What We Do Not Do, and Why

Part of being a good fit for the clients Queen City Wealth Planning serves is being clear about who we aren't built for, and what we won't do even for clients we already work with. This page covers the handful of things we deliberately don't offer — stock-picking, insurance sales, tax-return preparation and legal advice, and a short list of things we won't advise on at all — and, for each one, who you should actually call instead. None of this is a judgment about whether these things matter; it's a map of where our expertise ends and someone else's begins.

Do you pick individual stocks or time the market?

No. Our policy is to build portfolios around asset classes and your overall financial plan, not around picking which individual companies will outperform or guessing when to be in or out of the market — and we don't make an exception to that policy for clients who ask us to. We hold this line for a specific reason: as a fiduciary, we're required to act in your best interest at all times, and stock-picking and market-timing calls are activities where a track record of being right often has more to do with luck than a repeatable process, no matter how confident the pitch sounds. Building a client relationship around calls like that would put our own perceived skill ahead of what actually serves you over the decades your plan has to work, which is the opposite of what a fiduciary duty asks of us. It's also why we're upfront that we are not a fit for day traders, crypto-first portfolios, or anyone whose primary goal is picking individual stocks rather than managing a broader plan — if that's what you're looking for, our process will feel like a mismatch from the first meeting, and you'd be better served by an advisor built around that specific goal instead of one built around planning for equity compensation and everything that comes with it.

Do you sell insurance or annuities?

No, and this one is a direct consequence of how we're paid. We're fee-only, meaning every dollar of our compensation — whether that's the 0.75% annual fee on assets we manage or one of our flat project fees — comes directly from our clients, with no commissions, no referral fees, and no product-based kickbacks of any kind. Selling insurance or annuities almost always means earning a commission on the product sold, and a fee-only advisor by definition doesn't accept that kind of payment; the CFP Board's own compensation-disclosure rules draw exactly this line between "fee-only," where compensation is fees paid by the client alone, and "fee-based," a similar-sounding term that still allows commissions on top of fees. What we do instead is analyze your insurance needs as part of your overall plan — how much life or disability coverage makes sense given your income and dependents, whether an existing policy still fits, what gaps you might have — and then refer you to an independent insurance broker who can shop the market and bind a policy. We don't get paid anything based on whether you buy insurance through that referral or from anyone else, which is exactly the point: the recommendation to look at coverage at all is not shaped by whether it generates revenue for us.

Will you prepare my tax return or give me legal advice?

No to both, and for the same underlying reason: preparing a tax return and drafting legal documents are licensed professional services outside what a financial planning and investment advisory engagement covers, and we'd rather coordinate with the professionals who do them than attempt a version of their job ourselves. What we do instead, on the tax side, is plan around the consequences before they happen — modeling what a vest, an exercise, or a sale will cost you, timing decisions to manage your bracket, and then giving your CPA the numbers and the context they need at filing time — while your CPA remains the one who actually prepares and files the return and takes responsibility for it. The same division applies to legal work: drafting a will, a trust, or a power of attorney belongs to an estate attorney, not to us, and we'll flag when your plan depends on a document like that existing or being updated, then coordinate with the attorney who actually drafts and files it. This isn't a matter of preference — a CPA and an attorney carry professional licenses, training, and liability specific to their own work that we don't hold and don't claim to, and a plan that requires both a tax return and a will still needs both of those people regardless of how good the financial plan around them is.

Do you advise on crypto, private deals, or options strategies?

No, on all three, and deliberately so. Cryptocurrency investments or compensation, private company deals outside the equity your own employer grants you, and options-trading strategies beyond simply exercising or holding the options your employer issued are all outside the range of practice we've built this firm around, and we won't take a fee to evaluate any of them as part of an engagement with us. This isn't a comment on whether any of the three might be right for someone's situation — it's a statement about the limits of our own expertise: we built this firm specifically around equity compensation, tax planning, and broader financial planning for tech employees, and we'd rather say plainly that something falls outside that range than stretch our advice past where we actually have depth. If one of these is a meaningful part of your financial picture, the right move is a specialist built around it specifically — a crypto-focused tax professional, an attorney experienced in private security transactions, or an options-focused trading advisor — rather than asking us to develop that expertise on your file. We're glad to keep planning around everything else in your picture while you work with that specialist on the piece that isn't ours to advise on.

Who should I call instead?

Put together, the referral map looks like this: a CPA for preparing and filing your tax return, an estate attorney for wills, trusts, and other legal documents, an independent insurance broker for life, disability, or other coverage, and your employer's own equity-plan administrator for grant-specific paperwork and mechanical questions about your options or RSUs that only the plan itself can answer. For anything involving crypto, private deals, or options strategies beyond your own employer's grants, the right call is a specialist in that specific area rather than any of the professionals above. In every case, we make these referrals without any compensation attached — no fee-splitting, no referral commission, no arrangement where sending you to a particular CPA or attorney benefits us — consistent with the same fee-only structure that shapes everything else on this page. If you're not sure which of these categories a question falls into, ask us first: part of what the ongoing relationship covers is helping you figure out who actually owns a given problem, even when the answer is someone other than us.

Key numbers (2026)

• Compensation model — fee-only: 0.75% per year on assets we manage, plus flat project and hourly fees for defined engagements; no commissions, referral fees, or product kickbacks of any kind (our fee schedule — see How We Work and What We Charge).
• "Fee-only," defined — an advisor's only compensation is fees paid directly by clients, with no commissions or other product-based payments, distinct from "fee-based," which still permits commissions (CFP Board compensation-disclosure rules).
• Fiduciary duty — an investment adviser's fiduciary duty includes a duty of care and a duty of loyalty, requiring the adviser to act in the client's best interest and disclose material conflicts of interest (SEC Release IA-5248).
• Form ADV Part 2A — a registered adviser's brochure discloses its advisory services and how it's compensated, in the sections of the form set aside for exactly that (SEC Form ADV Part 2A instructions, Items 4 and 5).

Current as of 2026-09

Sources

• CFP Board, "Focus on Ethics: Disclosing and Accurately Representing Compensation to Clients" — https://www.cfp.net/ethics/compliance-resources/2018/07/focus-on-ethics---disclosing-and-accurately-representing-compensation-to-clients
• SEC, Release IA-5248, Commission Interpretation Regarding Standard of Conduct for Investment Advisers (Federal Register text) — https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-07-12/html/2019-12208.htm
• SEC, General Instructions for Part 2 of Form ADV — https://www.sec.gov/files/form-adv-part2.pdf

Sample content for demonstration purposes — not financial advice.