Steven G. Blum and Associates, LLC

The firm is an SEC-registered investment adviser serving roughly 70 clients that include individuals, families, pension and profit-sharing plans, estates, charitable organizations, and business entities. It provides integrated investment consulting and financial planning services—covering tax planning, estate and retirement planning, college funding, gifting and charitable strategies—and offers portfolio management on both discretionary and non-discretionary bases; the brochure reports about $180 million in AUM with roughly $106 million managed non-discretionarily and $74 million on a discretionary basis.

The firm frames its investment approach around the principles of financial economics, broad diversification across countries, regions, sizes and asset classes, and attention to tax efficiency and low costs. Advisers assess each client’s risk capacity to recommend an appropriate asset allocation and commonly select low-cost, tax-aware mutual funds and ETFs (including substantial use of a particular fund family) while noting no financial incentive from that fund family.

Noteworthy differences from many peers include that a principal of the firm maintains an active law practice with advanced tax credentials and ongoing academic ties to a business school, while the other principal is a CPA with experience in complex financial transactions and securitizations; the firm discloses these relationships and clarifies that advisory engagement does not create an attorney-client or CPA-client relationship. The brochure also highlights a blended fee structure that combines fixed and AUM-based components, the predominance of non-discretionary accounts, and that the firm does not act as a private fund adviser.