Looking for a Financial Advisor for the LGBTQIA Community?

A financial advisor specializing in serving the LGBTQIA community can help you achieve your financial goals with a personalized plan.

No matter your sexual orientation or gender identity, planning for your financial future can feel intimidating and leave you wondering if you’re making smart moves with your money. As a member of the LGBTQIA community, your legal protections and benefits can vary by state, creating additional obstacles to overcome on your journey to financial independence.

Rather than navigating this patchwork of laws and their finances on their own, many LGBTQIA community members are turning to financial advisors within the community who know the legal landscape and understand firsthand these and other common challenges that can make planning for your financial future more complicated.

If you decide not to tackle your finances on your own, you’ll likely find dozens of nearby financial advisors well-suited to help you reach your money goals with a personalized plan. But it may be more difficult to find a financial advisor who specializes in serving the LGBTQIA community.

Fortunately, many financial advisors offer virtual services so you can meet online no matter where you (or they) live. This means you can choose to hire a specialist financial advisor who lives hundreds of miles away if you decide their own knowledge and experience as a member of the LGBTQIA community is a better fit to help with your unique financial planning needs.

Financial Advisors for the LGBTQIA Community

💡 In the Q&A below, you’ll gain insights from financial advisors who specialize in financial planning for the LGBTQIA community and who help their clients make smart decisions to enjoy life more today while preparing for a comfortable retirement in the future.

🙋‍♀️ Do you have questions not answered below? Use the form on this page to submit your questions, and we’ll update this article with answers from the financial professionals and educators in the Wealthtender community. You can also contact the financial advisors featured in this article directly to set up an introductory call or ask your questions by email.

💸 Smart Money Insights for the LGBTQIA Community

This page is organized into sections to help you quickly find the information you need and get answers to your questions:

1. Q&A with Financial Advisors Specializing in Serving the LGBTQIA Community
2. Get Answers to Your Questions About Financial Planning for the LGBTQIA Community
3. Browse Related Articles

Q&A: Financial Advisors Specializing in Serving the LGBTQIA Community

Three Questions with Michael Raimondi

We asked New York City-based financial advisor Michael Raimondi to answer three questions useful to LGBTQIA community members interested in enjoying their lives with less money stress.

Q: As a financial advisor who specializes in serving the LGBTQIA community, what unique challenges do your clients often encounter, and how do you help?

Michael: One of the most daunting challenges the LGBTQIA community faces is finding a professional with whom they can talk to openly about their finances and who understands their lives. Financial services is a notoriously heteronormative industry. The last thing a client wants to be concerned about is being judged for who they are by their financial professional. Having a shared, lived experience with my LGBTQIA clients allows us to focus on the financial planning at hand without them needing to explain the rationale behind their decisions.

A lesson my community has learned over time is that we need to become experts at everything. If we want something, we have to figure out how to make it happen on our own because history has proven to us that sufficient support from other sources is rare, if it exists at all.

When it comes to financial planning and investing, the learning curve is often too steep for an LGBTQIA professional to try to master while simultaneously developing their career in another industry. The need for comprehensive financial planning services within the LGBTQIA+ community is clear. Our circumstances are sometimes complex and therefore require a patient professional with an expert team who engages with us in a highly collaborative process.

Transparency, communication, and financial education are paramount to a successful working relationship with any client, especially LGBTQIA clients.

Q: For LGBTQIA preparing to get married or start a family, what are the most important financial planning considerations?

Michael: In addition to all of the traditional financial planning considerations (building a sufficient emergency fund, having a clear picture of their income and expenses, assets and liabilities, defining goals and timeframes, etc.), parts of the financial planning process that are often overlooked for LGBTQIA clients are estate planning and risk management.

In both of these instances, it is prudent and necessary to ensure that each future spouse or future parent has sufficient safeguards in place to protect their loved ones in the event of an unexpected death or disability.

It is imperative that a comprehensive financial plan includes preparation for a possible long-term care event. In its simplest form, estate planning needs should ensure beneficiaries and contingent beneficiaries are identified. A financial planner should work alongside an estate planning attorney to ensure the most efficient types of trusts are established and funded appropriately to realize the grantor’s wishes; as well as in collaboration with a client’s accountant to make sure an estate plan operates with optimal tax efficiency.

Essentially, it’s not that anything should be done differently for LGBTQIA couples preparing to get married or start a family, but that nothing should be left out or disregarded because of a client’s gender identity or sexual orientation. Dismissing an LGBTQIA client’s needs because of biased assumptions is not only poor planning but also blatant discrimination. 

Get to Know Michael Raimondi, Financial Advisor for the LGBTQIA Community:

View Michael’s profile page on Wealthtender or visit his website to learn more.

Q: For your LGBTQIA clients, along with their families and friends, who want their investment portfolios to reflect their support of the LGBTQIA community, how do you recommend they proceed?

Michael: This is a question that I love because there is much more than meets the eye when it comes to the ‘S’ in ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) investing. I have found that LGBTQIA investors tend to be more conscientious of the impact their investments are having in the world, especially the impact on their own community.

A fund may be marketed as an ‘ESG friendly’ fund, but when you look under the hood, you may find that it has all the same holdings as other funds. Slapping a ‘socially responsible’ label on a fund is marketing, not impact investing. I have found that reliable research makes all the difference.

At Clarus Group, we use a platform called Ethos that prides itself on extensive, data-supported research for every stock or fund we could consider adding to a client’s portfolio. This includes data specific to how the holding scores on equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people.

Ethos is currently using 143,352 unique data points to rate companies, stocks, and funds on LGBTQIA equality, including Human Rights Campaign, Just Capital, DiversityInc, As You Sow, and Violation Tracker, to name a few.

When l build a portfolio for my LGBTQIA clients, it is a collaborative, engaging process. I analyze the financials of the portfolio through stress tests using various assumptions, seek true diversification that meets their required rate of return – just as I do for all my clients – but I take that extra step to consider how the causes they care about most and the community of which we are a part are impacted by the investments we select.

Even though one decision may seem like a small ripple in the water today, several ripples can quickly create a wave, and we can determine the impact it will have on our lives.

Resources to Help You Choose a Financial Advisor

✅ Top Questions to Ask a Financial Advisor

✅ How Much Does a Financial Advisor Cost?

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