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Independent planning · Chart Your Course

The first question
won’t be about
your money.

Most first meetings with an advisor open with performance charts. Ours opens with your story: how you got here, what keeps you up, and what you want this money to make possible. Strategy comes after that, and it comes coordinated with your CPA and your attorney.

Who this is for

Executives, physicians, owners

Where we focus

Equity comp, tax timing, transitions

How we work

Story first, then strategy

Sound familiar

You did not get here by being careless with money

Your compensation just developed more moving parts than anyone coordinated. This is what that usually looks like by the time someone calls us.
  • The vest date you would rather not think about

    Your employer withholds 22% on vesting RSUs. If your household lands in the 32% or 37% bracket, the difference arrives as a bill at filing.

  • Too much of your net worth in one ticker

    The stock built your wealth, so selling feels wrong. It also means your salary, your bonus, your equity, and your benefits all depend on one company.

  • A window that opens once

    An IPO, a tender offer, an acquisition, a business you might sell. Decisions inside that window are hard to reverse and they arrive with a deadline.

  • Income with nowhere left to hide

    Large W-2, a real bonus, few deductions remaining, and a CPA you speak with in March about a year that already closed.

  • Two generations needing you at once

    Children at home and parents starting to need help. Without a plan for long-term care, that cost usually lands on the children.

  • The question you have not asked out loud

    Could you step back in five years if you wanted to? It has a specific answer, and most people wait years before going to look for it.

If three or more of those sound familiar, the gap probably is not investment returns. It is that nobody is holding the whole picture for you.

Portrait of Matt Hightower
Matt Hightower

Who you would be working with

You should know who is on the other side of the table

GGM Wealth Advisors is led by Matt Hightower out of Mandeville, Louisiana. We work with people whose money got complicated faster than their planning did.

What we do differently is unglamorous. We ask more questions than you expect, and we do not propose anything in the first meeting. We want to know how you got here, what you are carrying, and what success sounds like in your own words before we have an opinion about your portfolio.

Then we take the coordinating seat. Your CPA, your attorney, your insurance, your investments: most people have all four and nobody connecting them. That gap is where the expensive things happen, and closing it is the job we take on.

How this works

Three steps, and the first one costs you an hour

No long onboarding and no homework before we have even spoken. Click through the steps to see what each one involves.

Step 01

Tell us your story

About an hour, no cost, no obligation to do anything afterward.

  • How you got to this point, in your own words. Career, family, the decisions that shaped the last ten years.
  • What keeps your attention at odd hours. Usually it is more specific than money in general.
  • What success looks like to you. Not a number we hand you, the version you would describe to a friend.
  • Who is already in your corner: your CPA, your attorney, anyone else we should be working alongside.

Who we help

Find your role

Each page below describes the problems we see most often in that role, and where we would start with you.

What brings people in

Planning for life's biggest decisions

Almost nobody calls an advisor because they decided they wanted a portfolio. They call because something changed. If one of these is the thing that changed for you, start there.

What to expect

You can let your guard down

People in your position get sold to all day. So it seems only fair to say plainly how a conversation with us goes, and what you will never have to sit through.
  • No portfolio pitch in the first meeting. We would not know enough yet to have an opinion worth hearing.
  • No product recommendation until we understand your tax picture.
  • No annual review that turns out to be a sales call in disguise.
  • No performance charts standing in for a plan.
  • And if what you need turns out to be simpler than what we do, we will say so and point you toward someone who fits. That happens, and it is a perfectly good outcome.

How we help

The work itself

Grouped by what you are trying to do rather than by product category, because that is how people actually arrive at these questions.

Free tool

At what age does work become optional?

The question most people ask late and quietly. It has a specific answer, and five inputs will get you close enough to know whether the date is where you assumed. If a business is the asset that funds it, there is a field for what a sale would net.

Vesting equity this year? Try the RSU tax gap calculator.

Illustration only
Age today
45
Invested
$1,200,000
Added each year
$90,000
Spending target
$180,000
Work becomes optional
61

Straight answers

Questions people ask before the first call

Let's start with a conversation

Bring whatever is on your mind: a vest date you are unsure about, an offer you are weighing, a business you might sell in three years. Nothing to prepare, no cost, and you will leave with something useful whether or not we end up working together.