Alterra Advisors

Website: https://alterraadvisors.com/
Follow:

Alterra Advisors Blogs

Alterra Advisors

Blog Authors

Grant Monson

Latest from Alterra Advisors

If you feel like the rules keep shifting under you, you’re not imagining it. Between 2025 and 2026, both the federal government and Washington State made significant changes to estate tax law, and in Washington’s case, the state raised rates and then partially reversed course a few months later. If your estate plan hasn’t been reviewed recently, it may be

…

​Ask most business owners how they picked their retirement plan, and you’ll usually hear some version of “our CPA set us up with a 401(k) a while back.” That’s not wrong, it’s just incomplete, and incomplete is often expensive.
When business owners aren’t optimizing the plans available to them, we’ve seen it cost them anywhere from $50,000 to $200,000+ a

…

If you plan to close the doors the day you’re done running this business, you can skip this one. But if you want it to keep going, a small handful of people probably matter more than the rest of your org chart combined. The question is whether your compensation and protection planning reflects that, or whether your key people get

…

Going into this project, I expected to write a story about loss.
When you’ve spent fifteen, twenty, or thirty years building a business, the assumption is that selling will hit hard. You lose the identity, the adrenaline, and the daily rhythm all at once. I thought I’d be hearing from founders about how they grieved their companies.
That’s not what

…

Many families we talk to are already generous. They give consistently. They support causes they care about. And if anything, they wish they could do more.
But when you sell an investment before giving, wait too long to plan around a major event, or rely on cash instead of more efficient assets, something unintended happens:
Taxes become one of the

…

At Alterra Advisors, we believe that great outcomes for our clients begin with a great experience for our team.
Each year, Inc. recognizes organizations that create exceptional workplaces by putting people, purpose, and culture at the center of their business. Through an independent employee survey, team members share their perspectives on leadership, engagement, communication, benefits, growth opportunities, and overall workplace

…

If you’re retired, market volatility does not feel like an opportunity. It feels like something to avoid.
You’ve spent decades building your wealth. Now that it is supporting your lifestyle, it’s no longer just about growth. It’s about stability, income, and feeling confident about the future.
As we discuss in Understanding Volatility in Retirement, you can effectively plan for

…

If you are like many business owners with a company you love, your business is strong and you still enjoy what you’ve built. You are not looking to sell. But as time goes on, you begin to ask a new question: how do I create more freedom without giving up my life’s work?
More time with family. More flexibility in

…

If you are a solo business owner, you probably don’t have a large team or a board room full of partners. It’s just you driving everything forward, and many solopreneurs love that independence. It’s part of what makes the business work. But it also creates a challenge when you begin thinking about the future.
There is no obvious transition path.No

…