Your company gets your best hours. Your own money gets what’s left.
Most of what you own sits inside one company. You can’t spend it, you can’t sell a slice of it next week, and no one can tell you its price until a buyer names one. Morrowgate manages your wealth around that fact: what you take out, what it costs in tax, where it goes next, and what happens to all of it if you stop.
For owners who aren’t selling this year, or may never sell, and want their personal wealth run with the same care as the company.
A fictional owner
Worth $14 million on paper. About $1.3 million within reach.
Picture the owner of a Rochester manufacturer: sixty, two grown children, one of them in the business. By any measure the family is wealthy. Now look at where the wealth sits.
The company, at an estimate no buyer has confirmed$10.4M
The building the company leases from you$1.4M
Your home$0.9M
Retirement accounts$0.8M
Cash and investments outside the business$0.5M
Within reach without selling the company, the building or the house≈ $1.3M
More than 80 percent of this family’s wealth depends on one company, the building it sits in, and one person who still has to show up.
None of that is a problem until it is: a slow year, a health scare, a lender calling the personal guarantee, a buyer who values the company lower than you do. Wealth management for an owner starts by deciding how much of your family’s future should ride on the business, then building the rest on purpose.
Cash and liquidity
If the business had a bad year, would your family feel it?
In a lot of owner families, the household and the company run on the same money. Distributions follow the company’s good months. The family’s bills don’t. And if you signed a personal guarantee on the credit line, the bank already counts your house as part of the company’s collateral.
We set aside a reserve that belongs to the family, work out what the company can pay you without starving it, and turn irregular distributions into income you can plan a life around.
What changes
A reserve the family owns, a draw the company can afford, and a clear line between the two.
Retirement planning for business owners
Is the business your retirement plan? Has anyone tested it?
Owners tend to fund everyone’s retirement but their own. The company match goes to the team; your spare dollars go back into equipment, inventory and the next hire. That bet has paid you. It also means your retirement now depends on a sale price, a buyer, and a year you may not get to choose.
We work out how much has to exist outside the business for you to stop working, whether a sale happens or not, and build it from the company’s cash flow: a larger company retirement plan, a cash balance plan if one fits, and steady investing outside the business. If a sale comes, it becomes the upside, not the plan.
Does your tax planning happen in April, looking backward?
Your CPA files the returns and answers the questions you bring. The decisions that move your tax bill come earlier: how you’re paid, when income lands, what goes into retirement plans, when you give, and how this year’s choices change the tax on a sale years from now.
We map those decisions across several years and bring them to your CPA while there’s still time to act. Your CPA still gives the tax advice. Our job is to get the right questions on their desk in time.
What changes
Tax decisions made in October, with your CPA, instead of discovered in April.
Estate, insurance and family
If you didn’t come in tomorrow, who would know what to do?
So much of the company’s value lives in your relationships, your judgment and your signature. If you were gone for a month, or for good, your family could inherit a business they can’t run, a buy-sell agreement nobody has read since the day it was signed, and an estate tax bill on wealth they can’t easily sell.
We check that your estate plan, the buy-sell agreement and the insurance all describe the same future, work with your attorney to close the gaps, and help your spouse and children know what you know, while you’re here to explain it.
What changes
A family that knows who to call, what the company means for them, and where the money for taxes would come from.
What we manage
Everything outside the company. And how it connects to what’s inside.
Wealth management for business owners isn’t a portfolio with a company stapled to it. It’s the money in and around the business, handled together:
Investments that don’t double the bet
Portfolios built to offset the risk you already carry in the company, not repeat it. Accounts are held in your name at Fidelity, with Schwab available.
What the company pays you
Salary, distributions and reserves, sized so the family has steady income and the company keeps the cash it needs.
Retirement built from the business
Company retirement plans, including cash balance plans where they fit, coordinated with your CPA and plan administrator.
Taxes across years
Income timing, retirement contributions and charitable gifts, mapped with your CPA several years out, including any year you might sell.
An estate plan that includes the company
Who controls the shares, what the buy-sell says, and how heirs share value from a business only some of them work in. Coordinated with your attorney.
Risk, reviewed independently
Key person, disability, buy-sell funding and liability coverage, measured against what your family would need. We review coverage. We don’t sell it.
Family, brought in on purpose
Meetings on what exists, who decides, and what’s expected of the next generation, whether they work in the business or not.
Every account on one screen
A consolidated view of your accounts, retirement plans, real estate and a working value for the business.
Your CPA and attorney, together
Joint meetings when a decision touches both, so their advice fits together instead of colliding.
Working together
You already run a company. Your wealth shouldn’t be a second one.
We keep the list of open decisions and the follow-up that goes with them. We meet as often as your year needs: more around tax season, a family change or a buyer’s call, less when nothing is moving. In between, you can reach us by email or at (585) 204-6690.
It’s the management of an owner’s personal wealth with the business in the picture: what the company pays you, how much of your net worth should depend on it, the taxes on both, retirement savings outside it, and what your family receives if you stop. Morrowgate manages the investments and coordinates the rest with your CPA and attorney.
Do I have to be planning a sale?
No. This work matters most when a sale is years away, or never coming. If a buyer does call, the planning is already underway.
How is a financial advisor for business owners different from my CPA?
Your CPA owns the tax returns and the tax advice. We manage the investments and the planning that ties cash flow, retirement, estate and family decisions together, and we bring your CPA in early on anything with a tax consequence. You need both.
Where are my accounts held?
In your name at Fidelity, with Schwab available. You see them, along with everything else you own, in one consolidated view.
How often will we meet?
As often as your year needs. Some owners want a standing quarterly meeting; others want to hear from us when something changes. We agree on it at the start and adjust as the business does.
Start with one question
You built a company that runs on you. Let’s build wealth that doesn’t.
Send us one question about your money, not the company’s. We reply by email, usually within one business day. No meeting and nothing to sign.