Dr. Mike is a fantastic accountant and financial advisor. He has helped my wife and I plan for our…read morefuture. He is a great guy and gives wonderful advice. God Bless you Dr. Mike and thank you for helping us file our taxes and plan our finances.

For the past 4 years I have had my taxes done by Michael Olff at Gateway Financial and have not…read morebeen disappointed. He is friendly, knowledgeable and efficient. His office has convenient parking ( big plus since many offices in Walnut Creek require you to pay for parking in their lot or garage!). After talking with friends, I can tell you his fees are considerably less than his contemporaries. I was so impressed with how Mike managed filing my taxes, I turned over a portion of my retirement funds for him to manage. Ya know what? My retirement has grown more than it ever has under my stewardship. Mike is a Certified Financial Planner, I have no regrets and only highest praises for his expertise in managing my money. You can't go wrong with taking your business to Mike!

I highly recommend Cortland L. Golightly at Element Wealth Management as a Financial Advisor. As…read moreCo-founder and Managing Partner, Cortland brings over two decades of industry experience to his office in Walnut Creek. He serves as a compassionate and attentive partner who genuinely cares about our financial goals and has methodically tailored our accounts to meet them. As a mom, it means everything to have a trusted advisor who understands the dedication it takes to build both a stable future and a nurturing home for our family. Cortland and his team check in with us several times throughout the year to ensure my family's questions are answered and strengthens our confidence by patiently explaining financial strategies and concepts. I learn something new every time we chat with him. If you're looking for a trustworthy and dedicated financial advisor, I wholeheartedly recommend Cortland! Feel free to message me if you have further questions!

Alex and his team are extremely knowledgeable and actively pursue ways to grow wealth. Most…read morefinancial advisors follow a formula. Alex goes above and beyond, and has significantly improved our portfolio.

I have been working with Alex for over 8 years now. Alex's attention to detail and broad knowledge…read moreof the markets has been instrumental in helping me build a solid retirement plan that works. The reason that I have continued to work with Alex is trust and integrity. When you work with Alex you know that he has your best interest in mind and treats you like family. I would, and have, recommended Alex's services to anyone looking for financial planning and investment advice.

Jirayr and Ryan at Citrine Capital are absolute professionals that provide the highest level of…read moreservice to their clients. I am a tax accountant and work with a number of their very satisfied clients, and would not hesitate to refer Citrine Capital to anyone looking for a qualified CFP (Certified Financial Planner). From the moment you meet either one of these gentlemen you get the immediate impression that they have their clients' best interests in hearts. They are highly responsive to their clients and professionals with whom they have mutual clients. In particular, their expertise with tech professionals and other individuals with equity positions places them at the top of their field. Will absolutely be sending referrals their way.

We absolutely loved working with Jirayr and his team. Jirayr…read morehas been everything we hoped for in a financial advisor: 1. Trustworthy and transparent. 2. Approachable, kind and understanding. 3. Knowledgeable and responsible. 4. Able to think "out of the box" and accommodating for changing needs. 5. Always available. And much more. If you want to learn how to manage your assets wisely and need help with financial planning don't hesitate, Jirayr will not disappoint.

I can't say enough good things about John Mao at Argus CPA. When our CPA unexpectedly retired and…read moreour corporate return was due on March 15, John came to the rescue. He was calm, detail-oriented, and genuinely caring about getting it right. He turned a stressful moment into a relief. I wish I could give him more than five stars!

John, you are just amazing! Our business has income tax…read moreissues and John helped us resolve them. Not only is he very knowledgeable (and you can tell from others who cannot answer your questions; they just keep on talking.), he is very kind, considerate of what our challenges are. (again; others including our recent tax attorney just reciting the tax laws that do not even apply to our conditions.) He listens, focuses on the issues, and able to answer the tax questions we have. Terrific!

As a new first time homebuyer, the KPR team was instrumental in answering my questions and…read moreproviding me the guidance I needed to make the right financial decisions throughout my homebuying process. They were kind, courteous, followed up with me on my open asks and were able to explain all the rules and guidelines to me in an easy to understand way. I won't hesitate to come back for future help!

Ken is extremely knowledgable in the area of equity P&L/compensation and helped me navigate through…read morethe quagmire of tax implications of ISO, RSU, ESPP, and both short/long term holding implications. He helped us sort out a mess the IRS years back with relation to ISO stock and AMT (pre-Tax and Jobs Act) that we are forever grateful for and have been going to him since. From a cost perspective, KPR is reasonable for a seasoned professional in the upper level with a service touch. On the service side, Annabelle has been amazing in providing that extra care and attention to details to remind us of milestones.

We decided to seek financial coaching after making "living in the moment" decisions for far too…read morelong. We also wanted to align our spending/saving to our short term and long term goals, instead of relying on the CC to do that. We were initially skeptical of letting someone take a full look at the books (ie. real accountability), but Garrett's approach quickly disarmed us. We initially discussed a full range of short/term goals, hard habits we were trying to break, and some of the finer details of how we "managed" our money. Our sessions were built around these core areas and we moved into solutions for making small changes each week, in order to see big changes overall. It might go without saying, but talking through finances, especially with a partner, can also bring up a lot of different feelings. Garrett navigated this brilliantly with empathy, humor, awareness, and really great communication. We would sometimes call him our financial coach therapist, but were only half kidding. Overall he gave us the tools, coaching, and accountability we needed to make significant changes in our relationship to money. Every day I'm thankful for the error-proof banking and spending structures he helped us build, as well as the savings plan we now use for our long-term dream. Plus so much more. I wish I could go back to my younger self and convince him to work with Garrett, I can only imagine where I'd be now if I had. HANDS DOWN the best money we've ever spent.

Growing up my parents always told me (and showed me) that I didn't need to worry about money; the…read moregeneral feeling was that there's always more. And while I was underage, and reliant on my parents that worked swimmingly. But, weirdly (read: disappointingly) I eventually got to a point in my own life where I needed to do things like make a budget and pay boring bills and generally be more financially responsible than what I had previously been. Cue the world's smallest violin, but it didn't go well. I have expensive tastes, and I feel entitled to my expensive tastes, and I got really, disgustingly good about figuring out how to juggle everything. And then one day that just became exhausting. And i didn't know how to end the cycle I'd created for me. I came across Be Awesome Not Broke and even though I still have lots and lots of work to do, I'be made such substantial jumps. I know the path to success and I know what habits I have to change to be successful. Garrett has set me up for the best type of success: not being my own worst enemy.

I highly recommend Sean Burgess' financial planning services. I chose Sean because of his…read moreaffordable, one-hour consultation session offering. I wasn't looking to spend thousands of dollars to have a financial advisor provide ongoing money management services. I really just wanted an expert to look at my situation in detail and provide advice that I could execute on myself. That's exactly what I got, and it was an incredibly valuable hour for me. Going into our session, I felt overwhelmed and without a plan for achieving my short and long term financial goals. Sean examined my situation (via a detailed questionnaire he had me complete in advance of our meeting) and provided, in a kind and straight-forward manner, both high-level perspective and clear guidance on specific actions to take. The greatest benefit of my meeting with Sean was that I came away with a much-increased clarity of my financial picture, which improved my sense of control and reduced my stress. I wouldn't hesitate to consult him again in the future when the need arises.

It has been several years since I went to see Sean so please keep that in mind but I just came…read moreacross his Yelp profile and realized I should add a review as meeting with him has stuck with me since then. I went to see him originally as I was searching for a financial planner that would really dig into my specific situation and help me "tune" my finances. At that time I had a general idea of finances, more than most people but less than some. I had read up on compound interest, opportunity costs... blah blah... and I had been saving about 50% of my paycheck and maxing out my 401k for decades. I've also tracked my spending in Quicken for about 20 years so I have an amazingly detailed view on exactly where all my money goes. With all this data, I was looking for a partner to put things over the finish line as I wrapped up my last few years of working. So now was the time that I needed another set of eyes on my finances to put an exit plan together and double check my math. It turns out that Sean isn't the person for this type of work. Although a SUPER nice guy with a passion for helping others, his advice from our one meeting was just the very basic fundamentals of financial planning. For example, for retirement he recommended that a person have X percentage of their current salary saved for a certain number of years. This is a common boiler plate idea that is a good starting point for thinking about finances. Unfortunately, this didn't fit my goal of seeing him as I wanted to "tune" my finances, not just keep sacking away as much as possible and use an off the shelf formula to determine success. I was willing to pay for personal advice but what he offered wasn't helpful or tailored to me in any way. I pointed out that this calculation doesn't apply to me because half of my salary as well as my max 401k match shouldn't be calculated into what I need to save for retirement. Will I keep saving 50% of my income during retirement? Of course not. When I pressed him on this, he didn't seem to have an answer. There were many more examples like this where he used a very basic spreadsheet to determine net retirement needed, current savings rates... which, for the right client, would be a great place to start. I do see that some people will get real value from working with Sean because they might not understand these concepts. What I am thankful to Sean for is that he inspired me to take matters into my own hands and dig deep into this project myself so I was able to retire at 50. This wouldn't have happened if I stuck with Sean. All of the resources that Sean brings to the discussion can easily be found for free on most any 101 planning website. But, if you want someone to walk you through these new concepts, Sean is easy to talk to and pleasant to be around. I would also plan on moving on from him fairly quickly as you will be doing yourself a disservice to stick with the basics that he provides for very long. Lastly, I would echo Daniel F's review almost verbatim.