I met with Benjamin because I had a specific tax planning question and was exploring the idea of…read moreworking with an advisor. He took the time to ask questions and understand my situation and my needs He basically said "you don't need me, but go talk to my accountant." No sales pitch, just straightforward advice. None of that gut feeling you get when someone is trying to sell you something that you don't understand or don't think you need but you go along with anyway because they're the "expert." Benjamin will be my first call whenever I do need a financial planner.

Seriously, it is time to fire your financial advisor if they are charging a percentage of your…read moreassets. You deserve a fiduciary who is focused on your needs, not their ongoing cut. I started working with Benjamin after a major life setback and felt completely lost. He grabbed my hand and helped me take the financial steps I needed to regain control of my future. He is kind, compassionate, and truly encouraging. He helped me make important adjustments to my finances that I should have made years ago. What I appreciate most is that he does not overcomplicate things to make you feel dependent on him. His goal is to educate his clients so they can take the reins themselves.

Mary is a thorough and detail oriented accountant. I've been her client for about 4 years and I…read morealways feel like I'm in the best hands. She helped me navigate the confusing financial and tax things that happens after a parent passes away, including the final tax return and how to ensure things were organized and filed correctly. Mary is also direct, to the point, and available and super responsive when I needed her. I am planning to be her client for a very long time!

Mary jumped right in and understood the numbers and where I was coming from quickly. She gave me…read moresome good ideas I hadn't thought of and recommended closing some accounts. I plan to use her for my tax return after my good impression at the first meeting. She was willing to educate me on various concepts and showed me details on my statements that I had not fully understood before. She is expensive but I think she reduced my tax burden enough to pay for the consult.

Samantha helped me acquire a life insurance policy after being denied coverage with several of the…read morenew online-only providers (ladder, haven). The problem was that I was an active rock climber when I started looking for insurance a couple years ago and that risk made them decline to offer coverage. This, by itself, made it harder to get a life insurance policy. I tried applying to several other life insurance companies but they all funneled me to independent brokers, who were not very helpful. Samantha was a breath of fresh air when I finally contacted her. She was quick to assess the situation and got the ball rolling with a very respectable life insurance company that was a little more lenient about rock climbing. The whole process only took a couple weeks and Samantha constantly kept me updated with the status. She's helpful, friendly, and most importantly, trustworthy. Happy I found her and I will definitely come back to her for more financial planning needs in the future.

Samantha has been managing my family's portfolio since 2018. This has been one of the best…read moredecisions we have made. In 7 years, she has doubled our assets. In addition to advising us on our financial portfolios, where she has guided us on salary contributions to different pots (retirement accounts, college savings accounts for our kids, and stocks), she advises us on life insurance and linked us with colleagues to help with our taxes and living will. We couldn't be happier with our decision to work with Samantha and hope this can be a life-long partnership - she is very talented and astute with markets and really has our back with every decision.

I had a 15-minute call with Gary, and he was able to answer all of my questions and point me in the…read moreright direction based on my tax needs. I really value his honesty and his willingness to help. His knowledge and experience made me feel confident that I was getting the right guidance. I highly recommend Gary for anyone looking for a knowledgeable and trustworthy CPA.

Gary is extremely knowledgeable and stays up to date in his education which is extremely important…read moreto me. He listened and provided answers to immediate concerns and met all expectations (and then some!). Highly recommend Gary to anyone who is looking for an expert in the finance/tax planning field.

I have never really had a financial education, and having ADHD has made it difficult for me to…read morelearn how to manage my money. I had a consultation with Jennifer this week and in 30 minutes, I literally understood more about my finances than in my entire life. She was so knowledgeable and yet down to earth and easy to understand. I hung up so motivated and empowered and already made significant and impactful changes! I cant recommend Modern Family Finance enough.

Writing a review for my financial planner was not on my Bingo card for my life. But when Jenni,…read moreLisa, and Cathy at Modern Family Finance are as fantastic as they are, it has to be done. To set the scene: I don't know anything about money, or the market, or really budgeting, if we're being honest. My working class family didn't know anything to teach me, and I was resistant to learning because I was sure it would mean discomfort at best and shame at worst. Luckily, opposites attract, and my spouse is a Responsible Adult who wanted to manage some inheritance in addition to our weirdly/ unnecessarily complicated financial situation. Enter: Modern Family Finance, referred to us by a friend. In my mind, they are fantastic for three main reasons. 1.) Based on what I just described, you will not be surprised to learn that I truly have no clue as to the wizardry they do with investing, but I love this. As far as I'm concerned, my accounts are like little Tamagotchis that I get to occasionally login to check and see how they're thriving. Our money is doing great, our finances are tidy, and our goals are being met! My Responsible Adult spouse DOES want to know, and Modern Family is an open book and wants to teach. Everyone wins! 2) The whole process of working together centers around YOUR particular and specific needs, goals, and personal priorities. They keep in mind both short term needs and long term visions to help you get and stay on track. I really appreciated the emotional intelligence and care Jenni brings, especially to our early meetings, and I still think about the questions she asked to help us understand our own relationships to money, and what needs to heal to move forward. They truly work with you where you are. Their approach is clearly not just about managing money, but building quality of life and empowerment. 3) They are truly the kindest people you could hope to work with. Getting me to respond to an email about life insurance or the 401K from ten years ago is like trying to put a cat in a bathtub, but somehow, miraculously, they don't judge. The team is thoroughly patient, kind, ridiculously detail oriented, and in general the most delightful people you'd hope to meet. As a queer couple navigating major life transitions, they give us clarity, patience, and structure without overwhelm. We'll be clients for life.

I specifically worked with Amie…read more 15/10 recommendation. The first time we spoke, around a year and a half ago, Amie (gently) turned me away and shared her free PDF as a resource to get a better handle on my finances before I paid for her services. I feel like most places would have taken my money and not have put my best interest first so that was really surprising and honestly, solidified my interest in working with her. She has a really good character! A couple of months ago, we met for the second time and I had paid off all of my debt and had an emergency savings, so we agreed to move forward with the final call & financial plan! I feel a lot more confident about retirement and that I'm making the right choices with my money. Amie is very kind and straightforward, and also happy to answer any questions! I am 25 so I had a lot of questions haha. My only regret is that I did not know about a financial planner when I was younger. Had I had seen Amie at age 20 or 21 I feel like I would be in an even better financial situation. Again, I highly recommend Amie and can only imagine that the others who work at Lulafinancial are just as great!

I've known Amie for years as a performer, and after discovering they were also a professional…read morefinancial adviser, I jumped at the chance to meet with them. I've worked the last 15 years as a professional freelance musician and teaching artist, and had never met with a financial adviser, so I came in quite nervous, though eager to learn. Within minutes of our first session, she laid out some excellent core tenets for me to follow, assessed my financial situation, was realistic and transparent, suggested several easy steps for me to start. She did all this while being supportive and encouraging - allowing me space to drop any guilt or shame for having "started late" on things like building retirement savings and investments. She was professional, knowledgeable, kind, and followed up immediately with a write-up with action items for me. Needless to say, I feel infinitely more confident and clear on next steps, and I'm excited to continue working with her. Do yourself a favor and hire Amie for a financial planning meeting! It's one of the most important steps I took in adulthood and you won't be sorry.

For decades I had a huge aversion to tracking and organizing my finances, both in my personal life…read moreand in my sole proprietorship. The main reason I had this aversion was a vague sense that I was probably wasting more money than I cared to admit both personally and in my professional practice, and I had shame about facing the music. The irony of course is that my aversion to facing it was making the problem much worse--which made me want to avoid the problem more, and on and on in a downward spiral. Luckily for me, one day a few years ago I was sitting in a theater waiting for the performance to start, and I happened to chat up the guy sitting next to me. At some point I asked him what he did, and he said he was a financial organization coach. A lightbulb went off in my head. This is exactly what I needed- a coach to hold my hand through the psychologically daunting task of actually facing the numbers of my personal and business expenses, tracking them, and setting up budgets. Also providing accountability that I actually do it. I asked for his card, and soon after the man from the theater, Adam Koren, gave me a very helpful and generous free initial consult. True to my pattern, I procrastinated and stuck my head in the sand for nearly another year around this issue before pulling the trigger and hiring Adam. And I am so so so glad I finally did. I started working with Adam in April, and now by early January, my life has completely transformed around this issue. I have extremely organized and well-categorized tracking in Mint, I have monthly budgets, I'm looking at comparative monthly and yearly charts, and I feel totally in charge of my personal and business numbers. Even more important, I don't feel shame about it any more! It wasn't some deep psychological process we went through (it was relatively painless) but just Adam's gentle, encouraging presence to guide me to do this each month, plus his knowledge of many of the psychological pitfalls people have around it, and his practical knowledge of tracking and budgeting, made it about as easy as it could have been for me. Plus, simply having the accountability to have to do the tracking before each call forced me to do it, rather than procrastinating as I used to. (By the way, one tip he gave me about budgeting that made it a zillion times easier for me to set up, was this: I only need to set up budgets in Mint for categories I need/want to cut down. For example, I'm trying to cut down food expenditures, so I need to set up a monthly budget for food--but I don't need to track a monthly budget for, say, clothing, because I don't spend that much on clothing and it's not something I feel I need to cut down. I still can see all my expenditures on all categories--including clothing--and each month I analyze monthly income vs. expenditures overall. But I'm only actually setting bonafide budgets for about 10 categories I've identified where I'd like to trim down. This turned budgeting from a daunting task I'd been avoiding for decades, to an easy one that is actually kind of fun for me to look at because it's not overwhelming. This is only one of many, many high-quality reframes Adam has given me.) It's only the first week in January and all my business and personal bookkeeping from last year is already done-- and I'm ready to file my Schedule C self-employed tax return. I cannot emphasize enough what a huge shift this is for me. My usual pattern for two decades has been to scramble a year's worth of expense tracking around October 7th, a week before the deadline from my inevitable extension! I would also only do business tracking, not personal, as that was what needed to be done in that week. Not this year. I just texted my tax guy, who has been used to these shenanigans from me for two decades, "Believe it or not, I'm going to file my taxes very early this year." He said, jokingly, "I'll believe it when I see it." I replied, "Well you're going to see it soon! When's your next tax appointment? I'm ready to file!" I'm saving about five hundred dollars a month now just from increased awareness about my expenses and trimming things that aren't really providing value (without feeling like I had to go on a restrictive "crash diet" around spending.) So the coaching has paid for itself just on purely financial terms. But much more important to me, I feel like decades of shame has been lifted from me around this issue. A huge weight has been taken off my shoulders by transforming financial disorganization into organization, and I feel like so much mental and emotional bandwidth has been freed up just by handling this one area of my life. I am so glad I chose that seat in the theater! I shudder to think how I might have never solved this problem for the rest of my life, had I chosen just one seat away. If you struggle with the same issue I did around financial disorganization, I can't recommend more highly that you work with Adam right away.

I had a great time working with Adam. During the complimentary initial session, we went over…read moreexpectations to make sure we were a good fit, he asked me to think about why I wanted to meet with him, and I had an idea of what things I needed to do to make the most out of our next two sessions. During our two hour-long sessions, we went over my spending versus income. He helped me look at my spending from various perspectives and encouraged me to put together a budget that I feel really good about. Before coming to Adam, I was having quarterly panic attacks late at night, whenever a large bill would come in, about how I was going to get through the next few weeks. I feel much better having worked with him and feel that I have the tools to spend more responsibly, analyze my spending habits, and put together rainy day funds to plan better for the future.

RJ is my financial advisor & educator! He breaks everything down & takes time to make sure I…read moreunderstand. He uses real life examples to compare to day to fay activities so that I can retain the information. Mrs. Tracey is the best & so friendly. She just assisted with getting all my forms uploaded. RJ is helpful with identifying other needed services.

We just bought our first home and could not have done it without the extremely professional and…read moretalented RJ Martin. We started investing with RJ a couple of years ago, and since then he's become like a close friend. He breaks financial jargon down into something we can make sense of and will really take you as far as you want to go. We tell EVERYONE about him. The Bay Area is expensive and I was always told that they way to get ahead is to make money off your money. I can't stress enough that we would not be where we are today without RJ's guiding hand. We look forward to continuing to work with him long into the future. I also want to shout out RJ's SUPER HELPFUL office administrator Tracey for being really on top of her outreach. While closing on our home the title company required a number of documents to track our payments, and I'm pretty sure I called so often Tracey memorized my number. She sent me everything I needed within in minutes and never once showed impatience with me. I really appreciate it.

If I could give more stars to Daniel, I would; he and his office staff are simply wonderful at…read morehandling both the hard bits (investing, presenting options, keeping me up to date on the state of my finances) AND the soft bits (listening to my concerns/needs and explaining things with fabulous charts/graphics). Daniel has even hosted my 2 young daughters in a session of Finance 101. I will be retiring soon, and feel calm about and clear on my financial picture - I credit Daniel and his team for this.

Daniel has been my financial guy for over a year now.... I could not be any happier. He is…read morewonderful. My wife and I make just enough money to put some aside for retirement - and he helped guide us through the process. He doesn't force you to do anything (which my wife likes) and simply gave us the options for us to decide. He knows how to get you the most bang for your buck - and will make investing easy. I pray he stays in finance for life - as he will be my financial guy for life. Thanks Mr. Jew.

Positive: Professionalism, Quality, Responsiveness…read more I have received exceptional care and service since my initial conversations with Tiffany and our consequent follow up coaching discussions. I am so glad my wife and I found her, given how much value and up-to-date wisdom she brings. Tiffany is friendly, attentive and very professional. I've experienced Tiffany to have an ability to quickly zero in on the essence of our financial situations and then partner with us to bring real-world clarity and strategy to our much needed financial solutions. She loves what she does and she has a heart to educate and to serve - totally a win-win relationship. Tiffany is extremely current and knowledgeable in her field, respectful, honest, fair and client focused. I recommend her in a heartbeat (have actually done so to hundreds of people) - she offers a free 30 minute consult, jam packed with value. Check her out. See for yourself. We definitely will continue to work on improving our family and overall finances with Tiffany!! Thank you, Tiffany!!

I have been working with Tiffany for 4 years on my personal finances. I can tell you straight out,…read moreI would not be where I am right now without her! I am completely organized with an excel sheet that covers incoming/ outgoing expenditures so that I am set up for recurring items, as well as prepared for one-offs. My credit cards are paid off and I have a significant sum of money in my savings (something I hadn't been able to do before). I have separate accounts such as my "weekly allowance" for things like gas, groceries, movies, etc where I can track day to day where I stand; a Vacation fund, an Emergency account, etc. It's very convenient to meet on zoom on a periodic basis to keep things lined up and flowing smoothly. The relief of knowing where I stand financially on an ongoing basis is priceless! Not to mention that she is such an easy person to work with; smart and experienced beyond general personal financial management.