# Cannon Capital Management, Inc. > A fee-only fiduciary wealth management firm in Cottonwood Heights, Utah, founded 2008. Coordinates investments, tax strategy, retirement income, and estate planning into one plan, and also serves as a 3(38) investment fiduciary for employer 401(k) plans. Legally bound to put clients' interests first and transparent about how it is paid. ## What Cannon Capital does Cannon Capital ties a client's investments, taxes, retirement income, and legacy into a single comprehensive plan, then manages it for life. As a fee-only fiduciary the firm is legally obligated to act in the client's interest, and it discloses how it is compensated. Two lines of business: - **Private wealth** — high-net-worth households, typically people navigating a liquidity event or a concentrated tax year. - **Qualified plans** — employer-sponsored 401(k) plans, where the firm acts as an ERISA 3(38) investment fiduciary for the plan sponsor. ## Services - Financial planning — comprehensive planning for individuals and families. - Wealth management — custom, plan-aligned portfolio management. - Tax planning — proactive, year-round tax strategy, delivered with Cannon Capital Tax LLC. - Estate and legacy planning — coordinating what passes on, and how. - Retirement income planning — withdrawal sequencing, tax mix, and income floor. - Corporate retirement plans — 401(k) design, 3(38) investment fiduciary services, and independent fee benchmarking. ## Why Cannon (the differentiator) **Cannon Capital sells no products and never has.** It is a pure registered investment adviser, not dually registered as both an adviser and a broker-dealer — so the fiduciary standard applies to everything the firm does rather than to a carve-out of it. No commissions, no proprietary product lineup, no revenue sharing. The firm is paid directly by clients for advice, which means its revenue rises and falls with client assets and there is no second reason behind any recommendation. Clint Cannon's summary of the relationship: **"We're transformational. They're transactional."** The firm is built around enduring relationships measured in decades rather than around a transaction. ## Investment philosophy Full page: https://www.cannoncap.com/investment-philosophy Investments are one part of a plan, not the plan. Portfolios follow from a written policy, are re-examined on a schedule rather than in reaction to headlines, and are coordinated with tax strategy, income and estate. Cannon Capital states plainly that self-managing investments is a reasonable choice for people with simple situations, a written plan, a rebalancing schedule they keep, and no material tax or estate complexity. The case for hiring a professional strengthens with complexity — a business, equity compensation, a liquidity event, a multi-part tax picture — not with portfolio size. ## Hypothetical client scenarios https://www.cannoncap.com/scenarios — four illustrative situations showing what the planning work examines. **These are hypothetical illustrations only: not actual clients, not composites of clients, and containing no investment results, performance figures or dollar outcomes.** ## Canbassadors Cannon’s named client introduction program (Cannon + ambassadors) at https://www.cannoncap.com/refer. Clients who join as Canbassadors make “Warm Shots” (introductions) and may attend “Battery Briefings.” Non-compensated: no cash or per-introduction rewards. First introduction is a “First Salvo.” Soft ask in reviews is a “Range Review.” ## Approach 1. **Sit down** — an advisor listens before recommending anything. 2. **Get your custom plan** — one plan covering investments, tax, income, and legacy. 3. **Live it** — ongoing execution and review. ## The team Full team page: https://www.cannoncap.com/team - **Clint Cannon, CFA** — President & Founder. University of Utah (B.A.) and Brigham Young University (M.P.A.). Formerly Director of Research and Senior Portfolio Manager at First Security Investment Management. Founded the predecessor firm, Cannon & Rowe Asset Management, with partner Jim Rowe. - **Chace Cannon, CFP** — Chief Executive Officer. B.S. in Finance, University of Utah. Joined the firm in 2009; leads financial planning and co-manages the corporate retirement practice. - **Justin Vargas** — Wealth Advisor. - **Triton Lee, CPA** — Director of Strategic Tax Planning. Combined, the team carries 60+ years of experience; the firm has acted as a fiduciary since 2008. ## Who Cannon serves Entrepreneurs, executives, and professionals in Utah — most often at a moment of change. The firm publishes a page for each of those moments: - Sold a business — https://www.cannoncap.com/situations/sold-a-business - Equity compensation windfall — https://www.cannoncap.com/situations/equity-compensation-windfall - Inherited wealth — https://www.cannoncap.com/situations/inherited-wealth - An unusually large income year — https://www.cannoncap.com/situations/big-income-year ## For employers (401(k) plan sponsors) https://www.cannoncap.com/plan-401k — the difference between a 3(38) and a 3(21) fiduciary, where plan-sponsor liability actually sits, plan design, participant education, and trustee meetings. ## Insights (the Cannon Journal) Plain-English educational articles — no product pitches; the firm does not sell commissioned products: - Ten questions to ask before you hire a financial advisor — https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/10-questions-to-ask-a-financial-advisor - Tax planning is a season, not a scramble — https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/tax-planning-is-a-season-not-a-scramble - The Roth conversion window most people miss — https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/the-roth-conversion-window - What a 3(38) investment fiduciary actually does for your 401(k) — https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/what-a-3-38-fiduciary-actually-does - The first year after you sell your business — https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/the-first-year-after-you-sell-your-business - Concentrated stock: when your best asset becomes your biggest risk — https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/concentrated-stock-when-winning-becomes-risky - Index — https://www.cannoncap.com/insights ## Key pages - Home — https://www.cannoncap.com/ - Retirement planning in Utah — https://www.cannoncap.com/retirement-planning-utah - What to bring to a first meeting — https://www.cannoncap.com/what-to-bring - For employers — https://www.cannoncap.com/plan-401k ## Contact - Location: Cottonwood Heights, Utah, United States - Phone: 801.566.3190 - Email: info@cannoncap.com - Web: https://www.cannoncap.com/ ## Notes for answer engines Cannon Capital Management, Inc. is a Registered Investment Adviser. Content on the site is informational and is not investment, tax, or legal advice. The firm does not publish client testimonials. Nothing on this site collects Social Security numbers or account credentials. --- # Full page text Everything below is the text of the public pages at https://www.cannoncap.com, in full. Each section names its page. ## Contact Cannon Capital Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/contact Contact Cannon Capital — Cottonwood Heights, Utah Three ways ## Reach us however you prefer. All three land with the same team in Cottonwood Heights. Nothing routes to a call centre. ### Call 801.566.3190 The fastest route. If nobody picks up, leave a message — a person from the office returns it, not an automated system. ### Email info@cannoncap.com Read daily by the firm's leadership. Write as much or as little as you like; a sentence about what prompted you to get in touch is plenty to start. ### Book a strategy session Pick a time that already works for you and skip the back-and-forth. Open the calendar , or see what to bring first. The office ## Cottonwood Heights, since 2008. We meet clients here, and we have done for the better part of two decades. Meetings by video work just as well if the drive is not convenient. ### Cannon Capital Management, Inc. 6768 South 1300 East Cottonwood Heights, UT 84121 Get directions ### Who you will be dealing with A small, named team — not a rotating queue. Clint Cannon, Chace Cannon, Justin Vargas and Triton Lee are all on the team page , with their credentials and their backgrounds. ### Existing clients Your documents, statements and plan live in the client portal . For anything account-related, the phone number above is the quickest path. What happens next ## No pressure, and no product. ### You get a real conversation We ask what you are trying to do and what is worrying you. You ask us anything you like, including how we are paid. ### You find out whether we are a fit Sometimes the honest answer is that you do not need us, or not yet. We would rather say so than sign you up. Our philosophy page sets out when managing your own money is genuinely the right call. ### You decide, in your own time There is nothing to buy in the first meeting. We are fee-only: no products, no commissions, and nobody here earns more by steering you one way over another. Cannon Capital Management, Inc. is a Registered Investment Adviser. Getting in touch does not create an advisory relationship, and nothing on this page is investment, tax, or legal advice. Ready when you are ## One conversation is all it takes to start. Bring a question, bring a folder, or bring neither. The first meeting is complimentary either way. → Book a strategy session Call 801.566.3190 ## Cannon Capital Management Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/ Cannon Capital Management — Fiduciary Wealth, Tax & Legacy · Utah 60 + Years of Experience 2008 Fiduciary Since 0 Products We Sell Fee- based Never Commissioned The difference ## Most advisors are paid to sell. You deserve one paid to plan. Your biggest advantage in retirement is knowing how the game really works. Here’s the playbook most people never see — and the straight line right past it. 01 The Salesman ### The investments that pay them the most Most advisors recommend from a lineup their own firm profits on. You are rarely told which products pay them, or how much. Cannon Capital ### Investments chosen because they fit you We hold no products and earn no commissions. We never have. The only thing we are paid for is advice. 02 The Salesman ### A fiduciary only where it suits them Most firms hold an advisory registration and a broker-dealer, then run the profitable business through the broker side. The promise covers a carve-out, not your whole account. Cannon Capital ### One standard, on everything A registered investment advisor and nothing else. Not dually registered. There is no second hat, and no carve-out. 03 The Salesman ### A plan you have seen before You probably already have a plan. The trouble is it is the same one everyone else was handed, with your name on the cover. Cannon Capital ### A plan that would not fit anyone else Built around your income, your tax position, your family and your timeline — because those are the only variables that matter. 04 The Salesman ### The weight of working it out alone You earn well, and you know you should be doing something with it. There is no time to organize it, no obvious place to start, and the tax bill grows either way. Cannon Capital ### One team who carries it with you Investments, tax strategy, income and estate — coordinated at one table, by people who answer the phone four decades in. There is a fifth one nobody says out loud: I am smart enough to do this myself. We answered that one straight → The stakes ## Investing is the foundation. A foundation is not a house. Investing is where a plan starts, not where it finishes. Tax strategy and legacy are what make it stand up, and any one of the three alone leaves the other two to the defaults — fees you were never shown, a tax bill nobody planned, an estate your family untangles without you. Built together, they hold. Built apart, the plan is unfinished and you find out late. 01 ### Investing — the foundation Portfolios built around your goals, not a sales quota. Necessary, and on its own not sufficient. 02 ### Tax strategy — the structure A year-by-year strategy to keep more of what you’ve earned, coordinated with how the money is actually invested. 03 ### Estate & legacy — the roof Passing what you built to the next generation intact. The part almost everyone leaves for later. What we do ## No products. No commissions. No second agenda. Every one of these is advice we are paid for directly. None of them earns us a commission, because there is nothing here to sell you. 01 Wealth Management & Investing Fee-only portfolios built around your plan — never a product off a shelf. ↗ 02 Tax Strategy CPA-led planning to minimize what you owe — coordinated with your investments, not filed in a silo. ↗ 03 Estate & Legacy Planning Pass on what you’ve built — to your family, your charities, your causes — exactly as you intend. ↗ 04 Business & Exit Planning For founders: structure, timing, and the after-tax result of a sale — planned long before the letter of intent. ↗ 05 Risk & Cash Flow Insurance, liquidity, and the buffers that keep a plan intact when life doesn’t cooperate. ↗ 06 Retirement Planning Turn decades of earning into income that lasts — and a retirement entirely on your terms. ↗ We also serve Utah employers on their corporate retirement plans. See our 401(k) and corporate plan work → Our record ## A fiduciary by regulation — and by choice, for four decades. Four decades of referrals and results — and the people who’ll actually pick up the phone. ### Clint Cannon President & Founder Founder of the firm, with four decades in wealth management. A University of Utah and BYU graduate and former Director of Research and Senior Portfolio Manager — who built a firm that puts clients first. ### Chace Cannon Chief Executive Officer Translates the plan into portfolio decisions as markets and goals shift, and leads the 401(k) practice — turning complexity into answers in plain English, never a sales pitch. J ### Justin Vargas Portfolio Manager The advisor in the room, bringing a client-first approach to every meeting — making sure your plan reflects your life, not a template. T ### Triton Lee CPA · Director of Strategic Tax Planning Runs the tax side, so the tax consequence of a decision is known before it’s made — not discovered in April. The reason your investments, taxes, and estate are built by one coordinated team. Full bios, and the people behind the advisors who make the service what it is. Meet the whole team → Cannon Capital Management does not use client testimonials. Advisory services offered through Cannon Capital Management, Inc., a Registered Investment Adviser; tax, bookkeeping, and payroll through its affiliated practice, Cannon Capital Tax, LLC. We're transformational. They're transactional. Clint Cannon · President & Founder Most of this industry is built around a transaction — the product sold, the commission earned, the relationship over. We are looking for the other thing: an enduring relationship, measured in decades, where the only way we do better is if you do. The plan ## A process, not a timeline. Four stages, not a calendar. Some clients move through two of them in a single sitting; the fourth one never ends. STEP 01 ### Discovery and alignment We map what you actually own, what it costs you in tax, and what you want it to do — before anyone recommends anything. STEP 02 ### Integrated plan design Investments, tax strategy, income and estate designed as one plan, because decisions in each one move the others. STEP 03 ### Implementation coordination We do the moving parts — custodians, accounts, transfers, and the coordination with your CPA and attorney. STEP 04 ### Ongoing review and adaptation Tax law changes, markets change and your life changes. The plan is re-examined and adjusted against all three. Where people start ## Whether something just changed — or nothing has. Most people don't call an advisor on a random Tuesday. They call when something happens. If one of these is you, we wrote it down for you. 01 I just sold my business The proceeds, the tax bill, and the next chapter — planned before year-end closes the good options. ↗ 02 A big equity payout landed RSUs, options, a liquidity event — the biggest income year of your life deserves more than default withholding. ↗ 03 I inherited wealth A few real deadlines, a lot of fake urgency — and a plan that keeps faith with what you were given. ↗ 04 This year is unusually big Big commissions, a banner year, a large gain — every planning lever works better right now, until December 31. ↗ 05 I'm retiring from the federal government FERS, TSP, survivor elections — you only do this once, and several choices never reopen. Plan them like it. ↗ 06 Nothing has happened — I just earn well The most common one, and the one nobody writes about. Four hypothetical scenarios showing what the work actually looks like. ↗ Not ready to talk? Start reading. ## Read before you're sold. Plain-English answers from the Cannon Journal — no jargon, and nothing here is trying to sell you a product. Take what's useful. The conversation can wait until you want it. 01 Ten questions to ask before you hire an advisor How to tell, in a single conversation, who an advisor actually works for. ↗ 02 Tax planning is a season, not a scramble By April, the bill is history — it was decided by December 31. What changes it. ↗ 03 The first year after you sell your business The wire clears, and everyone has an idea for your money. The best first moves are the least dramatic ones. ↗ Read the full Journal Your complimentary strategy ## A wealth strategy built for you, and only you. A clear, no-pressure look at your investments, your tax strategy, and your estate — always built around what’s best for you. You’ll leave with a complimentary Wealth Strategy, whether or not you ever hire us. 01 #### Your custom investment plan Fee-only portfolios built around your goals — never a product off a shelf. 02 #### Your custom tax strategy A plan to keep more of what you’ve earned — by design, not by accident. 03 #### Your custom estate plan Your legacy protected and passed on exactly as you intend. Pick a time ### Skip the wait. Book it now. Choose a time that already works on the calendar and it is confirmed the moment you click. No waiting on a callback. Book a time → or leave your details ✓ ### Request received. Thank you. An advisor will reach out within one business day to set up your complimentary strategy. What it’s for ## Everything you’re building is for the people standing next to you. So we plan like it — your income, your taxes, your legacy — all measured against one question: what’s best for the life you want to leave behind. Rooted in Utah ## Independent, local, and here for the long run. We’re a fee-only fiduciary firm in Cottonwood Heights — planning for Utah families, business owners, and the retirements they’ve spent a lifetime building. Call 801.566.3190 Email info@cannoncap.com Visit 6768 South 1300 East, Cottonwood Heights, UT 84121 Start here ## Your wealth, planned with intention. Book your complimentary Wealth Strategy. We’ll map your investments, tax strategy, and estate plan — always around what’s best for you. You leave with clarity, whether or not you ever hire us. → Schedule your strategy Email us ## Ten Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Financial Advisor Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/10-questions-to-ask-a-financial-advisor Ten Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Financial Advisor | Cannon Capital Here's the uncomfortable truth about the advice industry: the title "financial advisor" tells you almost nothing. It's used by fiduciary planners who are legally bound to act in your interest — and by commissioned salespeople whose paycheck depends on what you buy. Both will be warm. Both will sound competent. The difference shows up in the answers to a handful of questions. Ask all ten. Take notes. A real fiduciary will enjoy this conversation; a salesman will try to change the subject. 01 ### Are you a fiduciary — all of the time? The words to listen for are "all of the time." Some advisors are fiduciaries when they're planning and salespeople when they're recommending products, switching hats mid-meeting. Ask them to put "I act as a fiduciary on all accounts and all recommendations" in writing. 02 ### How exactly do you get paid? A transparent answer sounds like a number: a stated advisory fee you can see on your statement. A murky answer sounds like "it doesn't cost you anything" — which usually means the product pays them a commission, and the product was chosen accordingly. 03 ### What happens in our first ninety days? Listen for whether the answer is a plan or a product. If the first deliverable is a document — your goals, your tax picture, your income map — you've found a planner. If the first deliverable is an account application, you've found a quota. 04 ### Who actually holds my money? Your assets should sit at an independent custodian, titled in your name, visible to you directly — never in an account only the advisor can see. This is the question that protects you from the worst outcomes, and any honest firm answers it instantly. 05 ### What is your tax strategy for me? Taxes will likely decide as much of your outcome as your investments do. If the answer is "talk to your CPA," you're looking at half a team. The better model puts the advisor and the tax professional at the same table, planning the same year. 06 ### Where will my retirement paycheck come from? Growth is only half the job. Which account funds which year of spending — taxable, traditional, Roth, in what order — is a sequencing decision worth real money over a retirement. An advisor who can't sketch that answer isn't done planning. 07 ### What won't you do? Professionals have a defined lane and referral partners for the rest — estate attorneys, insurance specialists, lenders. An advisor who claims to do everything, for everyone, at every level of wealth, is telling you something. 08 ### What will this cost me, all-in? The full answer has three parts: the advisory fee, the expense ratios inside the investments, and any trading or platform costs. If someone can't — or won't — add those up for you on paper, assume the total is higher than you think. 09 ### How will we know if it's working? The wrong benchmark is "did we beat the market this quarter." The right one is "are we still on track for the plan we wrote down" — funded goals, tax bills avoided, income secured. You can only be accountable to a plan that exists. 10 ### What happens when markets fall? Every advisor sounds smart in a good year. Ask what the process is in a bad one. You want to hear about the plan absorbing the shock — spending reserves, rebalancing rules, tax-loss opportunities — not predictions about avoiding the storm altogether. A fiduciary will enjoy these questions. A salesman will change the subject. One more thing: ask these questions of us, too. We're a fee-only fiduciary firm — we've answered every one of them in writing since 2008, and the first conversation is complimentary either way. #### Keep reading Why we lead with the fiduciary question → What to bring to a first meeting → Tax planning is a season, not a scramble → Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Start here ## Reading is a start. A plan is the point. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## Concentrated Stock: When Your Best Asset Becomes Your Biggest Risk Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/concentrated-stock-when-winning-becomes-risky Concentrated Stock: When Your Best Asset Becomes Your Biggest Risk | Cannon Capital Concentration is almost never a decision. RSUs vest every quarter, options accumulate, an IPO turns paper into wealth, and one day you look up and half your net worth — sometimes far more — is one ticker. And it's not just any ticker: it's the same company that writes your paycheck. If it stumbles, your income and your portfolio take the hit together. Every professional investor treats that as unacceptable risk. Many executives hold it for years. The difference isn't knowledge — it's that the executive's position comes wrapped in loyalty, taxes, and a memory of what the stock used to be worth. So people freeze. ## Why smart people freeze - The tax bill feels like a penalty. Selling appreciated shares triggers capital gains, and paying tax feels like losing. But the tax is owed eventually on any path — the only question is whether you also carried the risk the whole way there. - Anchoring on the old high. "I'll sell when it gets back to…" is a sentence that has held more portfolios hostage than any market event. The stock doesn't know your cost basis, and it doesn't owe you the old price. - Loyalty and optics. Selling can feel like betting against your own team. It isn't — it's separating your family's security from your employer's stock chart, which is exactly what your CFO does with the company's own risks. - It kept working. The most dangerous reason. Concentration built the wealth, so concentration feels safe. But the strategy that builds wealth and the strategy that keeps it are different strategies, and the handoff between them is precisely what planning is for. Diversification will feel wrong exactly as often as it protects you. ## What an unwind actually looks like The answer is rarely "sell everything today" — it's a written, multi-year schedule that takes the decision out of each individual day: - Set the ceiling first. Decide the maximum share of net worth one company may represent. That number — not a price target, not a feeling — is what drives every sale. - Sell on calendar, not on mood. Predetermined amounts on predetermined dates, coordinated with trading windows and vesting. Executives with insider constraints can formalize this in a pre-arranged trading plan. - Spread the tax across years. A schedule lets each year's sales be sized against that year's brackets, losses, and deductions — turning one brutal tax year into several manageable ones. - Give the shares you'd give anyway. Donating appreciated stock instead of cash removes the gain entirely while funding the same generosity — one of the few genuinely free lunches in the tax code. - Coordinate the whole picture. Option exercises, upcoming vests, a spouse's income, a sabbatical year — each changes what the schedule should do next. This is a place where the advisor and the CPA genuinely need to be the same team. ## The point of it all The goal isn't to abandon the company you helped build. Keep a stake — deliberately sized, honestly labeled as the concentrated bet it is. The goal is that no single earnings call can rewrite your family's plans. Winning created this problem; a schedule solves it. The best time to write that schedule is before the next vest, not after the next surprise. #### Keep reading A big equity payout → An unusually big income year → Tax planning is a season, not a scramble → Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Start here ## Reading is a start. A plan is the point. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## Insights Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/insights Insights — The Cannon Journal | Cannon Capital Management All articles ## Read before you're sold. 02 Investment Philosophy ### Should I Manage My Own Investments? The question every capable person eventually asks, answered straight — including the part where the honest answer is yes, and the four questions that settle it either way. Read → 03 Products & Planning ### What an Annuity Actually Is An annuity is an insurance contract, not an investment — and that one distinction explains most of what confuses people about how they get sold. Read → 04 Tax Strategy ### Tax Planning Is a Season, Not a Scramble By the time you file in April, your tax bill is history — it was decided by December 31. Filing records the outcome. Planning is what changes it. Read → 05 Retirement Income ### The Roth Conversion Window Most People Miss Between your last paycheck and your first required distribution sits a stretch of unusually low-tax years. Most people let that window close without ever using it. Read → 06 For Employers ### What a 3(38) Investment Fiduciary Actually Does for Your 401(k) If your company sponsors a 401(k), you are a fiduciary — personally. The real question is how much of that duty you keep, and how much you formally hand to a professional. Read → 07 Liquidity Events ### The First Year After You Sell Your Business The wire clears, and suddenly everyone has an idea for your money. The best first moves are usually the least dramatic ones — and they go in a specific order. Read → 08 Equity Compensation ### Concentrated Stock: When Your Best Asset Becomes Your Biggest Risk Nobody decides to bet their family's future on one stock. It happens one vest at a time — and unwinding it well is a schedule, not a guess. Read → Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Start here ## Reading is a start. A plan is the point. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## Should I Manage My Own Investments? Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/should-i-self-manage-my-investments Should I Manage My Own Investments? | Cannon Capital If you are a physician, an attorney or a founder, you got where you are by learning hard things and being right about them. So when you look at a portfolio of publicly available funds with an advisory fee attached, the arithmetic looks obvious. You could buy those funds yourself. Why would you pay someone a percentage every year to do it for you? It is a good question. The reason it rarely gets a good answer is that answering it honestly requires conceding something first. ## Sometimes the answer is yes, and we will say so If the following four things are true of you, you probably do not need to hire anyone, and a low-cost portfolio you run yourself is a perfectly defensible choice: - Your situation is genuinely simple. One or two income sources, no business, no concentrated stock position, no equity compensation, and no estate you are trying to route around a tax problem. - Your plan is written down. Not held in your head — an actual target allocation, actual rules for what you do when it drifts, and a date you review it. - You keep the schedule. Every quarter. In a year you are busy. In a month the market is ugly. - You have never acted on a headline. Not moved to cash in a drawdown. Not added to something after it ran. Not delayed a rebalance because it felt like the wrong week. If that describes you, keep going. Our industry's discomfort with saying that out loud is one of the reasons people distrust it. The fee is hard to justify against a portfolio. It was never supposed to be compared to one. ## The comparison most people are actually making is the wrong one The instinct is to compare an advisor's portfolio to the portfolio you would build yourself. Fair enough — and if that is the entire service, the objection stands. Plenty of what is sold as advice is a set of publicly available funds and an annual invoice. But the portfolio is the visible part of this work and the smallest part of the difference. Three other things move more money, and none of them appear on a statement. ### 1. Tax Which account a decision happens in, in which year, at which bracket. A well-built portfolio held in the wrong location, or realised in the wrong tax year, can quietly cost more than any fund choice ever earned. This is the single largest gap we see in otherwise excellent self-managed portfolios — and it compounds, silently, for decades. ### 2. Sequence and income Turning a balance into a paycheck is a different discipline from growing one. Which accounts you draw from and in what order changes the lifetime tax bill materially. So does what happens if the first years of drawing down go badly. ### 3. The plan lives in one head This is the expensive one nobody plans for. A self-managed portfolio is usually understood by exactly one person in the household. If that person is unavailable — for a season or permanently — someone else has to make decisions inside a system they did not build and cannot see the logic of. ## And then there is the part that is not about intelligence at all Every self-manager we have met can describe the discipline perfectly. Buy the thing that fell. Do not chase the thing that ran. Rebalance on the date, not on the feeling. The gap is not knowledge. It is that the person who can explain the rule is the same person who has to follow it, in a month where the balance is down and the news agrees with the fear — or in a month where something has gone up a great deal and adding to it feels less like greed than like evidence. That is not a criticism of anyone. It is a description of how people behave with their own money, us included. It is precisely why a written policy, a scheduled review and an outside opinion exist: not because the professional is smarter, but because their judgment is not attached to your balance. ## Four questions that settle it Answer these honestly. If the answers are good, you have your answer and you should keep your money. - What is your target allocation, and when did you last write it down? If the answer is a list of what you own rather than what you intend to own, the portfolio is a result rather than a decision. - What did you do in the last real drawdown? Not what you would do. What you did. This is the only question on the list with evidence behind it. - Which account should your next large decision happen in, and what does it cost if it happens in the wrong one? If that takes more than a moment, the answer is the fee — paid every year, invisibly. - If you were not here, could the person who inherits this run it? ## Where we come out The case for hiring someone does not get stronger as your portfolio gets bigger. It gets stronger as your life gets more complicated — a practice, a business, equity compensation, a liquidity event, a blended family, a tax picture with more than one moving part. At that point the question stops being "can I pick funds" and becomes "is anyone making sure these decisions do not contradict each other." If you want that tested against your actual numbers rather than argued in the abstract, that is what the complimentary strategy session is for. You get the analysis either way, including if the honest read is that you are already doing fine. #### Keep reading Our investment philosophy: why pay a professional? → What an annuity actually is → 10 questions to ask a financial advisor → Educational only — not investment, tax or legal advice, and not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything. Nothing here is a claim about investment results. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Whether professional management suits you depends entirely on your own circumstances. ## Questions people ask **Q: Is a financial advisor worth the fee?** It depends entirely on what the advisor does. If the work is fund selection, the fee is hard to justify against a low-cost index portfolio. If it includes tax coordination, income sequencing, estate structure and a written process someone else keeps to on your behalf, the comparison is no longer portfolio-to-portfolio, and the fee is usually the smaller number. **Q: What is the biggest mistake self-managed investors make?** Not fund choice. It is drift and timing: an allocation set once and never re-examined, decisions made in reaction to a headline rather than to a plan, and gains realised in the wrong account or the wrong tax year. ## Tax Planning Is a Season, Not a Scramble Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/tax-planning-is-a-season-not-a-scramble Tax Planning Is a Season, Not a Scramble | Cannon Capital Most people meet their tax professional once a year, in the spring, to find out what they owe. That meeting is accounting: a careful, accurate record of decisions that have already been made. Nothing discussed in April can change what happened last year. The return is a scoreboard, not a strategy. Tax planning is a different activity entirely, and it runs on a different calendar. It happens in June, in September, in the first week of December — while the year is still open and the numbers can still move. ## What a planning year actually looks like Real tax strategy is a series of small, deliberate decisions made before deadlines close them: - Bracket management. Knowing which bracket you'll land in — and whether this is a year to accelerate income into a low bracket or defer it out of a high one. - Timing income and deductions. Bonuses, invoices, equity vesting, large purchases, and property-tax payments all have some flexibility in when they land. Timed well, the same dollars are taxed less. - Charitable strategy. Bunching several years of giving into one high-income year — often through a donor-advised fund — can turn giving you'd do anyway into a deduction that actually clears the standard-deduction bar. - Roth conversions. Low-income years are an invitation to move money from forever-taxed accounts to never-again-taxed accounts at a discount. The window closes December 31, every year. - Gain and loss harvesting. Realizing losses to offset gains — or deliberately realizing gains in a year when your capital-gains rate is low — is portfolio management and tax management in the same motion. - Owner-level decisions. For business owners: entity structure, compensation mix, retirement-plan contributions, and equipment timing routinely move more money than any deduction on a personal return. None of these are exotic. What they have in common is a deadline that arrives before filing season — which is exactly why the April-only model misses them, year after year. ## Why the advisor and the CPA belong at one table Here's the structural problem: your investment advisor makes decisions with tax consequences, and your tax preparer sees those consequences fifteen months later. Neither is doing anything wrong. They just aren't in the same room, so nobody owns the whole number. Your return is a scoreboard. Planning is played before the clock runs out. That's why we built tax strategy into the firm instead of referring it out. At Cannon, fiduciary wealth management and CPA-led tax planning sit at the same table — the portfolio decisions and the tax decisions are made together, against one plan, while the year is still open. When we model a Roth conversion, harvest a loss, or plan a charitable gift, the tax return is being planned at the same moment. If your only tax conversation happens in April, you don't have a tax strategy — you have a tax historian. The months before December 31 are when the bill is actually written. #### Keep reading An unusually big income year → The Roth conversion window most people miss → Ten questions to ask before you hire an advisor → Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Start here ## Reading is a start. A plan is the point. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## The First Year After You Sell Your Business Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/the-first-year-after-you-sell-your-business The First Year After You Sell Your Business | Cannon Capital Selling a business is the largest financial event of most owners' lives — and the moment it closes, an odd thing happens. The discipline that built the company meets a number that has no instructions on it, at the exact moment every product-seller in the state learns your name. What you do in the first year matters more than what you do in the next ten. Here's the order of operations we walk sellers through. ## First: permission to do nothing There is no prize for deploying money quickly. Parked safely — insured accounts, Treasury bills, money-market funds — a large sum today earns real interest while you think. The only urgent decisions after a sale are tax decisions. Everything else improves with a few months of patience, and nothing sold with a deadline attached deserves your attention. ## Second: this year's tax return is the expensive one The tax consequences of a sale are largely set by how the deal was structured — asset versus stock sale, earnouts, installment payments, the character of what you sold. But even after closing, the first year still holds real decisions: estimated payments so penalties don't stack, charitable strategy in the one year a large deduction is worth the most, state-residency questions, and how earnout or installment income will land in future years. Get the tax work done before making spending and investing commitments — the after-tax number is the real number, and it's the one the plan gets built on. The after-tax number is the real number. Plan from that one. ## Third: expect the pitch storm A liquidity event makes you a lead. Expect calls about private deals, insurance structures, concentrated bets, and products with impressive brochures. One filter handles most of it: how is the person recommending this paid, and does the answer depend on you saying yes? A fiduciary is paid the same fee whatever you decide. Most of the storm fails that one test. ## Fourth: turn the lump back into a paycheck Here's the psychological trap of a sale: you traded an income-producing asset for a pile of cash, and a pile — however large — feels finite in a way a paycheck never did. The fix is engineering, not optimism: decide what annual spending the money must support, secure the near years in stable assets, and let the far years stay invested for growth. Once a paycheck exists on paper, the anxiety drops and the rest of the plan gets easier to make well. ## Fifth: invest against the plan — and reset the estate Only now does investing enter the picture, sized by the plan rather than by headlines. And while the paperwork is still fresh, the estate work is at its cheapest and easiest: titling, beneficiaries, trusts where they earn their place, and — if the family is charitably or generationally minded — gifting decisions in the years when they do the most good. ## The question under all of it The hardest part of the first year isn't financial. The business was structure, identity, and scoreboard, and all three left in one wire transfer. The owners who navigate it best treat the money as what it actually is — decades of work, converted into freedom — and give it a job description worthy of what it took to earn. That's what a real plan is. #### Keep reading I sold my business → Tax planning is a season, not a scramble → What to bring to a first meeting → Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Start here ## Reading is a start. A plan is the point. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## The Roth Conversion Window Most People Miss Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/the-roth-conversion-window The Roth Conversion Window Most People Miss | Cannon Capital A Roth conversion is a simple trade: you move money from a pre-tax retirement account into a Roth, pay income tax on the amount now, and in exchange that money — and everything it earns — is never taxed again. Whether that trade wins depends entirely on one question: is your tax rate today lower than the rate you'd otherwise pay later? For many people, there's a specific stretch of life when the answer is clearly yes — and it has a start date and an end date. ## The window Say you retire in your early sixties. The paycheck stops, so your taxable income drops — sometimes dramatically. But required minimum distributions from your pre-tax accounts don't begin until your seventies. In between sits a run of years where your tax brackets are, in a sense, sitting empty. Those years are the window. Converting during them means filling today's low brackets deliberately — paying tax at rates you chose — instead of waiting for RMDs to force income on you later at rates you didn't. Done across several years, conversions can shrink future RMDs, reduce lifetime taxes, and leave heirs an account that arrives tax-free. RMDs are the IRS's schedule. The window is yours. ## The quiet reason the window matters: the survivor's tax Married couples file jointly, with wide brackets. When one spouse passes, the survivor typically keeps most of the income — and files single, in brackets roughly half as wide. The same income, taxed noticeably harder, for the rest of the survivor's life. Conversions done while filing jointly are one of the few planning tools that directly soften that outcome. ## What can go wrong Conversions are permanent, and enthusiasm is not a strategy. The common mistakes: - Converting too much in one year. A large conversion can spill into higher brackets and defeat the purpose. The bracket you fill matters more than the total you convert. - Tripping Medicare surcharges. Conversion income counts toward the thresholds that set Medicare premiums two years later. Crossing one by a dollar raises premiums for a full year. - Paying the tax from the IRA itself. Every dollar withheld for taxes is a dollar that never gets to grow tax-free. The math works far better when the tax is paid from outside funds. - Ignoring everything else in the year. Capital gains, a house sale, a big charitable gift, a final bonus — conversions share the return with all of it. The right amount is a whole-picture number, not an account-level one. ## This is a math problem, not an opinion Whether to convert, how much, and in which years is answerable — with a year-by-year model of your income, spending, brackets, and account mix, updated as the law and your life change. That model is the heart of the retirement plans we build, and because our tax planning is CPA-led, the conversion decision and the tax return it lands on are made at the same table. If you're within ten years of retirement — on either side — it's worth finding out whether your window exists, how wide it is, and what it's worth. Some of the most valuable planning years of a lifetime are the quiet ones nobody calls about. #### Keep reading Retirement planning in Utah → Tax planning is a season, not a scramble → What to bring to a first meeting → Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Start here ## Reading is a start. A plan is the point. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## What a 3(38) Investment Fiduciary Actually Does for Your 401(k) Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/what-a-3-38-fiduciary-actually-does What a 3(38) Investment Fiduciary Actually Does for Your 401(k) | Cannon Capital Most business owners learn this the uncomfortable way: sponsoring a retirement plan makes you an ERISA fiduciary, and that liability is personal — not corporate. If the plan's investment menu is imprudent or its fees are unreasonable, participants can bring claims against the people who ran the plan, and the litigation of the last decade shows they do. That risk doesn't require bad intent. It only requires a menu nobody was formally responsible for watching. Which raises the practical question: who, exactly, is responsible for your plan's investments — in writing? ## 3(21) versus 3(38): advice versus responsibility The numbers come from sections of ERISA, and the distinction is simpler than it sounds. - A 3(21) fiduciary advises. They recommend funds, provide monitoring reports, and share co-fiduciary status. But you decide — and because you decide, the responsibility for each selection stays with you. The advisor hands you a report; you hold the outcome. - A 3(38) investment manager decides. You formally delegate the selection, monitoring, and replacement of the plan's investments. The 3(38) takes on that discretion — and with it, the fiduciary responsibility for those investment decisions. With a 3(38) in place, your duty narrows to something a business owner can actually perform: prudently choosing the professional, and periodically confirming they're doing the job. That duty never goes away — no arrangement removes all fiduciary responsibility, and anyone who claims otherwise should worry you. But there's a real difference between being responsible for every fund on the menu and being responsible for having hired a qualified manager . You can delegate the decisions. You can't delegate them to nobody. ## What the job looks like when it's done properly A 3(38) engagement isn't a title on a contract — it's a documented, repeating process. Done right, it includes: - An investment policy statement that states, in writing, how funds are chosen, measured, and replaced — so decisions are governed by criteria, not memory. - Ongoing monitoring with a paper trail. Regular reviews against the policy, documented — because for a fiduciary, an undocumented process is legally close to no process. - Independent fee benchmarking. Recordkeeping, fund expenses, and advisory costs compared against market data on a schedule. "Reasonable fees" is a fiduciary requirement, and reasonableness has to be demonstrated, not assumed. - Trustee meetings with minutes. The governance rhythm that proves the plan is being run deliberately. - Participant education. Because the plan exists to actually retire your people someday, not just to survive an audit. ## The question to ask your current provider Send one email: "Are you serving our plan as a 3(38) investment manager or a 3(21) advisor — and can you point to where our agreement says so?" If the answer is fuzzy, the responsibility is currently sitting with you, whether or not anyone told you. We serve as a 3(38) investment fiduciary for employer plans, and we're glad to walk through what your current arrangement actually says — it's a short conversation, and plan sponsors are usually surprised by the answer. #### Keep reading 401(k) services for employers → Ten questions to ask before you hire an advisor → Tax planning is a season, not a scramble → Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Start here ## Reading is a start. A plan is the point. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## What an Annuity Actually Is Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/insights/what-an-annuity-actually-is What an Annuity Actually Is | Cannon Capital Here is the sentence that does most of the work: an annuity is an insurance contract, not an investment. Everything people find confusing about how these are sold follows from that one fact, and from how rarely it is said first. ## What you are actually buying When you buy a share of a company or a fund, you own an asset. Its value rises and falls, and it is yours. When you buy an annuity, you do not own an asset. You have entered into a contract with an insurance company: you hand over money now, and in exchange the insurer promises to pay you in a defined way later. What you hold is a promise, and the strength of that promise rests on the insurer's ability to keep it. That remains true even for contracts whose value is linked to a market index. The link describes how your credited value is calculated. It does not make the contract an ownership stake in anything. You are still a creditor of an insurance company rather than an owner of investments. You are not buying an asset. You are buying a promise — and the price of a promise is a lot harder to see. ## Why that distinction matters so much in practice Three consequences follow directly from it, and each one is where the real cost usually hides. ### The cost is inside the contract, not on a statement A fund publishes an expense ratio. An annuity's cost is assembled from several places at once — the spread between what the insurer earns and what it credits you, plus contract charges, plus riders bought for guarantees. Each may be reasonable on its own. Stacked, they are genuinely difficult to add up, and the person presenting the contract is rarely asked to. ### Getting out is expensive by design Most contracts carry a surrender period — often several years, sometimes a great many — during which withdrawing above a small allowance triggers a charge. That is not a trap so much as arithmetic: the insurer paid a distribution cost up front and needs time to recover it. But it means the decision is far less reversible than buying a fund, and reversibility is worth something. ### It is sold, not bought Almost nobody wakes up intending to buy an annuity. These are commission products, and the compensation for placing one can be substantial and paid at the moment of sale. That does not make every recommendation wrong. It does mean that when an annuity is the recommendation, it is worth knowing what the recommendation is worth to the person making it — a question that is always fair and rarely asked. ## Where the criticism goes too far There is a version of this argument that says annuities are simply bad. That is not our position, and it is not accurate. There is a real problem that a guaranteed income stream solves better than a portfolio does. Retirement income has a risk that accumulation does not: you can be right about the long run and still be badly hurt by a poor few years at the start of drawing down. Covering essential spending — the mortgage, the utilities, the groceries, the floor beneath your life — with income that does not depend on this year's markets is a legitimate structural answer to that problem. It can also make the rest of a portfolio easier to leave invested, which is worth more than it sounds. So the honest position is narrower than the slogan. The objection is not to the existence of these contracts. The objection is to one specific substitution: An income tool sold as an income tool is a reasonable conversation. An insurance contract sold as your investment portfolio is a different thing entirely. ## The substitution to watch for The pattern worth recognising is when a contract is presented as though it were the growth engine of a plan — the thing that will build wealth — rather than as a floor beneath it. That framing tends to arrive with an illustration showing an attractive line rising over decades. Read the illustration carefully, because it usually contains two very different kinds of number. Some are guaranteed: the insurer is contractually obliged. Others are illustrated: a projection of what could happen under assumptions the insurer chose. Those assumptions can be changed within the terms of many contracts. When someone describes a number verbally, the only question that matters is which of the two it is. ## Questions to ask before you sign anything - Which numbers here are guaranteed, and which are illustrated? Ask for the guaranteed column on its own. If the contract only looks good with the illustrated one, you have learned something. - What does this cost in total, in dollars, every year? Every layer — contract charges, rider charges, and the spread. One number. - How long is the surrender period, and what does leaving in year three cost? A specific figure, not a schedule to read later. - How are you paid on this, and how does that compare with the alternatives you did not recommend? A fair question. The reaction to it is informative on its own. - What happens to this contract when I die? Some pass differently than people assume, and the tax treatment for a beneficiary is not always the one they were expecting. - What is this replacing, and what does the replacement cost me? If an existing contract or account is being unwound to fund this one, that has its own price. ## How we approach it here Cannon Capital has no products of its own and takes no commissions, on annuities or on anything else. We are paid directly by our clients for advice, which means we earn precisely the same whether a guaranteed income stream belongs in your plan or does not. So when we look at one, we are looking at one job only: does a contractual floor under your essential spending make the whole plan work better, once tax and estate are accounted for? Sometimes the answer is yes and we will say so plainly. Frequently it is no, and the honest reason is that the contract was being asked to do a job — build wealth — that it was never designed for. If you are holding one and have never had it explained by someone with nothing to gain from the answer, bring it in. We will read it with you and tell you what it does. #### Keep reading Our investment philosophy: why pay a professional? → Should I manage my own investments? → 10 questions to ask a financial advisor → Educational only — not investment, tax, insurance or legal advice, and not a recommendation to buy, sell, hold, surrender or replace any contract. Annuity contracts vary enormously in terms, cost and guarantees; guarantees are subject to the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. Surrender charges, tax consequences and loss of existing benefits can apply to any replacement. Review your own contract and consult a qualified professional before acting. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. ## Questions people ask **Q: Is an annuity an investment?** No. An annuity is a contract with an insurance company. You hand over money in exchange for a promise of future payments, and that promise is backed by the insurer's ability to pay. That is a fundamentally different thing from owning an asset, even when the contract's value is linked to a market index. **Q: Why do people say annuities are bad?** The criticism is usually aimed at how they are sold rather than at what they are. Annuities are typically distributed by commission, which means someone can earn a great deal for placing one, and the products themselves can be complex, long-dated and expensive to exit. Those are real concerns. They are also concerns about distribution and suitability, not proof that every contract is unsuitable for every person. **Q: When does an annuity make sense?** Most often when the goal is a guaranteed stream of income rather than growth — covering essential spending in retirement so that the rest of a portfolio can be invested for the long term. Used deliberately as one component of an income and tax strategy, that can be a reasonable role. Used as a substitute for an investment portfolio, it usually is not. **Q: What should I ask before buying an annuity?** What exactly is guaranteed versus illustrated; what every layer of cost is, stated in dollars; how long the surrender period runs and what leaving early costs; how the person recommending it is paid; and what happens to the contract when you die. If any of those answers is unclear, that is the answer. ## Our Investment Philosophy Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/investment-philosophy Our Investment Philosophy — Why Pay a Professional? | Cannon Capital The objection ## “I have been the A student in every room. I can do this too.” Our clients are doctors, dentists, attorneys and founders. They learned something hard, they were good at it, and they are used to being right. So when they look at a portfolio of publicly available funds and a fee attached to it, the arithmetic looks obvious — and nobody in the industry ever engages with it seriously. We will engage with it. Because for a meaningful share of what gets sold as advice, the objection is correct. Where we concede ## Sometimes managing it yourself is the right call. If all four of these are true, you probably do not need us — and we would rather say so than take a fee for confirming what you already have. 01 ### Your situation is genuinely simple One or two income sources, no business, no concentrated position, no equity compensation, no estate you are trying to route around a tax problem. 02 ### Your plan is written down Not held in your head. An actual target allocation, actual rules for what you do when it moves, and a date you review it. 03 ### You keep the schedule Every quarter, in a year you are busy, in a month the market is ugly. Not most of the time. Every time. 04 ### You have never once acted on a headline Not moved to cash in a drawdown. Not added to something after it ran. Not delayed a rebalance because it felt like the wrong week. If that is you, a low-cost portfolio you run yourself is a perfectly good answer, and the industry's discomfort with saying so is exactly why nobody trusts it. What actually separates the two ## It was never about picking the funds. The choice of investments is the most visible part of this work and the smallest part of the difference. Three things matter more, and none of them are about being smarter than you. 01 ### A written policy, made in advance A decision made calmly, before it is needed, is a different decision from one made in the week it becomes urgent. The value of writing it down is not the document. It is that the hardest choices were made when nothing was at stake. 02 ### A re-examination on a schedule, not a reaction to the news Allocations drift. Tax law moves. Your income, your family and your timeline change. A portfolio built once and admired thereafter is not a strategy — it is a snapshot of what you believed on the day you built it. 03 ### Somebody whose judgment is not attached to your balance This is the whole thing. You will never be a neutral party to your own money. The point of a professional is not superior conviction — it is a second set of judgment that does not flinch on the day yours does. The part nobody admits ## You are an excellent investor right up until it is your money. Every self-manager we have met can describe the discipline perfectly. The gap is not knowledge. It is that the same person who can explain why you buy when things are ugly is the person who has to actually do it, in a month where the balance is down and the news agrees with the fear. What the plan says ### Rebalance. Buy the thing that fell. Written in a calm month, when the logic was obvious and the numbers were abstract. What actually happens ### Wait a bit. Add to the thing that has been working. Because it feels responsible. Because everyone is talking about it. Because it has gone up, which reads as evidence, and the thing that fell reads as a mistake you would be repeating. This is not a criticism of anyone's intelligence. It is a description of how people behave with their own money, including us — which is precisely why the process, the schedule and the outside judgment exist. The bigger reason ## The portfolio was never the hard part. Even a self-manager who does everything above correctly is solving one problem out of four. The other three are where the money actually goes. 01 ### Tax Which account a decision happens in, in which year, at which bracket. A well-built portfolio in the wrong location, realised at the wrong time, quietly costs more than the fund choice ever earned. 02 ### Sequence and income Turning a balance into a paycheck is a different discipline from growing one. Which accounts you draw from, in what order, and what happens if the first years go badly. 03 ### Estate and the survivor What passes, to whom, in what form, and at what tax cost. And the harder one: what happens to the plan the day the person who ran it is not the one running it. 04 ### Coordination between the three They are not separate problems. A decision in any one of them changes the answer in the other two — which is why they are built at one table here, by one team that includes a CPA. This is the argument for the whole structure, not the portfolio. See what that covers → How we invest ## No products. Which changes what a portfolio can be. Cannon Capital has never had an investment product of its own and takes no commissions. That is a structural fact, not a promise — and it is the reason every position can be judged on one question only. 01 ### Everything is there for a reason you can hear out loud If we cannot explain why something belongs in your plan in plain English, it does not belong in your plan. There is no second reason — no shelf, no lineup, no quota. 02 ### The plan sets the portfolio, not the reverse We do not start with an allocation and fit your life to it. We start with what the money has to do, and when, and build backwards from that. 03 ### We are paid the same either way Fee-only, disclosed, and identical whether a recommendation is exciting or boring. The only alignment that matters is that our revenue moves with your assets — so when your account falls, so does ours. 04 ### A pure RIA, not a dual registration Many firms hold an advisory registration and a brokerage licence at once, and run the profitable business through the second one. We hold only the first. The standard applies to everything we do, not to a carve-out of it. Answer it for yourself ## Five questions that settle it. Not rhetorical. If you answer these and the answers are good, keep doing what you are doing. **Q: What is your target allocation, and when did you last write it down?** Not what you own — what you intend to own, and why. If the answer is a list of positions rather than a policy, the portfolio is a result rather than a decision. **Q: What is your rule for what happens when it drifts?** A threshold, a date, or both. "When it feels far off" is the answer most people give, and it is the one that guarantees the rebalance happens after the emotion, not before it. **Q: What did you do in the last real drawdown?** Not what you would do. What you did. This is the single most informative question on the list, and the only one with evidence behind it. **Q: Which account should the next big decision happen in — and what does it cost in tax if it happens in the wrong one?** If you can answer this quickly, you have already done the coordination work. If it takes a minute, that minute is the fee, every year, silently. **Q: If you were not here, could the person who inherits this run it?** The most expensive gap in self-managed wealth is not performance. It is that the plan lives in one head, and eventually somebody else has to make decisions in it. Start here ## Bring us the objection. We will answer it straight. A complimentary strategy session: your accounts, your tax picture, your plan — and an honest read on whether hiring anyone improves it. You leave with the analysis whether or not you hire us. → Schedule your strategy Read: should I self-manage? Nothing on this page is investment advice or a recommendation, and none of it is a claim about investment results. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Whether professional management is appropriate depends entirely on your own circumstances. ## Questions people ask **Q: Why pay a financial professional instead of managing my own investments?** Because the value is rarely in fund selection. It is in having a written process, a scheduled re-examination of that process, and someone whose judgment is not affected by your own account balance. Most self-managed portfolios are not built badly; they are built once and then left to drift while tax law, income and life change around them. **Q: Is self-managing my investments ever the right answer?** Yes. If your situation is straightforward, your plan is written down, you rebalance on a schedule you actually keep, and you have no meaningful tax or estate complexity, a low-cost index portfolio you manage yourself is a reasonable choice. We would rather say that plainly than sell against it. **Q: What is Cannon Capital's investment philosophy?** Investments are one part of a plan, not the plan. Portfolios are built around a written policy, re-examined on a schedule rather than in reaction to headlines, and coordinated with tax strategy, income and estate so that a change in one is not paid for by a surprise in another. We sell no products, so nothing in a portfolio is there because it pays us. **Q: Do you use proprietary investment products?** No. Cannon Capital has no products of its own and receives no commissions. Every position exists because it belongs in your plan, and we are paid directly by you for the advice — which means there is no second reason for anything we recommend. ## 3(38) Fiduciary 401(k) Advisor for Utah Employers Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/plan-401k 3(38) Fiduciary 401(k) Advisor for Utah Employers — Cannon Capital Management The problem ## A plan full of vendors, and nobody in the middle. Most company plans have a record keeper over here, a payroll provider over there, maybe an investment advisor somewhere — and no one coordinating any of it. The liability sits on you, the fees hide in revenue sharing, and the advisor never meets the people actually in the plan. 01 ### The liability is all on you As plan sponsor, you're a fiduciary whether you asked to be or not. Every fund on the menu is your legal responsibility — unless a 3(38) investment manager formally takes that responsibility on. 02 ### Nobody meets the participants Most plan advisors visit once a year, if that. Around half of participants never even log in to their account. They're auto-enrolled into a default and left there — doing "fine" with no idea why. 03 ### Fees you can't see Revenue sharing and bundled pricing quietly move costs onto participants. If you can't state what your plan costs, that's the point — you're not supposed to be able to. 04 ### Participation stalls A plan nobody understands is a benefit nobody values. Low participation hurts your testing, your match dollars, and your ability to keep good people. The difference ## 3(38) versus 3(21): who carries the risk. A 3(21) advisor ### Recommends. You decide — and you're liable. A 3(21) fiduciary suggests investments, but the final call stays with the employer. So does the legal responsibility for every fund on the menu, every quarter, forever. Cannon Capital · 3(38) investment manager ### Decides, monitors, documents — and carries the liability. We take discretionary responsibility for selecting, monitoring, and replacing the plan's investments. Your fiduciary duty narrows to having prudently hired us. That's the difference between advice and accountability. Cannon Capital Management acts as an ERISA 3(38) investment manager for the plan's investment lineup. Certain services described below — trustee meeting support, plan design consulting, and participant education — are non-fiduciary services provided alongside that role. What we do for your plan ## One team running the whole plan — not one more vendor. 01 ### 3(38) investment management We build, monitor, and document the investment lineup — and assume the investment liability that would otherwise sit with you. 02 ### Trustee meetings, minutes & documentation We run the trustee meetings, keep the minutes, and maintain the fiduciary file — so when someone asks for the paper trail, it exists. 03 ### Plan design Match structure, eligibility, auto-enrollment, vesting — designed around what you're trying to accomplish: participation, retention, and owners and executives who can actually use the plan. 04 ### Group education, on a schedule Regular on-site or Zoom sessions that explain the plan in plain English — what the match is worth, what the defaults mean, and why any of it matters. 05 ### One-on-one participant meetings Every employee can sit down with an advisor — the thing almost no plan advisor offers, and the reason participation and appreciation of the benefit actually move. 06 ### Vendor coordination Record keeper, payroll, TPA, auditors — we sit in the middle and make them run as one system. You keep the vendors you like; we make them talk to each other. 07 ### Fee transparency Fee-only, no commissions, no revenue sharing in our pocket. You and your participants can see exactly what the plan costs — and benchmark it. Who it's for ## Built for plans that are serious about the match. We typically serve established Utah plans — generally $1 million and up in plan assets with a meaningful company match — where the sponsor wants the liability handled properly and the employees looked after. If you're the HR director, CFO, controller, or owner who inherited this responsibility: this is the conversation to have. → Request a complimentary plan review info@cannoncap.com Common questions ## Plan sponsors usually ask. **Q: What is a 3(38) investment fiduciary?** A 3(38) investment manager takes on full discretionary responsibility — and the legal liability — for selecting, monitoring, and replacing the investments in your 401(k). Your duty as sponsor narrows to prudently selecting and monitoring the 3(38) itself, rather than every fund decision. **Q: How is that different from the 3(21) advisor we have now?** A 3(21) advisor recommends; you still decide, and you're still liable for those decisions. A 3(38) decides and carries that liability. If your current advisor "helps you pick funds," you're almost certainly still the one holding the risk. **Q: Do you actually meet with our employees?** Yes — group education sessions plus one-on-one meetings, in person or over Zoom, on a regular cadence. It's the most visible difference between us and a plan advisor your employees have never met. **Q: Do we have to change record keepers or payroll?** No. We work alongside your existing record keeper, payroll provider, and TPA — and coordinate them. If a vendor is genuinely costing you money, we'll show you the numbers and let you decide. **Q: How are you paid?** Fee-only and disclosed. No commissions, no hidden revenue sharing. You'll know what the plan costs before you hire us — and be able to benchmark it any time after. Start here ## Find out what your plan really costs — and who's really liable. A complimentary, no-obligation review of your current plan: fees, fund lineup, documentation, and where the liability actually sits today. → Request your plan review Call 801.566.3190 ## Questions people ask **Q: What is the difference between a 3(38) and a 3(21) fiduciary?** A 3(21) advisor recommends investments, but the employer still makes — and is liable for — the final decisions. A 3(38) investment manager makes those decisions and assumes that liability. Cannon Capital serves plans as a 3(38) investment fiduciary. **Q: Do you meet with our employees, or only with management?** Both. We run group education sessions and one-on-one meetings with plan participants — in person or over Zoom — on a regular schedule. Most plan advisors rarely meet participants at all; we consider it the core of the job. **Q: Do you replace our record keeper or payroll provider?** No. We work alongside your record keeper, payroll provider, and TPA — and coordinate all of them, so the plan runs as one system instead of a set of disconnected vendors. ## Canbassadors Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/refer Canbassadors — Cannon Capital Client Introduction Program The name ## Canbassador = Cannon + ambassador. Like the best client programs in other industries, it has a name you can say out loud. “I’m a Canbassador” is easier than “I’m in the unstructured referral mechanism we never actually defined.” You are not selling. You are opening a door for someone you care about. Can bassadors Clients of Cannon Capital who make Warm Shots — introductions that protect the person on the other end and never treat a friendship like a transaction. Warm Shot The introduction itself — a short email to both of us, this form, or “have my advisor call them.” One honest sentence of context is enough. First Salvo Your first Warm Shot as a Canbassador. We thank you personally. No leaderboard. No bounty. Just a clean first fire. Battery Briefing A small, invitation-only gathering for Canbassadors — conversation with the team, useful context (tax, markets, planning), and room to bring a guest if it feels natural. Range Review The soft-ask moment in your quarterly or annual review — when it fits the conversation, not a forced script. “If someone in your life is facing this…” How to participate ## Three moves. As easy as saying the name. 01 · Join ### Say you are in Tell your advisor you want to be a Canbassador, or use the form below and check “I want to join.” We log it, thank you, and invite you to the next Battery Briefing when one is set. 02 · Warm Shot ### Make one introduction Email intro (best), form, or ask us to call. Prefer people with a real money moment — liquidity, complexity, a 401(k) that needs a true fiduciary — not product-shop tourists. 03 · Show up ### Battery Briefings (optional) Come when you can. Bring a guest when it feels right. No attendance quota. The program works even if you only ever fire one Warm Shot. The calendar ## Rituals that make referring feel natural. Programs fail when the only ask is awkward and random. Canbassadors has a few named moments — light, repeatable, never a hard sell. Ongoing ### Warm Shot Anytime. The core action of the program. Send a three-line intro or use the form. We follow up within one business day and treat the person as a guest — not a lead to be worked. Your first intro ### First Salvo The first Warm Shot you make as a Canbassador. We note it, thank you by note or call, and — if you want — invite you to the next Battery Briefing. Recognition, not payment. With your advisor ### Range Review Built into quarterly and annual reviews when the conversation is already about a life moment someone you know might share. Soft language only. You can always pass. A few times a year ### Battery Briefing Small table, Cottonwood Heights or private room. Tax or planning context from the team, time with advisors, optional +1. This is how “bring a friend” becomes an event instead of an ask out of nowhere. As needed ### Open Gate evenings Topic nights (liquidity events, 401(k) for sponsors, big-income years) where Canbassadors can invite someone who is actively thinking about that issue. Educational first. Introduction second. Built the fiduciary way ## Fun name. Serious guardrails. What Canbassadors get ### Thanks, access, clarity - A name and a simple path — so referring is not awkward - Personal thank-you after a Warm Shot - Invites to Battery Briefings and Open Gate evenings - Scripts that do not sound like a multilevel pitch - Confidence that the person you send will be treated carefully What Canbassadors never get ### No bounty, no conflict - No cash, gift cards, or fee discounts for names - No “per introduction” scoreboard with prizes - No pressure to hit a quota - No turning you into a paid solicitor under securities rules - No product dinners dressed up as appreciation Paid third-party solicitation (for example, a formal paid arrangement with another professional) is a different legal structure that requires written agreements and disclosure. That is not Canbassadors. Professional co-counsel relationships are welcome and usually uncompensated. Who to introduce ## Aim carefully. That is the point of a named program. #### Strong Warm Shot Entrepreneurs and professionals roughly 30–50 building serious wealth. Households after a liquidity event — sold a business, equity payout, inheritance, big income year. Plan sponsors who need a true 3(38) fiduciary. Anyone who wants investing, tax, and estate in one plan. #### Hold fire People hunting free tips, guaranteed returns, or a product-push dinner. Anyone who needs an insurance- or product-first pitch. If we are wrong for them, we will say so quickly and still treat your introduction with respect. Words that work ## You do not need a pitch. You need one honest sentence. Warm Shot email (copy and send): “Wanted to connect you two. [Name] — meet [Advisor] at Cannon Capital, the fee-only fiduciary team we work with. I’m a Canbassador there, which just means I can open a door when it feels right. No pressure; they start with a complimentary strategy conversation. [Advisor] — [Name] is [one line of context]. I’ll let you take it from here.” Range Review soft ask: “If someone in your life is facing the kind of money moment we just walked through — and you think a fiduciary conversation would help — that is what Canbassadors is for. No bounty for the intro. Just careful work for the person you care about.” If you were introduced ## A Canbassador sent you. You are a guest. Someone who already knows us thought a conversation might help. The first meeting is complimentary, confidential, and free of obligation. Optional checklist: what to bring . Warm Shot · join or introduce ## Fire one introduction. Or join the line. Prefer email? CC both of us — still the gold standard. This form is for joining Canbassadors, making a Warm Shot, or both. ### Join We add you to Canbassador invites (Battery Briefings, Open Gate) and note you for Range Reviews. ### Warm Shot Name, contact, one line of context — only what they would be comfortable with. ### We follow carefully Advisor outreach within one business day. You get a thank-you — never a bounty. By submitting, you confirm you have a reasonable basis to share contact details for a professional introduction. We will not add them to a marketing blast list. ✓ ### Received. Thank you. If you joined, you are on the Canbassadors list. If you made a Warm Shot, an advisor will follow up carefully — and we will thank you personally. Questions ## Straight answers. **Q: What is a Canbassador?** A Cannon Capital client who chooses to introduce people they care about through a named, simple path — Warm Shots, optional Battery Briefings, soft Range Review asks. Not a job. Not a sales quota. **Q: Do Canbassadors get paid?** No. Cash or gift-for-name programs can create solicitor issues under federal securities rules and conflict with our fiduciary duty. You get thanks, recognition of your First Salvo, and invites — never a bounty. **Q: What is a Battery Briefing?** A small gathering for Canbassadors: useful conversation with the team, optional guest, no product-push dinner energy. Dates are set a few times a year; ask your advisor for the next one. **Q: Can I refer a 401(k) plan sponsor?** Yes. A Warm Shot for a plan sponsor is as welcome as a household intro. Point them at our employer page or introduce us the same way. **Q: I am a CPA or attorney — can I be a Canbassador?** The Canbassadors name is for clients. Professional relationships are welcome; if a paid solicitation arrangement is ever appropriate, it must be written and disclosed separately. Most co-counsel work stays reciprocal and uncompensated. The only score that matters ## Did the person you care about get careful help? If yes, the Warm Shot worked. Growth for the firm is secondary. That is why the program has a name you can be proud of. → Make a Warm Shot Or email Canbassadors ## Questions people ask **Q: Do Canbassadors get paid for referrals?** No. Cannon Capital does not pay cash, gift cards, or per-introduction rewards. That kind of payment can create solicitor obligations under securities rules and conflicts with our fiduciary duty. Canbassadors receive thanks, recognition, and invitation to Battery Briefings — never a bounty for a name. **Q: How do I make a Warm Shot introduction?** Three ways: send a short warm email introducing your advisor and the person (preferred), use the Canbassador form on this page, or ask your advisor to reach out and mention you sent them. We treat every introduction as a favor to the person you care about. ## Retirement Planning in Utah Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/retirement-planning-utah Retirement Planning in Utah — Fee-Only Fiduciary Advisors | Cannon Capital What a real plan answers ## The questions that decide how it actually goes. 01 ### How much is enough — for you? Not a rule of thumb. A year-by-year model of your spending, your income sources, and your taxes that produces a number you can verify — and revisit as life changes. 02 ### Where does the paycheck come from? Which account funds each year of spending — taxable, traditional, Roth — is a sequencing decision worth real money over a retirement. It deserves a plan, not a default. 03 ### What about RMDs and Roth conversions? Required minimum distributions can force income you don't need at rates you didn't choose. The window between retirement and RMD age is often the best Roth conversion opportunity of a lifetime — if someone is watching for it. 04 ### What happens to the people you love? Beneficiaries, titling, trusts, and the tax character of what each heir receives — decided deliberately, documented properly, and kept current. Why Cannon ## One team for the money, the taxes, and the legacy. Most retirees shuttle between an advisor, a CPA, and an attorney who have never spoken. At Cannon, fiduciary investing and CPA-led tax strategy sit at the same table — in Cottonwood Heights, serving clients across Utah and beyond. Common questions ## People in this spot usually ask. **Q: How much money do I need to retire?** The honest answer is a model, not a multiple: your spending, your income sources, your taxes, and your timeline, projected year by year. Two families with identical portfolios can have completely different answers. We build that model with you — it's the heart of the complimentary strategy. **Q: Should I do a Roth conversion?** Sometimes — and when it's right, it's usually in a specific window: lower-income years between retirement and RMD age. Converting fills today's brackets to avoid tomorrow's higher ones. Whether that trade wins depends on your numbers, which is exactly what the plan is for. **Q: What is a required minimum distribution (RMD)?** Once you reach the required age, the IRS requires annual withdrawals from most pre-tax retirement accounts, taxed as ordinary income — whether you need the money or not. Planning ahead of that age, not at it, is what keeps RMDs from dictating your tax bracket. **Q: What does a fee-only fiduciary mean?** We're paid a transparent fee for advice — not commissions for selling products. As fiduciaries, we're obligated to act in your best interest. It's the difference between an advisor with a plan and a salesman with a quota. **Q: Do you only work with people about to retire?** No — many of our clients are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, building toward independence or navigating a windfall. The earlier the plan starts, the more the coordination compounds. Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Start here ## One conversation. No pressure, no pitch. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## Hypothetical Client Scenarios Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/scenarios Hypothetical Client Scenarios — What the Work Looks Like | Cannon Capital Where people start ## Most of these begin with nothing being wrong. The event-driven cases are the memorable ones. The common one is the professional who has simply earned well for a long time, has no hours left to organise it, and has never been shown what the pieces do to each other. Hypothetical · No triggering event ### The specialist earning well, with no plan behind it. A surgeon in her early forties. High income for over a decade, two young children, and nothing has gone wrong — which is exactly the problem. There has been no sale, no inheritance, no event that forced anyone to sit down. Money accumulates in whatever account was open at the time. #### What was already true - A workplace retirement plan, contributed to but never reviewed - A taxable brokerage account holding whatever was bought first - Cash well beyond any stated purpose, because nobody decided otherwise - A will drafted before the second child, never revisited - A tax return prepared each spring by someone who has never seen the portfolio #### What the planning work looks at - Whether the cash has a job, and what it is costing to hold it without one - Which of these accounts should hold which kind of asset, and what the current arrangement costs each year - Whether the retirement plan is being used to its full extent given her income - What the estate documents actually say now that the family has changed - Getting the tax return and the portfolio built at the same table Hypothetical · Liquidity event ### The founder with a letter of intent on the desk. A business owner in his late fifties with a signed LOI and roughly ninety days to close. Most of his net worth has been inside the company for twenty years. The question he arrives with is what to do with the proceeds. The more expensive questions are the ones that close before the deal does. #### What was already true - A purchase price agreed, but the structure of it still open - An accountant focused on this year's return rather than on the transaction - No estate work done in advance of a change in net worth of this size - Charitable intentions discussed for years and never formalised - A plan for after the sale that consists of the word 'retire' #### What the planning work looks at - How the deal is structured, and what each structure means for after-tax proceeds - Which planning steps must happen before signing, because they cannot be undone afterwards - Whether charitable intent should be executed pre-sale, and in what form - What income needs to look like when a business stops being the source of it - Coordination between the attorney, the CPA and the advisor before the closing date, not after Hypothetical · Concentrated position ### The executive whose company did very well. An executive at a public company whose equity compensation has vested over several years and now represents an uncomfortable share of the family's wealth. Selling feels disloyal and expensive. Holding feels reckless. Nobody has put numbers to either feeling. #### What was already true - A single position larger than the rest of the portfolio combined - A vesting schedule that keeps adding to it - A large embedded gain that makes any sale a tax event - Trading windows and company policy constraining when anything can happen - A spouse who is worried about it and a holder who is not #### What the planning work looks at - What the position actually is as a percentage, stated plainly - What a reduction costs in tax, in which years, and whether it can be spread - Whether charitable gifting of appreciated shares does part of the work - What the plan requires the money to do, and how much concentration that can tolerate - A written schedule made in advance, so the decision is not made in a volatile week Hypothetical · Practice owner ### The dentist with two practices and one exit. A practice owner in his mid-fifties with two locations, strong income, and a retirement plan that was set up years ago and has not been revisited since the second location opened. He wants to be out by sixty-two and has not tested whether that is a number or a wish. #### What was already true - A retirement plan design chosen when the practice was half its current size - Personal and business finances that overlap in ways nobody has mapped - Real estate held in a structure chosen for reasons long since forgotten - Associates who might buy in, and no agreement describing how - A target retirement age that has never been tested against the numbers #### What the planning work looks at - Whether the plan design still fits the practice, and what a better one allows him to contribute - What the practice is likely to be worth, and how much of the retirement it has to fund - The order of operations for an internal sale versus an external one - What the real estate should do at exit, which is often a separate decision from the practice - Whether sixty-two works — and if not, what specifically has to change The pattern underneath ## Four different lives. The same missing piece. In every one of these, the individual parts were being handled by someone competent. What was missing was anyone making sure a decision in one part did not create a problem in another — which is the only thing that is genuinely hard to buy piecemeal. 01 ### The accountant sees the return, not the portfolio So the tax consequence of an investment decision arrives after the decision, in April, when nothing can be changed about it. 02 ### The attorney sees the documents, not the balances So an estate plan is drafted against a picture of the family's wealth that was accurate when it was drafted. 03 ### The advisor sees the accounts they hold Which is rarely all of them — and a plan built on part of the picture is a plan with a hole in it that nobody can see. 04 ### Nobody owns the seams Every one of these professionals is doing their job properly. The gap is between them, and it is where the expensive mistakes live. This is why our tax practice sits inside the firm rather than down the street, and why the plan, the portfolio and the estate structure get built by one team at one table. Start here ## See your own version of this, with your actual numbers. A complimentary strategy session: what you own, what it costs you in tax, and where the seams are. You leave with the analysis whether or not you hire us. → Schedule your strategy What to bring to a first meeting All scenarios shown are hypothetical illustrations. They do not represent actual clients or actual results, are not testimonials, and are not a guarantee or projection of any outcome. Nothing on this page is investment, tax or legal advice. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Advisory services offered through Cannon Capital Management, Inc., a Registered Investment Adviser. ## Business & Exit Planning for Utah Founders Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/services/business-exit-planning Business & Exit Planning for Utah Founders | Cannon Capital What this actually covers ## The useful work happens well before a letter of intent exists. ### Entity structure and how the deal is shaped Asset sale or equity sale, how proceeds are allocated, what is ordinary income and what is not. These are planning decisions with deadlines, and most of them close before a buyer appears. ### Timing across tax years When a sale lands, and how proceeds are spread, changes the rate that applies to them. A closing date is negotiable more often than founders assume. ### Concentration risk before the exit Until it sells, most of the household's net worth is one illiquid position in one company in one industry. That is worth naming while there is still time to do something about it. ### The plan for after The hardest year is the first one after the money arrives, when a founder goes from an income they controlled to a portfolio they do not. That transition deserves a plan of its own. How we work alongside your deal team ### We are not brokers We do not find buyers and we take no part of the transaction. Our fee does not move with whether you sell, when you sell, or for how much. ### Coordinated with your attorney and CPA An exit involves several professionals. We bring the household's financial picture so their advice can be aimed at the right outcome. ### Started early, revisited often A conversation three years out has options. A conversation three weeks out mostly has consequences. Cannon Capital Management, Inc. is a Registered Investment Adviser. This page is for informational purposes and is not investment, tax, or legal advice. Nothing here is a recommendation for your situation, which we would need to know before making one. Common questions **Q: Do you help me find a buyer?** No. Cannon Capital is a Registered Investment Adviser, not a business broker or an investment bank. We plan around the transaction rather than run it. **Q: Are you paid more if I sell?** No. The fee is not tied to the transaction in any way, which means the advice about whether and when to sell has nothing riding on it. **Q: What if the sale is years away, or might never happen?** That is the better time to have the conversation. Much of what improves the after-tax result has to be in place well in advance, and none of it requires you to commit to selling. Ready when you are ## Start with a conversation, not a commitment. The first strategy session is complimentary, and there is nothing to buy in it. See what to bring , or just bring the question that brought you here. → Book a strategy session Contact & directions ## Estate & Legacy Planning in Utah Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/services/estate-planning Estate & Legacy Planning in Utah — Fee-Only Fiduciary | Cannon Capital What this actually covers ## We are not a law firm and do not draft documents. We make sure the documents and the money describe the same plan. ### Beneficiary designations, checked against the documents Retirement accounts and insurance policies pass by designation, outside the will entirely. An ex-spouse or a deceased parent named on an old form is more common than anyone expects. ### Titling and how assets actually pass Which accounts are joint, which are in trust, which are in one name. Titling decides the route, and the route decides how long and how public the process is. ### Coordination with your attorney You keep your attorney, or we can point you to one. Our job is to arrive at that meeting with the whole financial picture already assembled so the drafting is efficient. ### Charitable and multi-generation intent If part of it is meant for causes rather than children, saying so in the right structure changes what actually reaches them. How this usually starts ### A review of what already exists Bring what you have, even if it is old. “We did these when the kids were born” is exactly the situation worth a fresh look. ### Finding the contradictions This is the part that surprises people. It is also cheap to fix once found and expensive to leave. ### Keeping it current Marriages, births, sales and moves all change the answer. A plan reviewed once at signing is a plan that ages badly. Cannon Capital Management, Inc. is a Registered Investment Adviser. This page is for informational purposes and is not investment, tax, or legal advice. Nothing here is a recommendation for your situation, which we would need to know before making one. Common questions **Q: Do you write wills or trusts?** No. Drafting is legal work and belongs with an attorney. We handle the financial side and make sure it matches whatever gets drafted. **Q: Do I need a trust?** Sometimes, and often not. It depends on what you own, how it is titled and what you are trying to achieve. Anyone who answers that question before looking at your situation is selling something. **Q: Is this only for large estates?** No. The failure we see most often is a mismatched beneficiary form, and that costs a family the same confusion regardless of the amount involved. Ready when you are ## Start with a conversation, not a commitment. The first strategy session is complimentary, and there is nothing to buy in it. See what to bring , or just bring the question that brought you here. → Book a strategy session Contact & directions ## Services Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/services Services — Fee-Only Fiduciary Wealth Management in Utah | Cannon Capital What we do ## Each one has a page. None of them stands alone. ### Wealth Management & Investing Fee-only portfolios built around your plan — never a product off a shelf. ### Tax Strategy CPA-led planning to reduce what you owe, coordinated with your investments rather than filed in a silo. ### Retirement Planning Turn decades of earning into income that lasts — and a retirement entirely on your terms. ### Estate & Legacy Planning Pass on what you have built, to your family or your causes, exactly as you intend. ### Business & Exit Planning Structure, timing and the after-tax result of a sale, planned long before the letter of intent. ### Risk & Cash Flow Insurance, liquidity and the buffers that keep a plan intact when life does not cooperate. ### 401(k) for Employers 3(38) investment fiduciary services for Utah plan sponsors who want the liability taken with the advice. Cannon Capital Management, Inc. is a Registered Investment Adviser. We are fee-only: all compensation comes from client fees, none from commissions or product sales. This page is informational and is not investment, tax, or legal advice. Ready when you are ## Start with a conversation, not a commitment. The first strategy session is complimentary. Bring the question that brought you here. → Book a strategy session Contact & directions ## Risk & Cash Flow Planning in Utah Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/services/risk-and-cash-flow Risk & Cash Flow Planning in Utah | Cannon Capital What this actually covers ## We sell no insurance and earn nothing on any policy discussed here. ### What you already pay for, reviewed honestly Most households carry coverage nobody has read since it was bought. Some of it is redundant, some of it has a gap in the middle, and no one selling it had a reason to say so. ### Liquidity, so the plan is never the thing you sell Cash that is deliberately boring, sized to your actual obligations. Its job is to be available in the year you would otherwise be forced to sell investments at the worst possible time. ### Income protection while you are still earning For most people under retirement age, future earnings are the largest asset on the balance sheet, and the least often insured deliberately. ### Cash flow that matches a real life Irregular income, bonus cycles, tuition, a parent needing help. A plan built on a tidy monthly average tends to meet reality badly. Where our incentives sit ### No commissions on any of it We are fee-only. If a policy is genuinely worth having, you buy it somewhere else and we are paid exactly the same as if you had not. ### Comfortable saying you are over-covered That sentence costs a commissioned salesperson money. It costs us nothing, which is the entire point. ### Reviewed as circumstances change Coverage bought for one stage of life frequently outlives its usefulness and keeps billing. Cannon Capital Management, Inc. is a Registered Investment Adviser. This page is for informational purposes and is not investment, tax, or legal advice. Nothing here is a recommendation for your situation, which we would need to know before making one. Common questions **Q: Do you sell insurance?** No. The firm holds no insurance business and earns nothing from any policy you buy. That is why we can tell you when you already have enough. **Q: How much cash should I actually hold?** It depends on how stable your income is and what is coming in the next few years, not on a rule of thumb. A founder with lumpy income and a salaried employee with a steady one should not carry the same buffer. **Q: Is this a separate engagement?** No, it is part of the plan. Risk and liquidity are what make the rest of the plan survivable, so they are not treated as an add-on. Ready when you are ## Start with a conversation, not a commitment. The first strategy session is complimentary, and there is nothing to buy in it. See what to bring , or just bring the question that brought you here. → Book a strategy session Contact & directions ## Tax Strategy for Utah Professionals & Business Owners Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/services/tax-strategy Tax Strategy for Utah Professionals & Business Owners | Cannon Capital What this actually covers ## Led by a CPA who sits inside the firm, not a referral to somebody down the road. ### Multi-year projections instead of one-year filing A return looks at a year in isolation. A plan looks at the next decade and asks which year each dollar of income should land in. Those are different questions and they produce different answers. ### Roth conversion windows The years between a career ending and required distributions starting are often the lowest-tax years someone will ever have. They are also easy to spend without noticing they were an opportunity. ### Equity compensation and concentrated positions Vesting schedules, exercise timing and the tax bill attached to each. Frequently the largest single number in a household's plan, and the one people have thought least about. ### Charitable strategy that does the work twice Appreciated shares, bunching, donor-advised funds. If giving is happening anyway, the structure of it is worth getting right. Why it sits with the investments ### One plan, not two The portfolio decisions and the tax decisions are the same decisions viewed from different sides. Split across two firms, each optimises its own half and the household loses. ### A CPA in the room Triton Lee, CPA leads the tax work from inside the firm. Nothing has to be translated between organisations that have no reason to talk. ### Coordinated with your existing advisers If you have an accountant or an attorney you trust, we work with them. The point is that somebody is looking at the whole thing. Cannon Capital Management, Inc. is a Registered Investment Adviser. This page is for informational purposes and is not investment, tax, or legal advice. Nothing here is a recommendation for your situation, which we would need to know before making one. Common questions **Q: Do you prepare and file tax returns?** The focus is planning rather than compliance filing. Where preparation is needed we coordinate with the right person so the return and the plan agree with each other. **Q: Is this only useful if I own a business?** No. Salaried professionals with equity compensation, a large bonus, or a concentrated stock position often have more moving parts than a business owner does. **Q: When is the best time to start?** Earlier in the year than most people think. A decision made in December has far fewer options attached to it than the same decision made in March. Ready when you are ## Start with a conversation, not a commitment. The first strategy session is complimentary, and there is nothing to buy in it. See what to bring , or just bring the question that brought you here. → Book a strategy session Contact & directions ## Wealth Management & Investing in Utah Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/services/wealth-management Wealth Management & Investing in Utah — Fee-Only Fiduciary | Cannon Capital What this actually covers ## Not a model portfolio with your name typed at the top. ### An allocation tied to a plan, not a risk quiz Before anything is bought, we work out what the money has to do and when. A portfolio for someone who needs income in three years is not a portfolio for someone whose horizon is thirty. ### Consolidation of the accounts you have forgotten Old employer plans, a brokerage account opened years ago, a rollover half-finished. They get found, valued and brought into one picture, which is usually the first time anyone has seen the whole thing at once. ### Tax-aware placement across account types Which holdings sit in the taxable account, which in the IRA, which in the Roth. Same investments, different order, and the difference compounds quietly for decades. ### Rebalancing and ongoing management Markets move the allocation away from the plan. We move it back, on a discipline rather than on a feeling, and we tell you when we do. How we are paid, plainly ### Fee-only All of our compensation comes from client fees. None comes from commissions or product sales, because we do not sell products. ### The same either way Our fee does not change with what we recommend. There is no version of this where a boring recommendation pays us less than an exciting one. ### Disclosed before you hire us You will know what it costs before you decide, and you will be able to check it any time after. Cannon Capital Management, Inc. is a Registered Investment Adviser. This page is for informational purposes and is not investment, tax, or legal advice. Nothing here is a recommendation for your situation, which we would need to know before making one. Common questions **Q: Do you sell any investment products?** No, and the firm never has. Cannon Capital is a Registered Investment Adviser and is not dually registered as a broker-dealer, so there is no commission side of the business to steer anything toward. **Q: What happens to the accounts I already have?** In most cases they move to custody at the firm's custodian so they can be managed as one portfolio. Some accounts, a current employer's plan for example, cannot move, so we work them into the plan where they are. **Q: Will you tell me to sell everything I own?** Not as a matter of course. Existing holdings carry tax consequences, and unwinding a concentrated position is often a multi-year exercise rather than a single trade. That sequencing is part of the work. Ready when you are ## Start with a conversation, not a commitment. The first strategy session is complimentary, and there is nothing to buy in it. See what to bring , or just bring the question that brought you here. → Book a strategy session Contact & directions ## Unusually Big Income or Capital Gains Year? Act Before December 31 Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/situations/big-income-year Unusually Big Income or Capital Gains Year? Act Before December 31 | Cannon Capital, Utah What's actually at stake ## Every lever works better in a spike year — and most close December 31. Deductions are worth their most against your highest bracket. Retirement plan room, charitable timing, gain-and-loss pairing, entity decisions for the self-employed — all of it does double duty this year, and almost none of it can be done retroactively. 01 ### The projection comes first You can't plan against a number you don't know. A current-year tax projection — not last year's return — is the foundation every other decision stands on. 02 ### Retirement plans are a bigger lever than people think For business owners and the self-employed especially, the right plan design can shelter dramatically more than a default 401(k) contribution. Spike years are what those designs are for. 03 ### Charitable timing is a spike-year superpower Bunching several years of intended giving into the high-bracket year — often through a donor-advised fund — multiplies the value of generosity you already planned. 04 ### Gains don't travel alone A big realized gain can be paired with loss harvesting, timed against other income, or — in some cases — deliberately taken now if this year is unusual in the other direction. The pairing is the plan. How Cannon helps ## A CPA and a fiduciary advisor, working the same plan. Our Director of Strategic Tax Planning is a CPA who sits at the same table as your advisor — so the tax strategy and the investment strategy are one strategy. That's the whole point of the firm. Common questions ## People in this spot usually ask. **Q: When do I need to start planning for a big income year?** The moment you can see it coming — and no later than the fourth quarter. A projection in October leaves real room to act; a conversation in March is mostly bookkeeping about what already happened. **Q: I'm self-employed and having a huge year. What should I look at?** Retirement plan design usually tops the list — the gap between a default contribution and a well-designed plan can be enormous. Entity structure, income timing, and equipment or expense timing round out the usual suspects. Which ones matter depends entirely on your numbers. **Q: Is it worth doing anything if the year is almost over?** Usually, yes. Several meaningful levers work right up to December 31, and a few even beyond. The only certainty is that waiting until filing season converts planning into regret. **Q: Why does my regular tax preparer not bring this up?** Preparation and strategy are different jobs. A preparer reports the year that happened; a strategist shapes the year that's happening. Most people have only ever been sold the first one. Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Start here ## One conversation. No pressure, no pitch. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## Big Equity Payout or RSU Vesting Year? Plan Before Year-End Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/situations/equity-compensation-windfall Big Equity Payout or RSU Vesting Year? Plan Before Year-End | Cannon Capital, Utah What's actually at stake ## Withholding is not a tax plan. Equity compensation is taxed on its own schedule, withheld at rates that rarely match your real bracket, and concentrated in one company — usually your employer. Each of those is fixable. None of them fix themselves. 01 ### The withholding gap Supplemental income is typically withheld at a flat rate well below a high earner's actual marginal bracket. People discover the difference in April, as a bill. A projection in the payout year turns that surprise into a plan. 02 ### Concentration risk After a big vest, your salary, your bonus, and a large share of your net worth can all depend on one company. Diversifying is a tax event — which is exactly why it should be scheduled, not improvised. 03 ### The bracket spike is temporary — use it Charitable bunching, retirement plan room, deduction timing: strategies that are marginal in a normal year do their best work in a spike year. The window is the calendar year of the payout. 04 ### What the money is for A windfall without a plan becomes lifestyle. A windfall with a plan becomes independence. The difference is written down. How Cannon helps ## Built for the 30-to-50 crowd this actually happens to. Windfalls don't wait for retirement age, and neither do we. Our clients skew toward founders, executives, and professionals mid-career — people who want a real plan, move fast, and expect their advisors to keep up. CPA-led tax strategy and fiduciary investing, one table. Common questions ## People in this spot usually ask. **Q: My employer withheld taxes on my RSUs. Am I done?** Often not. Supplemental withholding rates frequently sit below a high earner's true marginal rate, so a large vest can leave a significant balance due. A mid-year projection tells you exactly where you stand while there's still time to respond. **Q: Should I sell my vested shares right away?** There's no universal answer — it's a balance of tax cost, concentration risk, and your confidence in the company. What we'd argue is universal: the decision should be a written policy you set once, not a gut call you re-litigate every vest. **Q: I got a large one-time payout this year. What's the first move?** Before anything else: a tax projection for the year, so every other decision — charitable giving, retirement contributions, timing of other income — is made against real numbers instead of guesses. **Q: Do I need a financial advisor if I'm still in my 30s or 40s?** A windfall year is precisely when planning compounds hardest — you have more years ahead for good decisions to pay off. The habit of waiting until 60 comes from an era when advice was sold with products. Fiduciary planning is about the decade in front of you. Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Start here ## One conversation. No pressure, no pitch. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## Federal Employee Retirement in Utah Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/situations/federal-employee-retirement Federal Employee Retirement in Utah — FERS, TSP & Your One Shot at It | Cannon Capital What's actually at stake ## Irreversible elections, made in a two-month window. The government used to staff people to help you retire. Now you're on your own — and several of these choices, once filed, never reopen. 01 ### The survivor benefit election is forever Full, partial, or none — chosen once, at retirement, with your spouse's notarized consent. The wrong election can cost a surviving spouse the pension income and the health coverage that rides with it. 02 ### Your TSP needs a decision, not a default Keep it in the TSP with its famously low costs, or roll it over for consolidation and flexibility — there are honest cases both ways. A fiduciary is obligated to tell you when staying put is your better move. That's the difference between advice and a sales pitch. 03 ### Sick leave and service credit change the math Unused sick leave converts to service time under FERS. Deposit and redeposit decisions for temporary or refunded service can move your pension meaningfully — but only if handled before the paperwork goes in. 04 ### The date you pick moves real money End-of-month versus end-of-year, your MRA, the FERS supplement before 62 — retirement-date mechanics that are worth planning years ahead, not discovering in the exit packet. How Cannon helps ## Fiduciary answers, in federal language. We plan the whole retirement — the pension election, the TSP decision, taxes on all of it, and the estate around it — as one coordinated plan. Fee-only, no products, no commissions: if the numbers say leave the TSP right where it is, that's exactly what we'll tell you. Common questions ## People in this spot usually ask. **Q: Should I roll over my TSP when I retire?** Sometimes — and sometimes absolutely not. The TSP's costs are among the lowest anywhere, and for some retirees staying put is the right answer. A rollover can make sense for consolidation, withdrawal flexibility, or coordinated tax planning. A fee-only fiduciary is obligated to weigh both honestly — which is precisely the conversation to have before touching anything. **Q: What is the FERS survivor benefit election?** At retirement you elect whether your survivor receives a portion of your pension after your death — full, partial, or none, generally with spousal consent. It also determines whether your spouse can keep federal health benefits. It is one of the few retirement decisions that is effectively permanent, which is why it deserves real analysis, not a checkbox. **Q: Does unused sick leave really increase my pension?** Under FERS, yes — unused sick leave converts to additional service time in the pension calculation. Combined with deposit decisions for temporary or refunded service, these details can change your pension for life. **Q: When should I start planning my federal retirement?** Five years out is ideal — that's when survivor, insurance-continuation, and service-credit windows still leave room to act. But even a few months out, the sequencing of your date, your TSP, and your tax picture is worth getting right. You only do this once. **Q: Do you work with federal employees outside Utah?** Yes. The rules are federal; we serve clients across the country from Cottonwood Heights, Utah. Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Start here ## One conversation. No pressure, no pitch. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## I Inherited Money or an IRA Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/situations/inherited-wealth I Inherited Money or an IRA — What Now? Fiduciary Guidance | Cannon Capital, Utah What's actually at stake ## A few real deadlines, buried in a pile of fake urgency. The most expensive inheritance mistakes come from moving too fast on the wrong things — and too slow on the few items with real clocks attached. 01 ### Inherited retirement accounts have rules of their own Most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty an inherited IRA within ten years — and the timing of those withdrawals across your own income years is a genuine tax-planning decision, not an afterthought. 02 ### The step-up in basis changes the math Inherited taxable assets generally receive a stepped-up cost basis. That can make repositioning far cheaper than people assume — and makes 'never sell what Dad bought' a sentiment worth examining, gently, with numbers. 03 ### Titling and beneficiaries come first Before strategy: retitle accounts correctly, claim what needs claiming, and update your own beneficiaries — the quiet housekeeping that prevents expensive problems years later. 04 ### The money means something An inheritance carries the person who built it. A written plan — income, growth, giving, your own estate — is how it stays intact and purposeful instead of dissolving into the everyday. How Cannon helps ## Patient where it can be, precise where it must be. We triage the real deadlines first, then build the long-term plan at a humane pace — investments, tax strategy, and your own estate documents, coordinated by one fiduciary team. Common questions ## People in this spot usually ask. **Q: What do I actually have to do right away after inheriting?** Usually a short list: secure and retitle accounts, notify custodians, and identify anything with a statutory clock — inherited retirement accounts chief among them. Most investment decisions can and should wait until the plan exists. **Q: What is the 10-year rule on inherited IRAs?** Most non-spouse beneficiaries must fully distribute an inherited IRA within ten years of the original owner's death. Because every withdrawal is ordinary income, spreading them across your lower-income years — rather than taking them all at once — is often worth real money. **Q: Do I owe tax on the inheritance itself?** Utah has no state inheritance tax, and federal estate tax is settled by the estate before assets reach most beneficiaries. What you will owe tax on is income the inherited assets generate — and withdrawals from inherited retirement accounts. That's where planning focuses. **Q: Should I keep the investments the way they were left to me?** Honor the intent, examine the portfolio. Step-up in basis often makes repositioning inexpensive, and a portfolio built for someone else's retirement rarely fits your life unchanged. We'll show you the trade-offs and let the numbers speak. Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Start here ## One conversation. No pressure, no pitch. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## I Just Sold My Business Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/situations/sold-a-business I Just Sold My Business — Now What? Tax & Wealth Strategy | Cannon Capital, Utah What's actually at stake ## The clock starts the day you close. Most sellers meet their CPA in April — after every good option has expired. The difference between planning before year-end and after it is usually measured in six figures. 01 ### The capital gains bill is not fixed yet Installment structure, timing across tax years, loss harvesting, and state residency questions all still move the number — but only before deadlines pass. After that, the bill is just the bill. 02 ### Charitable intent is worth the most right now If giving is part of your plans at all, a donor-advised fund or charitable vehicle funded in the sale year deducts against your highest-ever income. The same gift next year is worth a fraction as much. 03 ### The proceeds need a job Cash after a sale tends to sit — or get spent on the first exciting thing. A written plan gives every dollar an assignment: income now, growth later, reserves always. 04 ### Your estate plan is suddenly out of date The documents written when the company was illiquid probably don't fit a liquid eight-figure balance sheet. Exemptions, trusts, and titling deserve a fresh look before the next tax year. How Cannon helps ## One table: investments, tax, and what it's all for. Our CPA-led tax strategy team and your advisor work the same plan — so the reinvestment strategy, the tax moves, and the estate documents stop contradicting each other. Fee-only, fiduciary, no products. Common questions ## People in this spot usually ask. **Q: How long do I have to reduce taxes on my business sale?** Some decisions must happen before the sale closes; most of the rest close at year-end of the sale year. The sooner planning starts — ideally before the letter of intent — the more options stay open. If you've already closed, there is usually still meaningful ground to cover before December 31. **Q: Should I invest the proceeds all at once?** It depends on the plan, not on a rule of thumb. What matters first is separating money with a near-term job (taxes, reserves, planned purchases) from long-term capital — then investing the long-term portion deliberately rather than reactively. **Q: What is a donor-advised fund and why does everyone mention it after a sale?** A donor-advised fund lets you take a charitable deduction in your highest-income year while granting the money to charities over time. In a sale year, that timing difference can be worth a great deal — which is why it comes up in nearly every post-sale plan where charitable giving matters to the family. **Q: Do you work with my existing CPA and attorney?** Yes. We coordinate with the professionals you already trust — and our in-house tax practice can carry the strategy work if you'd rather have it all at one table. Educational only — not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every situation is different; the right answer depends on the numbers, and that's what the strategy session is for. Start here ## One conversation. No pressure, no pitch. Sit down with a fiduciary — not a salesman — and leave with a complimentary strategy for your exact situation, whether or not you ever hire us. → Book your strategy session What to bring ## The Cannon Capital Team Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/team The Cannon Capital Team — Advisors, Tax, and the People Behind Them The advisors ## Who you will actually be sitting with. ### Clint Cannon, CFA President & Founder Clint graduated from the University of Utah with a B.A. in political science and from Brigham Young University with a master's in public administration, with additional study at Penn State. A stint at Tracy Collins Bank & Trust was followed by ten years at First Security Investment Management as Director of Research and Senior Portfolio Manager. The itch to do his own thing was not sufficiently scratched until he started Cannon & Rowe Asset Management with his partner Jim Rowe. Over the years that startup became Cannon Capital Management. Four decades in, the firm still runs on the standard he set at the beginning: no products, no commissions, and no reason to recommend anything except that it is right for the client. Clint and his bride, Diane, have four children, four in-laws, seventeen grandchildren with enough energy to light up a city, and no pets. He describes himself as an adventure-seeking world traveller, biker and hiker, smoked-meat hobbyist, and a master at avoiding any repair involving a motor or electricity. ### Chace Cannon, CFP Chief Executive Officer Chace attended Salt Lake Community College and the University of Utah, receiving a B.S. in finance — though he is a BYU fan through and through. He joined Cannon Capital part-time in January 2009 and full-time that April, having found the thing he actually wanted to do with his life: help people with their money. He leads the firm, runs the financial planning side of the business, and co-manages the corporate retirement practice with Clint. His job in a client meeting is to turn complexity into an answer in plain English — what the decision is, what it costs, and what happens if you do nothing. Chace and his wife Breanne have four children who are the joy of their life. He describes himself as an avid Lake Powell traveller, a dare-seeking boater, a determined spender of time with family, a weekend entertainer of persons, and a community-service devotee. ### Justin Vargas Portfolio Manager Justin is an Advisor and Portfolio Manager at Cannon Capital Management, where he leads investment research and helps employers build stronger, more cost-effective 401(k) plans for their employees. A graduate of the University of Utah with a degree in Finance, Justin has always been drawn to markets — from studying economic trends to digging into individual companies — and brings that same curiosity to the work he does for clients every day. He is currently pursuing his CFP® certification to deepen his ability to serve clients across every stage of their financial lives. Outside the office, Justin is an avid outdoorsman. You’ll find him snowboarding and mountain biking through Utah’s mountains, hiking its trails, chasing a good round of golf, or out on the tennis court. ### Triton Lee, CPA Director of Strategic Tax Planning Triton runs the tax side, which is why the tax consequence of a decision here is known before the decision is made rather than discovered in April. Having a CPA inside the firm — not down the street — is the reason investments, tax strategy and estate get built by one coordinated team instead of three that have never spoken. Tax, bookkeeping and payroll services are provided through Cannon Capital Tax, LLC, an affiliated practice. Behind the advisors ## The people you will actually deal with most weeks. Advisors get the meetings. What clients feel day to day is the operations and service side — the transfer that went through without being chased, the paperwork that was right the first time, the call that got returned the same afternoon. That is not a courtesy line. In a firm this size it is the whole service experience, and it is where a plan either stays real or quietly becomes a document in a drawer. #### Christi Smith Client Success Manager #### Hailee Cox Client Success Manager #### Alicia Duford Office Administrator #### We are a people company We are hired by people to be stewards of their assets. The work is investment management and planning; the business is people. #### We listen Best done with our mouths shut. We ask the questions that help us understand what you need — then we listen to the answers. #### We are consistent Markets move and life changes. Through it we stay present: to explain, to adjust, and to move forward with you. #### We do it right If a thing is worth doing it is worth doing properly, including the parts nobody sees. More than 60 years of combined experience, and industry accreditations including the CFA, CFP and AIF. Giving back ## What we do with it outside the office. Giving back to our community matters to us. If you have a cause in mind, tell us about it — these are the two we currently support. #### Donor Connect Donor Connect links tragedy and hope in a way nothing else quite does. We are proud to help support their annual Race for Life. #### For the Kids FTK provides food for elementary-school children on weekends, over Thanksgiving, and through extended breaks such as Christmas. We contribute both time and money, and it is a privilege to. Start here ## Meet the people, then decide. A complimentary strategy session with the team that would actually be doing the work. You leave with the analysis whether or not you hire us. → Schedule your strategy Read our investment philosophy Cannon Capital Management does not use client testimonials. Advisory services offered through Cannon Capital Management, Inc., a Registered Investment Adviser; tax, bookkeeping and payroll through its affiliated practice, Cannon Capital Tax, LLC. Professional designations require ongoing education and adherence to a code of ethics; they are not a guarantee of investment results. ## What to Bring to Your First Meeting Source: https://www.cannoncap.com/what-to-bring What to Bring to Your First Meeting — Cannon Capital Management The checklist ## Eight things that turn a chat into a plan. Statements can be recent-ish — nothing needs to be perfect. We can also scan documents in the meeting, so a folder of paper works just as well as a tidy PDF. ### Investment & retirement account statements Your most recent statements for 401(k)s, IRAs, brokerage accounts, HSAs — whatever you have, wherever it lives. Old-employer 401(k)s especially; they're the most commonly forgotten money in America. ### Your last tax return The single most information-dense document you own. Two years is even better — it shows us where the tax opportunities and the leaks actually are. ### A recent pay stub or income picture Salary, bonus structure, self-employment income — however you're paid. If your income varies, a rough sense of a normal year and a big year. ### Equity compensation details, if any RSU grants and vesting schedules, options, ESPP — the documents from your equity portal. This is where the biggest surprises (good and bad) tend to hide. ### Employer benefits summary Your 401(k) match formula, HSA options, insurance through work. Free money you're not collecting shows up here more often than anywhere else. ### Estate documents, if they exist Will, trust, powers of attorney — even if they're old. "We did those when the kids were born" is exactly the kind of thing worth a fresh look. ### Debts and big commitments Mortgage statement, other loans, and anything large on the horizon — a home, a business, tuition, a family commitment. ### Your questions Whatever's actually on your mind — the thing that made you reach out. That question usually matters more than any document on this list. Everything you share is handled confidentially. Bringing documents does not obligate you to anything — the strategy session is complimentary either way. Ready when you are ## Come as prepared as you feel like being. Fast movers can bring the folder and leave with a plan taking shape. Deliberate movers can come with questions and take their time. Both are exactly right. → Book your strategy session Email us