Financial planning and investing for therapists in private practice
You do work that makes a real difference. You meet people during times when they need steady guidance, and you offer support that helps them move forward. With the rising demand for mental health care, you're likely managing a full caseload — balancing your clients' needs with the ongoing complexity of running a business.
Thrive is a financial planning and investment management firm built exclusively for therapists in private practice — combining precise financial planning with institutional-grade investment management, so your financial life gets the same careful attention you give your clients, and you can pursue your goals with clarity and confidence.
Why Thrive
"Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum."
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Holmes was reminding us that life isn’t a fixed equation. It’s something you shape, revise, and refine as you go — and your financial plan should work the same way. Planning and investment management are offered separately so you can choose what you need, when you need it, without bundled fees, required asset levels, or commitments that don’t fit your life today.
As your picture evolves, you won’t be handed off or redirected. You’ll work with the same advisor over time — someone who knows your situation, understands your priorities, and provides steady guidance through each stage of your journey.
Comparison Dedicated CFP AdvisorThriveVanguardSchwabFidelityBuilt for therapists in private practiceYesNoNoNoUpfront commitment$500 Fee$500,000 Investment$500,000 Investment$500,000 InvestmentFlat-fee financial planningYesNoNoNoLocal Offices NationwideNoNoYesYesOngoing Planning & Investment Mgmt fee on a $100,000 portfolio$900Not offeredNot offeredNot offeredOngoing Planning & Investment Mgmt fee on a $500,000 portfolio$1,500/yr$1,500/yr$4,000/yr$6,250/yrComparative figures sourced from publicly available competitor websites as of 6/12/26; subject to change without notice. For Thrive's complete fee schedule, please refer to our Form ADV Part 2A.
“Outer order contributes to inner calm.”
Gretchen Rubin
With a full clinical schedule and a busy life, it’s easy for personal finances to fall out of view. Your client portal brings everything together in one place — bank accounts, credit cards, investments, income, spending, and budgets update across institutions, giving you a clear picture of where you stand at any moment.
Practice and personal finances are kept cleanly separated, with user‑defined rules that categorize income and expenses automatically going forward. You always know what belongs to the practice and what belongs to your household.
For self‑employed clinicians, that clarity isn’t optional — practice income and expenses directly affect taxes, savings, and personal cash flow in ways W‑2 professionals never have to think about. The portal helps you maintain that clarity with less effort and more confidence.
All of your income, spending and budgeting details remain private to you, and a secure document vault keeps important records organized and easy to access whenever you need them.
“A penny saved is twopence clear.”
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin’s reminder still holds true: paying attention to taxes can make every dollar go further. Here are several areas of precision that help you plan with greater clarity and confidence.
1. Detailed annual cash flow projections. Cash‑flow projections are modeled in annual detail across your entire planning horizon, capturing adjustments as “life happens” — a year with a big expense like a new roof or an extra‑special vacation, a stretch of unexpected income, a period of reduced work, a change in tax law, or a salary increase to expand pre-tax savings.
2. Separate wage and distribution modeling. W‑2 wages, S‑Corp distributions, and self‑employment income are each modeled with their correct payroll tax, QBI, and deductibility treatment. This precision ensures the plan reflects the full structure of income accurately within both tax and cash-flow projections — capturing the short-term tax savings of a higher distribution allocation and the long-term Social Security cost of a lower W-2 wage, since Social Security benefits are based on wages only.
3. Multiple Income Streams and Growth Rates. Each income source, whether primary practice earnings or additional work, can be forecasted separately with its own unique growth rate. Income rarely rises in a straight line, so projections can flex to reflect periods of faster growth, transitions to part‑time, or temporary pauses. This capability keeps projections realistic and mirrors how income and growth actually unfold over time.
4. Liability and Deductions Modeling. Real‑estate and other liabilities are modeled alongside deductible expenses such as mortgage interest and state and local taxes. Retirement contributions are integrated with the same precision. Together, these details ensure projections capture how debt, deductions, and savings interact across time.
5. Investment Management Expenses. Investment management expenses are reflected directly in your projections rather than using a blanket estimate or omitting them entirely. Actual fees are incorporated based on your portfolio’s structure, keeping return assumptions precise and transparent.
“There is no better teacher than history in determining the future.”
Charlie Munger
The growth rates applied to your investments are among the most critical assumptions in your financial plan. Even a 1% difference in annual return, compounded over decades, can meaningfully affect your plan.
1. Length of historical data. Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman observed that “the single most important question (when forecasting) is ‘what is the baseline?’.” In financial planning, that baseline is the historical data used to estimate future returns. The starting point for developing all of your asset class estimates is 95 years of data (1929–2024).
2. Sub‑asset class detail. In addition to primary asset classes, I estimate return and volatility for 21 specific sub‑asset classes — such as growth and value stocks, long‑ and short‑term bonds, and real estate investment trusts. These estimates draw on 58 years of historical data (1966–2024).
3. Consistent baseline data. Each baseline has the same starting and ending date, creating an “apples‑to‑apples” foundation. This alignment makes comparisons more reliable and ensures that long‑term projections rest on a clear and even footing.
4. Real versus nominal growth rates. What matters most in the long run is not the size of your portfolio in nominal dollars, but the purchasing power it represents in today’s terms. Real, inflation‑adjusted growth rates are used when building your financial plan.
5. Unbiased by interest rate changes. Stock returns are not strongly correlated to interest rates, but fixed income returns are. Estimates based only on periods of rising or falling rates can be skewed too high or too low. Your estimates are built with baselines that begin and end with very similar interest rates.
6. Not influenced by near‑term noise. Nobel Prize–winning behavioral economist Richard Thaler emphasizes the importance of the “outside view,” which relies on long‑term historical trends rather than short‑term predictions. Your estimates follow this principle. They are not adjusted based on recent market swings, economic headlines, or forecasts about the next year or two. Short‑term conditions can change quickly and often unpredictably, but long‑term historical patterns tend to be far more stable. By grounding your plan in those long‑term patterns, your projections avoid the noise and stay focused on what actually matters for a decades‑long planning horizon.
7. Adjusted for valuation extremes. Even multi‑decade periods can be distorted by unusually high optimism or deep pessimism in markets at the beginning or end of the baseline period. To avoid baselines that begin in bubbles or end in crashes, your estimates use periods with very similar starting and ending valuations, as measured by Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller's CAPE ratio. This keeps long‑term return assumptions grounded in economic reality and not distorted by sentiment-driven extremes.
“The market is a voting machine, whereon countless individuals register choices which are the product partly of reason and partly of emotion."
Security Analysis
As Daniel Kahneman explains, decision‑making heuristics are most used when people are “faced with a difficult question.” Forecasting the return of an individual stock or bond months or years ahead is exactly that kind of difficult question. Industries, companies, and products change, but the average investor’s decision process does not. This conclusion follows from more than two decades of observing how professional and amateur investors make choices, combined with my own and others’ research.
While I offer six traditional, ultra‑low‑cost, market‑cap weighted ETF portfolios across a range of risk profiles, designed to match popular stock and bond benchmarks, I also offer three Behavioral‑Factor‑Weighted (BFW) portfolios that each pursue a different risk/return profile than those benchmarks. Unlike industry‑standard market‑capitalization weighting, these BFW portfolios are weighted primarily by behavioral factors.
To understand the behavioral factors, it helps to think about two broad types of investors who try to beat the market: bargain‑hunters and trend‑followers. Bargain‑hunters are drawn to stocks that have fallen sharply in the hope they will rebound, a pattern influenced by anchoring and the gambler’s fallacy. Trend‑followers chase recent winners on the expectation that the momentum will continue, driven by recency bias, the bandwagon effect, and the endowment effect.
A third group of companies receives little attention from either bargain‑hunters or trend‑followers: stable, lower‑visibility businesses that aren’t obvious bargains and whose recent charts aren’t attention‑grabbing. Empirical evidence shows these companies often produce competitive risk‑adjusted returns and tend to suffer smaller declines during broad market sell‑offs.
Behavioral‑Factor‑Weighted portfolios translate predictable investor biases into disciplined, rules‑based weightings that seek a differentiated risk/return profile versus market‑cap benchmarks.
Click here to download investment strategies factsheet.
All investments involve risk, including loss of principal.
Note: Security Analysis (1934) was written by Benjamin Graham — Warren Buffett’s mentor and an early observer of how human psychology shapes market behavior.
Services
Financial Planning
1.
Get organized. I help bring your financial information — goals, income, expenses, and accounts — together in one place, so everything is clear and easy to work from.
2.
Build your plan. I review your financial information and develop a personalized plan that gives you a clear understanding of where you stand and confidence in how to move toward your goals.
3.
Explore “what ifs” and adjust. As your life and goals evolve, I’ll update your plan and run scenarios to help you evaluate decisions and move forward with confidence.
$500 one-time setup fee, then $62.50/month, billed monthly
Investment Management
1.
Implement your strategy. I open your accounts and put your investment strategy into place, so your investments are aligned with your plan.
2.
Manage and maintain your portfolio. I monitor and rebalance your portfolio as needed, and provide support for contributions, withdrawals, and other account needs.
3.
Focus on tax efficiency. I incorporate tax-aware strategies to help improve after-tax outcomes, including asset location, tax-loss harvesting, and thoughtful withdrawals.
0.15% of assets under management, billed quarterly
Resources
A Health Savings Account (HSA) can serve as a powerful complement to retirement accounts like SEP‑IRAs and Solo 401(k)s, especially for self‑employed therapists who want both tax advantages and flexibility in managing healthcare costs.
Self-employed therapists have several retirement account options, including SEP-IRAs, Solo 401(k)s, and Roth IRAs. Each plan offers different contribution limits, tax advantages, and administrative requirements, making it possible to tailor savings strategies to your practice size and income level.
About
I've seen how deeply mental health challenges can affect individuals and families, and those experiences have given me a lasting respect for the work you do. I founded Thrive to support you — and the people you help — because as a private practice owner, you run your business without the financial infrastructure or support available to employed therapists.
I graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in finance and have spent the past 25 years as an institutional investor and financial advisor. You can learn more about my experience on LinkedIn.
Thank you for the work you do.
Take care,
Trevor