Frequently Asked Questions

Our family is from a small village in the far northern reaches of Italy in Piemonte called Toceno in the Val Vigezzo (also known as the Valley of the Painters). There is a local nursery rhyme that Damian's great-grandpa used to sing to him while riding on his knee that starts "trott, trott, cavalot, porta pan in cima al mott..." (Trot trot horsey, bring the bread to the top of the mountain...) The song always stuck as a reminder of the man that forged his own path at a young age to a new place where he didn't speak the language or know anyone - in search of something better.

In life we get to decide what is important to us, what we want to achieve and which hill we are going to climb to get there. Some routes take longer than others, and there will surely be challenges, failures and wins along the way. But whatever path you choose, Cavalot is a reminder to have the courage to follow your dreams and heart as you make your way to the top. You never know what you might find up there.

While not as common as it used to be, financial advisors in the past were often paid on commission for the sale of products. This created a potential conflict of interest where clients were sold investments to make money rather than because it was in the their best interest. Fee-only changes that. By paying a fee for service, it aligns the client with the advisor so that the client's best interests always come first. Learn more here.

While wealth is generated in many different ways including business ownership, inheritance, prudent investing and many other avenues, we have found that there are 3 core principles to manage it.

1. Financial Planning to Allocate Wealth
2. Investing to Grow Wealth, and
3. Tax Planning to Keep Wealth

No. While many of our clients do share one or more of these characteristics, it is not a prerequisite to engage our services. If you are looking for someone to help you solve any type of financial issue we would be glad to meet and see if we can be of help. If not, we have an extensive network of financial professionals that we would be happy to refer you to.

We have two physical locations in California: Truckee and Redding. We also operate virtually which enables us to take clients from around the country regardless of their location. Meetings are held either in-person, via web conference or phone depending on your preference.

We can only manage accounts that are held outside of your workplace - IRAs including Traditional, Roth, SEP, SIMPLE. Taxable accounts including individual, joint or trusts and custodial accounts (UGMA, UTMA) and a few other less common options. 

We are unable to manage any investments in a qualified plan, meaning no 401k, 403b, 457, ESOP, etc. We can however offer advice and recommendations on these accounts in our financial planning services, see the above graphic for more information.

We break down our asset management into two broad buckets - traditional and cryptoassets.

Traditional can be further broken down into our customized portfolios that include individual stocks and ETFS and our robo-advisor offering which consists of ETFs only. Find details and pricing for each on our Investment Management page here. We custody all traditional accounts at Schwab.

Cryptoassets are a separate asset class and service from our traditional asset management. Cryptocurrency and token investments are not for everyone and present their own risks and challenges, we require all clients interested in this option to undergo an extensive suitability questionnaire to ensure they are appropriate for their situation. Our digital asset portfolios consist of individual, direct cryptocurrency and token holdings and are custodied at Gemini Institutional. For more information please see our Cryptoassets page here.