About Eric
I'm a fiduciary investment adviser and a tax professional. That combination is an unusual one, and it's the whole point: the person managing your money is the same person preparing your return, and neither job gets done without the other in view.
I've spent my career around other people's money — how it gets measured, lent and moved. For the last stretch of it I built the software that banks and lenders use to read a person's financial life: tax returns, W‑2s, 1099s, K‑1s, pay stubs, bank statements. Software I helped build is used by some of the largest banks in the world.
The heart of that work was teaching a machine what every line of a tax return meant, and what it revealed about the family behind it. I have read an unreasonable number of tax documents, and I've made my peace with that.
What the software could never do is the part that actually matters. I've been preparing tax returns for low-income families here in the Bay Area since 2014 — still the part of my year I look forward to most — and it taught me that what families need isn't a faster form. It's someone who understands their particular situation and can explain it back to them in plain language.
Eventually those two halves stopped feeling like separate jobs.
Tax seasons volunteering for Bay Area families
Reading financial paperwork — for families, and for lenders
Where I live, and where I'll gladly come to you
Person you call
My experience handling the money side of a death began in my own family.
For some, I did the work myself: closing bank and brokerage accounts, filing life insurance claims, moving a pension to a surviving spouse, rolling over inherited IRAs, and preparing the final tax returns. For others, I advised the executor through the estate, step by step.
I've been doing this for my family for years. Now I do it for clients.
It's why I pay particular attention to older couples, and to the adult children who end up quietly carrying this for their parents. And it's why I would far rather meet a family some years before anything happens than in the month afterward.
The short version of why you can hand me this.
I'm the investment adviser representative of Etu Financial, a registered investment adviser in California. We build the plan together; from there I manage the portfolio for you — placing trades, rebalancing as markets move, and keeping every move aligned with your tax situation. As a fiduciary I am legally required to act in your interest, and because the practice is fee-only I earn nothing from commissions or product sales.
An Enrolled Agent holds unlimited rights to practice and represent clients before the IRS — the same representation rights as a CPA or an attorney. In practice that means I can file your returns, speak to the IRS on your behalf, and have official correspondence come to my desk rather than to your kitchen counter. I'm a member of the National Association of Enrolled Agents.
Coursework in economics and finance that taught me to reason from first principles rather than rules of thumb. Your situation is not the average situation, and the average answer is often the wrong one.
I was the one who thought calculus was fun. It never wore off. Somebody in this relationship ought to genuinely enjoy running the numbers, and it may as well be me.
My family and I live in Walnut Creek. I coach kids' sports, serve communion at my church, and play disc golf around Northern California whenever the calendar allows it.
That's the life I'm building here, and it's the same reason I do this work. When you hire me, you get me — the same person on your taxes, on your investments, and on the phone when something comes up. Someone who understands your story, knows your family, and is thinking about your finances so that you don't have to. I'd love to serve your family the way I serve my own community.
A short conversation about what you've got going on — your taxes, your investments, or helping a parent with theirs. No pitch, no paperwork, no obligation.
Book a free consultation