When Wealth Outgrows Advice: The Cost of Uncoordinated Decision-Making

Season Two, Episode One

In this opening episode of Season Two, Penny DiGiovanna explores how modern wealth builders can move beyond traditional financial planning toward a more integrated, design-driven approach to managing complexity.

As wealth grows, decision-making shifts. The challenge is no longer individual recommendations, but how strategy, advisors, businesses, real estate, and multiple entities fit together. This episode introduces the concept of wealth architecture — a framework designed for complex financial lives that require coordination, integration, and intentional design.

Rather than addressing finances in isolation, wealth architecture focuses on structure, sequencing, and judgment across the full financial landscape. Penny explains how a Virtual Family Office lens supports clearer decision-making for families and individuals navigating multiple advisors, entities, and long-term priorities.

Season Two of The Family Wealth Blueprint Podcast is designed to help listeners think more clearly about how wealth is structured, how decisions are coordinated, and how intentional design supports clarity over time for modern families with complex wealth.

If you’re a business owner, real estate investor, or family navigating increasing complexity — this episode offers a grounded perspective on what comes next, and why integration matters more than ever.

Hosted by Penny Di Giovanna, CFP®, CDFA®
Founder of Financial Planning By Design | Boutique Virtual Family Office

🔗 Learn more: www.financialplanningbydesign.com
📩 Questions or topic suggestions?

Email: penny@financialplanningbydesign.com

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Podcast Disclaimer:

This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as investment, legal, or tax advice. Opinions expressed are those of Penny Di Giovanna and do not constitute a recommendation to take any particular action. Financial Planning By Design is a registered investment advisor. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Penny and the firm are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. All investments involve risk, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Consult your financial, legal, or tax advisor before making any decisions.

Transcript

Speaker: 0:00

Welcome to the Family Wealth Blueprint Podcast, Season 2. This podcast is for modern wealth builders with complex financial lives who have outgrown traditional financial planning. The focus here is wealth architecture, how strategy, coordination, and intentional design come together through a virtual family office lens. Each episode explores how integrated decision making supports clarity, continuity, and long-term stewardship across a modern family's wealth. This is not about products or predictions. It's about structure, judgment, and designing wealth with intention. Here's Penny D. Giovanna, founder of Financial Planning by Design. Let's begin.

Speaker 1: 0:43

Hi, this is Penny D. Giovanna from Financial Planning by Design, and this is the Family Wealth Blueprint Podcast. We're really glad you joined us today. Today's episode, we're going to talk about what happens when wealth outgrows advice and the cost of uncoordinated decision making. I've seen this over and over again, and when wealth reaches a certain level of complexity, the problem isn't a lack of intelligence or effort or even having good professionals. The problem is typically uncoordinated advice. So today I'm going to talk about what actually breaks down as wealth grows more complex, especially for those families that have built wealth and real estate, have business interests, and multiple advisors, and why at that point advice alone is no longer enough. One of the common things families tell me is that they is not that they don't have advisors. They typically do. They usually have a CPA helping them. They may even have a financial advisor already. But what they don't have is coordination. They're getting guidance, but not clear direction. The opinions are not integrated. No one is holding the whole frame and looking at the big picture. So nothing is moving and nothing is coordinated. And that's where the problems quietly start to compound for families. Just this past weekend, I actually had a very relevant conversation to this topic, and it illustrates it really well. I was speaking with a lady whose family owned several rental properties. Real estate for them is a core part of their wealth. They're thoughtful, capable, and already working with some professionals. And she said something that I've heard and seen many times before. She said, We talk to our CPA and they tell us what to do. But then they say, but you should check with your attorney first. So they go to their attorney and they speak with their attorney and they also get advice and guidance, and they tell them, but you should confirm this with your CPA. And in the middle of that loop, nobody's actually taking responsibility for the whole picture. So what happens is the family ends up confused, frustrated. Everyone that they're speaking with is likely competent and well-intentioned, but no one is accountable for that integration piece. And that means the family's left carrying all the risk and trying to figure it out on their own. And why this happens really isn't particularly a failure of the professionals per se. It's more a failure of the structure. CPAs are trained to focus on tax, and attorneys are trained to focus on legal and legal risk. And then financial advisors are typically trained to focus on portfolios. So each role is actually scoped narrowly by design, but when the wealth becomes more complex, the gaps between those roles really become the problem. The decisions don't overlap, and then timing, which typically matters in these types of situations, doesn't get taken into account. And one move can affect five others. So you could see how that uncoordination really is a big effect on your wealth. Because without the coordination, families are they're forced into being that middleman, and then they're relying on information and trying to reconcile advice and trying to make those judgment calls as best they can, but they were never really meant to make them alone and in a siloed way like this. And then real estate and operating assets really make this breakdown even more pronounced because real estate isn't just an investment, it's more like an operating system. It involves a lot of moving parts like entities, leverage, liquidity and cash flow planning, risk exposure. Sometimes there's multiple state tax considerations involved, there's things like capital decisions, and we often also see family dynamics and or partnerships involved. And yet, as important and dynamic as real estate is in a portfolio, we often see this living outside of the actual financial planning conversation. It's typically treated as something separate and off to the side. And when that happens, families make decisions in pieces instead of in flow and in coordination. That's not just inefficient, it can also be a dangerous place to be because what's left uncoordinated is often where the greatest risk actually lives. So this is the point where families don't need more advice. They actually need what we call architecture. They need someone whose role is to hold the full system, to integrate the tax advice from the CPA, the legal advice from the attorneys, the real estate, the investments, and cash flow into one coherent strategy and structure. And that's where the concept of the virtual family office comes in. Not as a product, but more as a function. It provides integration, wealth architecture, and a central point of clarity. Creating one strategy with one coordinating lens and one place where decisions are evaluated in context, not in isolation. As we know, modern wealth is rarely simple because it's often built on things like income, opportunities, real estate, businesses, and evolving family goals. And modern wealth requires ongoing coordination, not one-time plans. It requires integration, not siloed advice. And it requires judgment, not just projections. And when advisors are working together within a shared framework like this, families can stop managing the professionals and start living their lives knowing that they have the wealth architecture and an integration plan in place. So if you've ever felt like you're the one that's connecting the dots between your advisors and your wealth has grown, but your financial life is really feeling fragmented. And you start to realize that spreadsheets and one-off PDFs really aren't enough anymore. That's usually a good signal that your wealth has outgrown traditional advice. And it's really not a problem to think about, but more like a transition. So as we close the Family Wealth Blueprint podcast, that's exactly what season two is about. It's about that transition. Not quick fixes, trends, or even tactics, but really how families navigate complexity, structured decision making, and move from that uncoordinated advice to intentional wealth architecture. Because complexity doesn't always mean that something's wrong, but it means the structure just needs to change with it. This is Penny di Giovanna signing off from season two, episode one. We look forward to having you join us next month on episode two, and we thank you for listening today.

Speaker: 11:35

Before we close, I want to share an important disclaimer. Financial Planning by Design LLC is a registered investment advisor in the state of Florida. The information shared in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered as investment, tax, or legal advice. While Penny D Giovana and Financial Planning by Design LLC share insights and strategies, Penny D Giovana is not an attorney or CPA and does not provide legal advice or tax guidance. The stories and examples we discuss combine both real and hypothetical situations, but any similarity to specific individuals, families, or circumstances is coincidental and unintentional. Please note that listening to this podcast does not create an advisory relationship between us. Remember that past performance doesn't guarantee future results, and all investments carry risk, including the potential loss of principal. For more detailed information about our services, please review our ADV Part 2A brochure on www.advisorinfo.sec.gov or reach out to Financial Planning by Design directly at financial planning by design.com.