Our Approach
How we design, manage, and guide financial strategies
Planning Built Around Real Life
At Populus Wealth, we believe financial planning should be both deeply strategic and deeply human. It should help you feel more prepared, more informed, and more confident in the decisions in front of you, whether you are building wealth, protecting what you’ve created, supporting the people you love, or navigating a major life transition.
Founded by Daniella Friend, MBA, CDFA®, Populus Wealth was created to help clients navigate both the day-to-day realities of managing wealth and the pivotal moments that shape it. Whether you are planning for retirement, navigating divorce, caring for aging parents, preparing for a business transition, or simply trying to make smarter financial decisions with greater clarity, our role is to help you move forward with confidence.
We work with clients who want more than investment management alone. They want a trusted advisor who understands the full picture of their financial life and can help connect the dots between today’s decisions and long-term goals. Our approach is rooted in thoughtful strategy, proactive planning, and a relationship-centered experience designed to help clients feel supported through both opportunity and uncertainty.
At the heart of our work is a simple belief: your financial life should feel aligned with the life you’re building. Our goal is to help you create a plan that feels intentional, sustainable, and built to support where you are today and where you want to go next.
Rooted in Your Values.
Committed to Results.
We are an independent registered investment advisor and financial planning firm serving individuals, families, and business owners nationwide through virtual, personalized financial guidance.
Hundreds of people have trusted our team to help them identify and pursue their goals through disciplined portfolio management, customized advice, careful planning, and clear communication.
We believe clear direction and consistency are important principles in both life and investing. Our approach is centered around helping clients grow and protect their wealth through thoughtful portfolio construction and sound financial planning designed to simplify and support long-term financial security and freedom.
How We Support Clients
We partner with you to create a clear, strategic roadmap that aligns
your financial decisions with the life you want to build.
Support Through Life Transitions
Some of the most important financial decisions people make happen during seasons of change. Populus Wealth provides thoughtful guidance during these transitions, helping clients navigate both the emotional and practical sides of major financial decisions.
Divorce Financial Planning
Divorce often brings a flood of financial questions at the same time you’re trying to navigate a deeply personal life transition. As a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst® (CDFA®), Daniella helps clients navigate the financial side of divorce with clarity and strategy, from understanding assets and cash flow to evaluating long-term implications and planning for what comes next.
Widowhood Support
Losing a spouse often means navigating grief and major financial responsibility at the same time. We provide compassionate, steady support for clients who are facing finances alone for the first time, helping them make thoughtful decisions, organize next steps, and move forward at a pace that feels manageable.
Couples Financial Harmony Coaching
Money can be one of the biggest sources of tension in a relationship, especially when partners approach spending, saving, risk, or long-term planning differently. We help couples have more productive, honest conversations about money so they can align around goals, values, and financial decisions with greater clarity and less conflict, while building a shared financial foundation that feels sustainable for both partners.
Ongoing Wealth Planning & Coordination
Ongoing wealth planning is about more than managing investments in isolation. Populus Wealth provides comprehensive guidance and coordination across the many moving pieces of a client’s financial life, helping ensure decisions around wealth management, tax strategy, estate planning, and long-term goals stay aligned over time.
Financial Roadmap Planning
Many people reach a point where they’re doing a lot of the right things financially, but still don’t feel like all the pieces are working together. We help clients step back, organize the full picture, and create a clear plan for what comes next. That may include cash flow, savings strategy, debt payoff, retirement planning, education funding, major purchases, or long-term wealth goals, all built into one roadmap designed around real life.
Wealth Management
As wealth grows, so does the complexity of managing it well. We help clients make thoughtful decisions about how their assets are invested, how risk is being managed, and how their portfolio fits into the bigger picture of their financial life. From ongoing portfolio management and rebalancing to tax-aware investment strategy and guidance around more complex scenarios like concentrated positions, equity compensation, or alternative investments, our role is to help ensure your wealth is being managed with intention.
Tax Strategy
Taxes influence far more of your financial life than most people realize, from retirement income decisions to investment sales, charitable giving, and long-term wealth transfer. We help clients think proactively about tax planning throughout the year, identifying opportunities around Roth conversions, retirement distributions, capital gains, tax-loss harvesting, and charitable planning, while working closely with tax professionals to keep strategy aligned.
Legacy & Estate Planning Coordination
Estate planning is about more than documents. It’s about making thoughtful decisions now so your wishes are clear, your loved ones are protected, and the people carrying out your plans have the guidance they need. We help clients think through beneficiary designations, wills, trusts, powers of attorney, inheritance structures, and the broader legacy questions that come with planning for the future, while coordinating with estate professionals to help ensure everything works together.
Risk Management
A strong financial plan is not just about growth. It also needs to account for what could disrupt it. We help clients evaluate the protection side of their financial life, from insurance coverage and liability considerations to investment risk and emergency planning, so they can feel more confident that what they’re building is protected as well as growing.
An Investment in You.
Our financial planning process is designed to bring clarity, confidence, and structure to the decisions shaping your financial life.
What You Gain from Populus Wealth
A clear financial roadmap built around your goals, values, and life circumstances
Greater confidence in the decisions that shape your wealth, family, and future
Proactive guidance through complex financial questions, life transitions, and planning opportunities
More time to focus on the people and priorities that matter most
Peace of mind knowing your financial life is being managed with intention, coordination, and care
We take a family office-like approach.
At the center of that approach is coordination. We serve as a central point of contact across the many moving pieces of your financial life, helping ensure that the people, strategies, and decisions involved are working together rather than in silos.
That means we do more than build portfolios or answer one-off financial questions. We help clients think holistically about wealth management, tax strategy, retirement planning, estate considerations, insurance needs, family dynamics, and the practical financial decisions that come with life’s transitions. We also act as a quarterback alongside the other professionals in your world, whether that includes CPAs, estate attorneys, insurance professionals, or other advisors, helping align the broader strategy so nothing important falls through the cracks.
Our goal is to bring structure, clarity, and confidence to your financial life so you are not left trying to coordinate everything on your own or piece together advice from multiple sources without a clear plan.
Ongoing Personalized Financial Planning with Investment Advisory Services
This is designed for business owners, widows, divorcees, those with equity compensation, those seeking a financially independent, work-optional lifestyle, and high-income earners.
Quarterly review meetings and check-ins as needed
Financial Plans starting at $12,000/yr
for more complex cases, $18,000/yr + Tiered Fee Schedule to manage Investment Advisory Assets
*Financial Plan Fee is waived with $1mm or more in assets under management
Investment Advisory Services without Ongoing Personalized Financial Planning
Designed for those who are primarily interested in investment management and are not currently in need of a financial plan.
Annual review meetings and check-ins as needed
Tiered Fee Schedule to manage Investment Advisory Assets
*Minimums apply. Please reach out to request/determine if you're a fit.
Ongoing Personalized Financial Planning without Investment Advisory Services
Designed for those primarily invested in hard assets, like real estate, or those who are interested in planning for their financial future, but are not currently in need of a third-party managing their soft investments.
Includes ~5 onboarding meetings, followed by an annual review and check-ins as needed.
Starting at $12,000/yr for more complex cases, $18,000/yr
Next Steps
1) Schedule your Get to Know Us call by clicking on the green link below
2) We go over your situation to see if it makes sense to work together
3) Request access to your encrypted folder to begin uploading information for onboarding