Helping families in Belmont, Massachusetts
Fee-only financial advisors for Belmont families
About 20 minutes east of our Concord office.
Monument Group provides fee-only fiduciary financial planning to Belmont, MA families from our Concord office, about twenty minutes away. Common work includes Massachusetts estate tax planning for long-held homes, coordinating education costs with retirement saving, public pension elections, and charitable giving from appreciated assets.
Belmont households tend to combine long ownership of a substantially appreciated home with professional or academic careers, and a strong commitment to funding education.
Those three things compete for the same dollars at the same stage of life, and the sequencing between them is what the planning is actually about.
Three claims on the same money
The pattern is consistent enough to describe. A house bought long ago now represents a large share of net worth. Education costs arrive during peak earning years. Retirement saving needs to happen in the same decade, when it still has time to compound.
None of the three is negotiable in isolation, which is why the answer comes from ordering them rather than choosing between them: which account funds what, in which year, and what that does to the tax bill in the years either side.
Later, the same appreciated house is the reason a Massachusetts estate tax review is worth doing. Families here frequently have no federal estate tax exposure and a meaningful state one, and the fix is usually document structure rather than anything drastic.
What comes up most in Belmont
- Education funding sequencing
- Whether to fund from cash flow, 529 accounts or appreciated securities is a tax decision with a long tail, and it interacts directly with the retirement date.
- Appreciated primary residence
- A long-held Belmont home can exceed the capital gains exclusion on sale, making the decision to downsize, hold or transfer a tax question first.
- Public pension elections
- For households with a state or municipal career, the survivor option chosen at retirement is generally irrevocable and belongs in the plan, not on a form.
- Charitable giving
- Giving appreciated securities rather than cash removes the embedded gain and preserves the deduction. Bunching several years into one concentrates it where it is worth most.
- Massachusetts estate tax
- Massachusetts applies its own estate tax above $2 million — far below the federal exemption — and around Boston a long-held house plus retirement accounts clears that line more often than people expect.
Services Belmont families use most
Financial Planning
Life planning that coordinates retirement income strategies, estate planning, tax planning, risk management, and charitable giving into one cohesive blueprint.
Learn moreEstate & Legacy Planning
Your financial plan, coordinated with the legal work of our affiliated law firm, so that wills, trusts and beneficiary designations all point the same way.
Learn moreTax Strategy & Preparation
Proactive tax planning and in-house preparation to optimize after-tax returns and minimize lifetime tax liabilities.
Learn moreBelmont, MA
Questions from Belmont families
Should we prioritize college or retirement?
Both, in a deliberate order rather than by instinct. Retirement saving has the longer runway and cannot be borrowed for; education can be funded from several sources with quite different tax consequences. We model the two together against your intended retirement date, which usually shows there is more room than it feels like there is.Do Belmont families face Massachusetts estate tax?
Frequently, yes. Massachusetts taxes estates above $2 million, well below the federal exemption. A Belmont home held for decades, combined with retirement accounts, often clears that threshold — and most families only learn this when an estate review surfaces it.How far is your office from Belmont?
About twenty minutes, at 801 Main Street in Concord center. We also have an office at 55 Union Street in Boston, and we work by secure video for anyone who prefers it.
Belmont, Massachusetts
Fifteen minutes of conversation beats an hour of reading.
Schedule a time to discuss whether our approach is the right fit for you.