Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What services do you offer?
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We provide comprehensive financial planning and wealth management for individuals, families, and business owners in the Kansas City metro area and beyond, with offices in Overland Park, Kansas.
Our core services include holistic wealth management, retirement planning, tax strategy, estate and legacy planning support, and business succession planning. For business owners, we also design and manage employer-sponsored retirement plans, including 401k plans for small and mid-sized companies.
What sets our approach apart is that these services are not separate products. They work together as a coordinated plan. Your investment strategy is built around your tax situation. Your retirement projections account for estate planning goals. Your cash flow plan reflects the life you actually want to live. We model scenarios, analyze tax consequences, stress-test assumptions, and give you a clear visual picture of where you stand and where you're headed.
We serve clients in person at our two Overland Park offices or remotely.
Are you a fiduciary?
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Yes. We operate as fiduciaries to our advisory clients, which means we are legally and ethically obligated to act in your best interest when providing financial advice.
Our advisory services are offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment adviser. We favor a transparent cost structure that aligns our interests.
What credentials does your team hold?
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Our wealth advisors hold some of the most respected designations in the financial services industry. Several of these are earned through The American College of Financial Services, and each represents a focused area of expertise that directly benefits our clients.
CFP (Certified Financial Planner) is one of the most widely recognized certifications in financial planning. Administered by the CFP Board, it requires meeting rigorous standards in education, examination, experience, and ethics. CFP professionals are held to a fiduciary duty, meaning they are obligated to act in their clients' best interests at all times. The certification covers the full scope of personal financial planning, including investments, tax planning, retirement, insurance, and estate planning, which aligns with our belief that sound advice considers how every piece of a client's financial life fits together.
ChFC (Chartered Financial Consultant) is one of the most comprehensive financial planning credentials available. It covers advanced topics including income tax planning, retirement planning, estate planning, insurance, and behavioral finance. The ChFC curriculum is broader than many other planning designations, which reflects our belief that good financial advice requires understanding the full picture, not just investments.
CRPC (Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor) focuses specifically on retirement income planning. This includes Social Security optimization, withdrawal sequencing, required minimum distributions, and the transition from accumulating wealth to generating reliable income in retirement. For clients approaching or already in retirement, this expertise shapes the strategies we recommend.
CRPS (Chartered Retirement Plans Specialist) is geared toward employer-sponsored retirement plans. This designation is especially relevant for business owners who want to design, implement, or improve a 401k or other qualified retirement plan for their employees. It covers plan design, compliance, fiduciary responsibility, and participant education.
We pursue these designations because financial planning is never static. Tax laws change, retirement rules evolve, and our clients deserve an advisor who is continuously deepening their knowledge to stay ahead of those shifts.
We work alongside the professionals you already trust, bringing together a unified team of investment specialists, CFP® professionals, CPAs, attorneys, and insurance specialists to help ensure every part of your financial life is connected.
What does the first meeting look like?
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The first meeting is a complimentary consultation, and it is really a conversation, not a sales pitch. We will ask about your goals, your concerns, and what is most important to you financially. That might include retirement timing, tax frustrations, questions about an employer benefits package, estate planning gaps, or simply a feeling that your finances are not as organized as they should be. We want to understand your full picture, not just your portfolio. We have a page that describes exactly what to expect.
You will also have a chance to ask us anything: how we work, what our planning process looks like, how we communicate with clients, and whether we are the right fit. We believe that the advisor-client relationship works best when both sides choose it deliberately.
If we decide to work together, the next step is typically a deeper discovery process where we gather financial documents, discuss your goals and concerns, and begin building your financial plan. You will be able to see your financial life modeled out visually, with projections, scenarios, and recommendations you can actually understand.
You can book a consultation directly on our website, or call us at (913) 732-7777. We meet clients at either of our Overland Park offices and through video or phone for those who prefer remote meetings.
What does it cost? How much money do I need to work with a financial advisor?
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We normally charge a percentage of the assets we manage, with the rate coming down as assets grow. With this structure, our financial interests are aligned. Our costs are automatically deducted from the accounts rather than arriving as a bill. At $250,000 and above, the written financial plan, ongoing tax strategy, and estate planning support are all bundled into the cost, so there is no separate planning charge on top. The complete cost information is listed on our website.
There is no minimum. But below $250,000 we charge separately for comprehensive financial planning, tax work, and estate planning. The first year of planning work runs at least fifteen to twenty-five hours for the average client, and rather than set a high minimum that quietly turns people away, we would rather price the work honestly and individually so you may decide. If you prefer, or if the bulk of your wealth sits outside the accounts we would manage, whether that is a closely held business, real estate, or concentrated stock, we will negotiate a fixed engagement instead. The full schedule is on our pricing page.
Are you an independent advisory firm? What does it mean to be an independent advisor?
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Yes, and we want to be specific about what that means. Proper Planning & Wealth Management is an independently owned firm. LPL is not a parent company and does not own us. Advisory services are offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment adviser, and LPL provides custody, trading, compliance oversight, research, and some of our technology. It does not decide what we recommend.
The real test of independence is whether your advisor has in-house proprietary products to sell. We do not. There are no proprietary funds, no sales quotas, and no revenue reason to steer you toward one investment over another.
We also carry no obligation to use any particular manager, fund, or insurance carrier. Our platform is open architecture, and every recommendation we make is driven by you and your financial plan, not our financial interests.
Do you serve clients nationwide? Do I have to be local to work with you?
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We serve clients nationwide. We have two offices in Kansas City and we enjoy meeting people in person. But nearly all of what we do works just as well over video calls. Documents go through our secure portal, signatures are electronic, and our planning software puts the same visual plan on your screen whether you are across the desk or across the country. Plan reviews, tax planning, and portfolio work happen the same way either way.
We are also often a good fit for people who moved away from Kansas City but kept the employer, the ESOP, or the family here.
What kind of clients do you typically work with?
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There are three main groups (and a lot of overlap between them):
High-net-worth and high-income individuals and executives. Usually people whose compensation has gotten complicated: restricted stock, options, deferred compensation, bonus timing, an ESOP, or a large position in employer stock. High income creates tax problems that require more complex strategies.
Business owners. Often the company is the single largest asset, which changes the retirement math, the succession question, the tax strategy, and the retirement plan they sponsor for their employees. All four are connected, and we treat them that way.
Families. Frequently across generations, where aging parents, adult children, education funding, an inheritance, tax concerns, or the cost of care are all part of the same plan.
People hire us when the decisions start getting complicated, the do-it-yourself tools no longer suffice, and they want clarity with their financial lives.
I already have a CPA and an attorney. Does that change what you do?
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Not much, and you do not need to change anything. We can work well with the professionals you already have.
Some clients arrive with a CPA they trust or an attorney they have used for years. Those relationships have real value, and replacing them is rarely the right move. What usually is missing is someone connecting them. In practice that means your CPA gets a Roth conversion analysis in October while there is still time to act on it, rather than discovering the issue in April. It means your attorney gets an accurate picture of what you own and how it is titled before drafting documents. It means your beneficiary designations actually match your will (more common than you might think).
What information do you need to start?
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Less than you would think for the first conversation, and more once we start building the plan.
For the first meeting, bring whatever you have available. Recent statements and a rough sense of your income and expenses are great. Even if you bring nothing we can still have a productive conversation.
If we decide to move forward together, we will ask you to gather the information from our Data Gathering Worksheet.
Most people have this spread across a filing cabinet, three websites, and a drawer. Do not spend a weekend organizing it. Send what you can find, and we will tell you what is missing.
Do you work with employees at Garmin, Burns & McDonnell, Cerner/Oracle Health, or Black & Veatch?
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Yes. These companies employ a lot of people in the Kansas City metro, and each has a benefits package with unique elements.
Burns & McDonnell. The ESOP is usually the central question. When you are eligible to diversify, how distribution timing affects your tax bill, whether net unrealized appreciation applies, and how much of your net worth is riding on your employer.
Garmin. RSUs are taxed as ordinary income when they vest, which catches people off guard. There is also the employee stock purchase plan, tuition reimbursement, and the question of how much company stock is too much stock. We have a piece on the benefits package.
Cerner / Oracle Health. The Oracle acquisition changed equity compensation and benefits for a lot of people. Legacy Cerner holdings, 401(k) decisions, and Oracle RSU vesting all interact, and the right answer usually depends on the whole picture rather than any one account.
Black & Veatch. Another employee-owned company, which means concentrated stock and distribution timing factor heavily into the plan.
Those are just a few of the larger employers. If your employer is not on this list, that doesn’t mean we aren’t already familiar with your benefits and options. The underlying questions, concentrated stock, equity compensation, pension elections, are the same ones we work on every week.
Proper Planning & Wealth Management and LPL Financial are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of the companies named above.
Can you help with our company 401k?
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Yes. Employer-sponsored retirement plans are a core part of the practice rather than something we do occasionally. We work with plans for small and mid-sized businesses across the Kansas City metro.
Our advisors hold the CRPS (Chartered Retirement Plans Specialist) designation, which is focused specifically on employer plans: plan design, compliance, fiduciary responsibility, and participant education. That focus matters, because a 401(k) is very different from an individual portfolio.
What that work usually involves:
A real accounting of what the plan costs. Many owners have never seen a full breakdown of what they (and their participants) are paying across recordkeeping, administration, and fund expenses. Fee benchmarking is often the first thing we do.
Plan design. Safe harbor, profit sharing, new comparability, and cash balance structures all change how much you as an owner can put away and how the contribution is allocated. This is where we can often make the largest impact.
Fiduciary support. Documentation, investment policy statements, and committee meetings help protect you if the plan is ever examined.
Investment menu construction and monitoring.
Participant education and enrollment - we help make the plan a benefit employees actually understand and use.
Coordinating with your recordkeeper, TPA, and payroll provider so it does not become your project to manage.
For many owners, the plan is solving two problems at once: a competitive benefit for employees, and a tax and retirement tool for you. Those should be designed together, but often are not. That’s one of the ways we are different.