Wealth Management
A fee-only fiduciary managing your portfolio and your tax return together.
Shetland Financial is a fee-only, flat-fee registered investment advisor and a CPA firm, based in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. You work directly with Kevin Dodgson, CPA, CFA, CFP®. The person building your portfolio is the same person who prepares your return, which means the investment decision and the tax consequence are considered in the same conversation rather than discovered in April.
What fee-only and fiduciary actually mean
Both terms get used loosely, so it is worth being precise about what they rule out.
Fee-only means the only money we receive comes from you. We are not paid commissions, we do not receive trail payments from fund companies, we do not sell insurance or annuities, and no third party compensates us for steering you anywhere. This is narrower than fee-based, a similar-sounding term that permits an advisor to take commissions alongside fees.
Fiduciary means we are obliged to act in your interest, not merely to recommend something defensible. As a registered investment advisor we owe that duty at all times, on every recommendation, not only at the moment of a sale. Brokers operating under a suitability or best-interest standard are held to something meaningfully weaker.
Flat fee means you see the price before we begin, and it does not rise automatically because your account grew. Most advisors charge a percentage of assets, which quietly increases what you pay every year the market rises, for work that has not changed.
How the portfolio is built
We build diversified, low-cost portfolios matched to your goals, your time horizon, and how much volatility you can genuinely tolerate rather than how much you say you can tolerate in a calm market. We are not stock pickers and we do not attempt to time markets. The evidence that either reliably adds value after costs and taxes is weak, and pretending otherwise would be an expensive kind of theatre.
What we do work hard at is the part that is within our control: costs, diversification, discipline during bad markets, and tax. Investment returns are uncertain. Fees and taxes are not, and both compound.
Where the tax coordination actually shows up
Asset location. The same portfolio can produce materially different after-tax outcomes depending on which account holds which asset. Tax-inefficient holdings generally belong in tax-deferred accounts; assets you expect to grow most belong where growth is never taxed. Advisors without visibility of your return often cannot do this properly.
Tax-loss harvesting. Realizing losses deliberately to offset gains elsewhere, without drifting from your target allocation or tripping the wash-sale rules. Useful in volatile years, and worth very little if nobody is watching for the opportunity.
Gain realization in low-income years. A year with unusually low income, whether from retiring, a sabbatical, or a bad year in the business, can be an opportunity to realize gains cheaply. That only happens if the person managing the portfolio knows what the return will look like.
Withdrawal sequencing. Once you are drawing on the portfolio, the order in which you tap taxable, tax-deferred and Roth accounts changes what you keep. See our retirement planning page for how we approach it.
Concentrated positions and equity compensation. If a large share of your net worth sits in one company, unwinding it is a tax problem before it is an investment problem. Incentive stock options in particular carry timing traps that are easier to avoid than to fix.
Who this suits
Professionals and business owners who have accumulated real balances and have reached the point where tax is the largest controllable drag on their wealth. Households approaching or in retirement. People rolling over a 401(k) after leaving an employer. And anyone who has been quietly paying a percentage of assets to someone who has never seen their tax return.
It suits people less well if you want someone to beat the market, or you are early in accumulating and your main need is a plan rather than portfolio management. In the latter case our financial planning page is the better place to start.
What it costs
Flat fees, quoted before we start. No commissions, no product sales, no revenue sharing, and no percentage of assets that grows every year on its own. Our only compensation comes from you, which is the point.
What you get
One fiduciary for the portfolio and the return. No handoff between two firms, and nothing falling into the gap between them.
Tax handled as part of investing, not after it. Asset location, loss harvesting, and gain timing planned with your actual return in view.
Flat fee, fee-only, no commissions. Priced up front, and it does not quietly rise because the market did.