Michael Piper, LLC

Michael Piper, LLC is a solo-registered investment adviser that provides comprehensive financial planning to individuals, high-net-worth individuals, and small businesses. Its planning services include retirement projections and distribution planning, Roth conversion and Social Security analysis, estate-plan review, charitable planning, and the development of an investment policy statement; the firm does not act as custodian for client assets.

The firm’s investment approach emphasizes passive investing and strategic asset allocation, typically recommending low-cost index mutual funds and ETFs, broad diversification, and tax-efficiency informed by sources such as Morningstar and fund prospectuses. Clients retain implementation discretion: the firm does not provide portfolio management or discretionary trading and expects clients to execute transactions through custodians of their choice.

Distinctive features relative to many peers include that the firm’s principal is a Certified Public Accountant with a Personal Financial Specialist credential and explicitly integrates tax planning within advisory work, and the adviser does not use percentage-of-AUM fees but instead provides fixed or hourly planning arrangements with annual fee adjustments tied to Social Security COLA. The brochure also discloses a small client roster and a concurrent publishing business the principal reports may consume substantial monthly time, underscoring a fee-for-service planning model rather than an asset-management orientation.