Dear Yeske Buie Community,

It is a great honor to be writing to you as Chief Planning Officer of Yeske Buie. Every step that has gotten me to this point in my career is near and dear to my heart – from my childhood to my entry into the profession, I’ve been mentored by and given opportunities from many amazing people. First and foremost, I wouldn’t be here, nor would this firm exist and be the incredible place it is, without our founders Elissa and Dave. They have been monumental to this profession and, of course, to this firm. They have shown us all what it means to embody and truly live your values, to set a standard of excellence, and to always come from a place of Client Big: to best serve others, we must feel the world through their heart.

At Yeske Buie, we empower people to pursue their Live Big lives. And I’ve been empowered in this way repeatedly. I’m thrilled to have the honor and responsibility to continue serving this firm and our Clients as Chief Planning Officer.

You might be asking…”so what is a Chief Planning Officer?” It may not be a typical role in some professions, but it is in the financial planning profession. I’m in charge of the development and delivery of our financial planning process to our standard of excellence and in alignment with our values, The BIGs, to empower people to pursue their Live Big lives.

To expand on that, I’ll share a bit more about my current focuses within the various stages of our process:

Client Onboarding

The partners have been deeply focused on cultivating an excellent team to serve all of our Clients to our standards and build new energy and capacity to serve new Clients, whether they be your loved ones or new-to-Yeske-Buie Clients. How our Clients feel at every step of the relationship with us is paramount. We have a robust onboarding experience tracking process with details on all the steps we take and, maybe most importantly, how we want the Client to feel at that step.

Our standard is excellence, and excellence is an ever-changing target – it requires ongoing analysis, feedback, and adaptations to best practices, technology updates, and personal circumstances. In 2025, we’ll be reviewing and revamping our onboarding process to ensure it aligns with our current approach, our values, and our purpose in working with Clients.

Discovery Process

One of my favorite parts of the financial planning process is the Discovery Process. We build deep, lasting relationships with our Clients, and we can only do so if we get to know our Clients as humans – what and who matters most to them, what their dreams are, what their values are, what their obstacles may be. In our Discovery Meeting, we don’t discuss the numbers. We ask to learn your life story (as far back as you’re willing to go!) and simply listen with genuine curiosity.

During this process, we often use surveys and exercises from Money Quotient to start conversations that help discover more about various realms of your life. We’re continuing to review the tools available to determine what others might fit well into our process to generate meaningful conversations.

Financial Planning

Once we gather data and learn more about our Clients, we analyze that data and crunch the numbers (we are financial planners, after all!). We are grounded in our approach to the financial plan we put together and are sure to review many aspects of your life:

Financial Hygiene

• While we’re not insurance agents, we review your various insurance policies and coverages to see if there are any gaps in your coverage. If we find any, we’ll suggest you reconnect with the appropriate insurance agent to get quotes for updated coverage (home, auto, umbrella, life, disability).
  • If you’re working, we’ll help review and discuss maximizing your employer coverages.
  • If, instead, you’re at or nearing Medicare age, we can connect you with an expert to determine the best coverages and timing for applying.
  • If you are affected by the current California insurance market crisis and your policy is nonrenewed, we know experts who can help determine the best next steps – non admitted carriers, or the last-resort CA FAIR Plan.
• We also aren’t attorneys and don’t draft estate documents, but we work with many amazing attorneys to jointly serve our shared Clients. We aim to simplify your estate plan and show you the high-level summary – who is in charge if you can’t be and where does your money go? If you find a misalignment with your wishes, you can revisit your plan with your attorney to make the appropriate updates.
• And, in alignment with your estate plan, we show you who your designated beneficiaries are so you can be sure your money goes to the people and/or causes you want it to.
• We also spend a lot of time thinking about your investments so you don’t have to! And, we want to first be sure you understand how and why your money is invested the way it is – for more on that, check out the latest from our CIO, Yusuf Abugideiri, and his ongoing articles and webinars.

Aspirations

• Then, we focus on the aspirational realm; are you pursuing your Live Big life?
• We use extensive software to provide you with robust projections for the path you’re on so we can have a discussion on the tradeoffs of exploring numerous possible futures.
  • We use MoneyTree to prepare long-term financial planning projections and are currently exploring their latest software upgrades to better serve you and take advantage of their ongoing improvements.
  • We like using this specific software because it’s never a black box – we can burrow into every single number to know exactly how it is calculated and the pieces that influence it, so we can be confident sharing what path you’re on and how you can adjust that path if you want to.
  • We also use this space to explore our Safe-Spending System if you’re reaching or in the phase of spending from your hard-earned and hard-saved assets.
• As the lead tax planning nerd on the team (a term borrowed from one of my tax planning heroes), a role I’ve worked hard to grow into and take over from Elissa (I’m in good company with Ryan Kelly, CFP^® and Tim Connolly, among others!), I love this part!
  • We’re committed to having deep expertise and understanding in tax planning (though, again, we’re not preparing tax returns nor giving final tax advice – we leave that to your tax expert, who we collaborate with closely). It’s really important to me (as it has always been to Elissa), that our financial planners know how the tax system works so we can be confident in our tax discussions.
  • We’re exploring best-in-class tax planning software with Holistiplan and I’m working on analyzing how we can be more efficient and effective in our tax planning work while maintaining deep knowledge of taxes and the tax system (so we don’t blindly rely on software and lose the ability to have on-the-fly brainstorms of tax items).
  • We also dive into Roth Conversions, Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs), and/or Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs), reviewing and proposing policy-based, systematic liquidation plans for concentrated stock and employee stock options, home or rental property purchases and sales, and other tax related items as required by a Client’s situation.

Ongoing Awareness

It’s also my job to pay attention to ongoing updates in the financial planning profession including new or changing tax legislation, best practices within each facet of work we do with Clients, and software updates that can help us better serve our Clients.

There have been quite a few tax law changes in the past three or four years and each time I’ve made it my top priority to dig into the change and learn all the ways our Clients might be affected. Then, I put together thoughts to share with you (Secure Act 2.0, Secure Act, American Rescue Plan, CARES Act) and prepare a section of a webinar to fill you in live.

And, next year, there will be more! The rules for Inherited IRAs changed with the SECURE Act (signed in 2019, changes in place as of 2020), but it’s taken until now for the IRS to get its act together regarding annual Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) for some of these accounts. Starting in 2025, some post-2019 Inherited IRAs will now have RMDs and we’re busy reviewing the rules and updating our tracking to calculate the RMDs each year going forward.

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 included many changes (lower tax brackets, limitations on State and Local Tax deductions, increased estate tax exemption, among others) that are set to sunset after 12/31/2025 if nothing is done. So, I’ll be paying close attention to see what Congress and The White House decide to do as that time approaches (hoping they give us advanced notice vs. enact something retroactively in 2026).

Personal Notes

On a personal level, my family is my Live Big life. My husband, Daniel, has been my unwavering support through the roller coaster of my career – it’s been filled with periods of challenging exponential growth including: studying for my CFP^® exam; pursuing and obtaining my Masters in Advanced Financial Planning with a concentration in taxation; learning how to be a partner and help run a business and manage an incredible team; receiving wonderful and robust feedback from Dave, Elissa, Yusuf, and Lauren along the way; and, the ongoing striving for excellence in all our team does.

It’s also been filled with incredible celebratory moments like becoming a partner in 2019, serving as President of the Financial Planning Association (FPA) of San Francisco in 2021, serving as a mentor in FPA’s Residency Program in 2019 and 2023, and being recognized by our profession most recently on the Forbes Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors Best-in-State list.

My children (Nora, 3, and Owen, 1) remind me every day how lucky I am to be their mom. Showing them the world and mentoring them to grow into harmonious humans is a huge responsibility and such a joy of my life. Their laughter and chaos is contagious!

When I have time (haha!), I also love running, walking, hiking, being outdoors, reading, and cooking.

My Goal

My goal is to continue to be a trusted pillar of this firm – to uphold the incredible standards of excellence our founders have fostered and to bring my new energy to the ongoing pursuit of that ever-changing standard of excellence. And I don’t do any of this alone, as you can see from the various team members’ articles and bio pages I’ve linked above.

It is an honor and privilege to serve as your Chief Planning Officer and a responsibility I don’t take lightly. I know I have big shoes to fill and I’m up for the challenge!

Sincerely,