taxable account

We run them as one portfolio and decide which holdings belong in which account, because at your tax rate that decision changes what you keep. Education funding and charitable giving are handled in the same conversation, within our wider wealth services. With fewer earning years than most careers allow, your contribution rate carries more of the work than your return does.

Protecting Your Income and Your Assets

Your ability to practice is the largest financial asset most doctors hold, and it took years to acquire. We check that it is insured for what it is worth, and that what you have built is not left exposed by how it happens to be owned.

Your Income and Disability Coverage

We read the disability and life coverage you already have and tell you whether it would do what you are assuming it does. The amount may no longer match what you earn, and the definition may not protect a specialist who could still work elsewhere.

There is more to protection than insurance, so we also look at:

  • The protection your retirement accounts carry
  • How your property is owned and titled
  • How the practice itself is structured

We go through those with your attorney, so that how your assets are owned is a decision rather than an accident.

Your Estate

Estate documents and accounts drift apart over the years:

  • A trust created without all of the intended assets moving into it
  • A beneficiary designation that no longer matches current wishes
  • Property that changed hands while older documents stayed as they were

Passing a practice to a partner or to the next generation is its own piece of work, and it sits with legacy and family business. We look for those gaps and work with your estate attorney to close them, so the documents still do what you intended.

Planning for the Retirement You Want

A medical career usually ends in stages rather than on a date. We plan the income for each stage, so you can change your pace when you want to and know what it costs before you do.

Deciding When and How You Step Back

Most physicians arrive at retirement through several decisions rather than one. You may reduce your schedule, come off call, leave a role, sell the practice, or finish earlier than you once expected. We model each of those, including a practice sale that comes in below what you hoped for. You see what each choice does to your income and your spending before you commit to it.

Your Income in Retirement

In retirement, the work moves to where the income comes from and what it costs in tax. We decide which accounts you draw from and in what order, because that sequence decides how much tax you pay across a whole retirement. A 403(b) and a 457(b) have different distribution rules, and the proceeds of a practice sale need a home. The mechanics of drawing an income are set out under retirement planning. We also watch the income thresholds that raise your Medicare premiums, and we review the plan as your spending settles.

An Independent Financial Advisor for Doctors and Medical Professionals

Doctors are marketed to heavily, often by people whose recommendations are tied to a product they sell. How an advisor is paid, and who they answer to, shapes every recommendation you will get from them.

Independent

LRVS Advisory Group is an independent registered investment advisor. We are not owned by a fund company, there is no product line we are expected to sell, and we sit on your side of the table.

Your Trusted Advisor

We are in the conversation when a partner asks whether you want to buy in, when a hospital contract is put in front of you, or when a practice sale is being negotiated. Each can affect your financial plan, and the advisor you call already knows your situation.

Our Team

We have advisors on both coasts and clients across the country, including physicians, dentists, and other medical professionals, employed and in private practice.

Meet Our Advisors

Spencer Graham

Financial Advisor

Patrick Lawler, CFP®

Founding Partner

Jeff Van Siclen, CFP®

Founding Partner

Marc Instrum, CFP®

Financial Advisor

Getting Started
With LRVS

Working with us begins with three conversations:

  • An introductory meeting, to see whether we are a good fit
  • A discovery meeting, to understand your financial life, priorities, and goals
  • A plan presentation, to review our recommendations and assumptions

After that we meet regularly to review the plan, and we are available in between whenever something comes up. The introductory meeting is confidential and carries no obligation.

Questions Doctors Ask Us

Both can allow eligible employees to defer income for retirement, and some healthcare organizations offer access to both. The plans differ in important ways, including their distribution rules and, depending on the type of 457(b) offered, the protection the assets carry. The right approach depends on the plans available to you, your tax situation, and how long you expect to stay with the employer. Our guide to retirement accounts and their rules covers the differences.

The amount matters less than the definition. Group coverage through a hospital or practice is often capped and may not cover bonus or production income. It is also taxable to you when the employer pays the premium, which leaves the benefit smaller than the headline percentage suggests. The question worth answering first is whether it would pay if you could not perform your own specialty, rather than any occupation at all.

It does not have to be one or the other, and for many hospital-employed physicians it should not be. If a nonprofit system employs you, public service loan forgiveness may make paying the loans down early the more expensive choice. Retirement contributions can also lower the income your payments are calculated on. Refinancing into a private loan forfeits that eligibility permanently, o it is worth modeling before you sign anything.

Financial planning at LRVS is typically a flat annual fee, and investment management is charged on a tiered schedule based on the assets we manage for you. What that comes to depends on your situation, and we go through the numbers in the introductory meeting before you decide anything.

It depends on which kind of 457(b) you have. A governmental 457(b) can usually be rolled into an IRA or a new employer’s plan. The nongovernmental plans many hospital systems offer cannot, and the balance is often paid out on the schedule the plan sets, sometimes as a lump sum in a single tax year. Reviewing the plan document before you resign, with your LRVS advisor, keeps the timing yours.