One team for your taxes, investments, and financial planning—working together so you don't have to coordinate between advisors.
Most business owners work with a CPA for taxes and a separate financial advisor for investments. The two rarely talk. When they do, it's often too late—strategies conflict, opportunities get missed, and you're left playing middleman.
Vaughan Family Financial is a hybrid CPA firm and fee-only Registered Investment Advisory (RIA). We handle your bookkeeping, tax planning, financial planning, and investment management under one roof. No commissions. No product sales. Just integrated advice from a single team that sees the full picture.
This structure exists because financial decisions don't happen in isolation. A retirement contribution affects your taxes. A business sale affects your estate plan. An investment decision affects both. When one advisor handles all of it, nothing falls through the cracks.
Monthly bookkeeping, reconciliations, and financial statements that keep your records accurate and ready for tax planning.
Year-round tax strategy for individuals and businesses—not just annual compliance, but proactive planning to minimize liability.
Comprehensive planning that connects your business success to your personal goals: retirement, education, estate, and everything in between.
Fee-only, tax-aware portfolio management built around your goals and risk tolerance—not around product sales.
The typical advisory relationship is fragmented. Your CPA handles taxes. A broker handles investments. Maybe a third team handles your financial plan. Each operates independently, optimizing for their piece without seeing the whole.
When we recommend a retirement contribution, we've already considered the tax impact. When we manage your investments, we're thinking about your business cash flow needs. When we prepare your tax return, we know your financial goals.
This isn't about being all things to all people. It's about eliminating the gaps where money and opportunity are lost. When tax, investment, and business planning work together, the result is better than any single service could deliver alone.
We are fiduciaries. That means we are legally obligated to act in your best interest—not to sell products, not to generate commissions, not to meet sales quotas. Our compensation comes directly from you, which keeps our advice free from conflicts.
Our investment approach is evidence-based and cost-conscious. We believe in diversification, tax efficiency, and staying disciplined through market cycles. We don't chase hot stocks or promise to beat the market. Instead, we build portfolios designed to capture market returns while minimizing unnecessary costs and tax drag.
Keep costs low. Diversify broadly. Harvest losses when appropriate. Locate assets tax-efficiently. Rebalance systematically. Stay invested. These aren't exciting principles, but they're the ones supported by decades of evidence—and they're the ones that serve long-term wealth building.
Your portfolio is designed around your specific goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance. We don't use a one-size-fits-all model. But we do apply a consistent philosophy: prudent, low-cost, tax-aware investing that supports your financial plan rather than working against it.
We work best with clients who value coordination over fragmentation, and who want a long-term relationship rather than one-off transactions.
Small and medium business owners who need their business finances and personal finances to work together.
Professionals with complex tax situations who want proactive planning, not just annual compliance.
Families focused on long-term financial success—retirement, education, and legacy—who want a trusted partner.
If you're tired of coordinating between your CPA and your financial advisor, or if you're looking for a more integrated approach to your finances, we should talk.
Straight answers to what people actually ask before hiring a CPA or a financial planner — including what it costs.
Monthly bookkeeping and support is typically quoted between $400 and $900 per month. Where you land depends on the size of your business and what you need. We build the quote based on a realistic estimate of the time your books and support will take each month.
What the monthly fee includes: the bookkeeping itself, tax planning, and access to Joe. Calls, meetings, and questions are part of the engagement, not billable events. If you email to ask something, or want an hour to walk through your cash flow, that's covered.
That last part matters more than it sounds. Most business owners don't just need clean books — they need a sounding board. Should I buy the building or keep leasing? Can I afford this equipment, and should I finance it or pay cash? What is this business actually worth? Why is the P&L profitable when the bank account isn't? Those conversations are where the money is, and they don't happen if you're worried about a $300-an-hour invoice showing up because you picked up the phone.
If a monthly engagement doesn't fit, there's a second option. Some businesses genuinely only need the books brought current once a year. In that case there's no monthly fee at all — just a single year-end bookkeeping fee billed annually alongside your tax return. Tax planning can be added on to that arrangement; it's included by default in the monthly one.
Either way, you get a flat fee in writing before any work starts.
Minimums are $1,500 for a business return and $1,000 for an individual return. Returns go up from there with complexity — multiple entities, multi-state filings, rental property, or a stack of K-1s all add work.
For very small or simple returns, the minimum may be waived. You'll have a number in writing before we begin.
Written financial plans are quoted as a flat project fee, generally $2,000 to $10,000, depending on the scope and complexity of the engagement. A single-issue question is a different project than a business owner coordinating an exit, a retirement plan, and an estate strategy at once.
Investment management fees are described in full in our Form ADV Part 2A, which is posted on this site. We'd rather point you to the actual disclosure document than summarize it.
A non-CPA bookkeeper may not be keeping your books with tax preparation in mind — and those two things are directly linked. How a transaction gets categorized during the year determines what's available to you on the return. Owner draws, vehicle expenses, equipment purchases, home office, meals, and how you handle contractor payments all get recorded by the bookkeeper and then have to be defended by whoever signs the return.
When those are two different people at two different firms, nobody owns the connection. The bookkeeper isn't thinking about your return, and your CPA sees the file in March, after every decision has already been made.
There are enormous benefits to having the same CPA keep the books, prepare the returns, and do the tax planning. The books get built to support the tax strategy from January instead of being reverse-engineered in April.
Run the fully loaded number before you decide. A full-time in-house bookkeeper is salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, PTO, software, and the management time to supervise someone whose work you may not be qualified to review.
In-house wins when transaction volume genuinely fills a 40-hour week — which happens later than most owners assume. Below that, outsourcing usually costs less and gets you a licensed CPA reviewing the work instead of a solo employee with nobody checking behind them.
Often you shouldn't. I tell people all the time that they don't need a CPA yet and should just use online tax software. If we aren't a good fit, I will tell you so.
It changes when there's a business involved. Software processes what you type in. It doesn't ask whether your entity structure still fits your profit level, whether your owner compensation is defensible, whether an equipment purchase should land this year or next, or whether the retirement plan you're using is the one that actually fits. Those decisions are worth more than the preparation fee, and they get made during the year — not in April, when the return is just recording what already happened.
Fee-only means every dollar this firm earns comes from its clients. No commissions, no insurance products, no referral fees from anyone we send you to, no revenue sharing from fund companies, no payment for shelf space.
It matters because it removes a question you'd otherwise have to ask about every recommendation: is he telling me this because it's right, or because of what he earns if I do it? There is no product on the other side of the advice.
This is different from “fee-based,” which sounds nearly identical and means something else entirely — fee-based advisors charge fees and collect commissions.
Yes — for every client and every recommendation, not only when a particular rule happens to apply.
The distinction is worth understanding. Some advisors are held to a fiduciary standard for retirement accounts and a lower suitability standard everywhere else, which means the same person can owe you different duties depending on which account is being discussed. As a registered investment adviser, we owe a fiduciary duty across the entire relationship.
Joe Vaughan holds two: Certified Public Accountant, licensed by the Alabama State Board of Public Accountancy, and CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, awarded by the CFP Board.
Don't take our word for it — here are the direct links:
Both are membership organizations for financial advisors, and both apply objective requirements to join.
NAPFA — the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors — accepts only fee-only advisors. Members are compensated exclusively by clients and sign a fiduciary oath. Advisors who accept commissions are not eligible for membership.
XY Planning Network is a national network of fee-only planners that likewise prohibits commission compensation and requires CFP® certification.
Vaughan Family Financial is a member of both. We pay annual dues to each organization. Neither membership is an endorsement of this firm, a rating of our services, or any indication of future results — membership reflects that we meet each organization's stated criteria, nothing more. Both organizations publish their membership requirements, and our listings are public: NAPFA firm profile, NAPFA advisor profile, and XY Planning Network profile.
Take as much time as you need. You describe your situation and your business, if you have one. If you're working with an accountant now, tell me where the pain points are, or what you'd want to see from a new one.
I'll ask questions about your situation and tell you how I'm different from other CPAs and financial advisors, and we'll both get a read on whether we're a good fit. If we are, I'll request some additional information — usually the last couple of tax returns and a look at the books. Depending on what I see, we may have another call, or I may be comfortable going straight to a quote.
I want to look at the actual records before quoting. A number pulled out of the air isn't a good-faith quote, and neither of us benefits from a price that changes once I see the file.
For an intro call, essentially nothing. Bring your pain points and your questions. That conversation is a fit check, not a document review.
If we're moving forward, that's when I'll ask for the real material: recent tax returns, access to your books, and anything else you think would help me understand the situation. The more I can actually look at, the more accurate the quote — and the less likely the number moves later.
No. I'm happy to meet in person by appointment, and plenty of clients prefer that. But everything here can be handled virtually — calls, video meetings, and a secure client portal for documents.
The work is the same either way. Some clients I see in person multiple times a year; others I've never met face to face.
Start the intake process or reach out to discuss how integrated tax, investment, and financial planning can work for you.