SERVICES
Engineered wealth strategy for business owners and high earners.
The structure, and the six pieces inside it.
Most of what I see is assembled from products. A retirement account here, a policy there, a will drafted a decade ago. Each piece is defensible on its own. Together they leak.
I start from the structure instead. I look at how your income, your business, your tax exposure and your estate actually connect, then build one coordinated design around them. Premium financing is usually the load bearing piece. The rest of what follows supports it.
Below is what each piece does, who it fits, and who it is wrong for. That last part is the section most people in my business leave out. It saves us both time.
Premium Finance
Lender capital funds a life insurance policy built for cash accumulation rather than for the death benefit alone. The policy is the collateral. The lender is paid from the policy, from other collateral, or from you, depending on how the structure is built and how it performs.
What you are buying is access to an asset that accumulates on a tax advantaged basis and passes outside your taxable estate, funded largely by borrowed money rather than by pulling capital out of your business. That is the whole idea. Everything else is design and arithmetic.
It is not an investment product competing with your next deal. It is a place for income and proceeds to sit and compound, built to require as little of your own working capital as the structure allows.
Who it fits. Owners, firm partners and real estate operators who already borrow to build. Income with years left in it. A horizon measured in decades rather than quarters. Income that arrives unevenly or arrives all at once. Assets that will pass to someone, and a preference that they pass efficiently. Health and age that allow a policy to be underwritten. If you have recently sold something, or expect to, that is the moment this does the most work.
Who it is wrong for. If you cannot be underwritten, none of it applies. The structure depends on an insurable life, and age and health decide that. If the horizon is short, the math does not work. If the income is not durable, do not start, because a structure that depends on servicing a loan is the wrong thing to take on between roles or in the first year of a new venture. If you want liquidity, this is the wrong place. If two or more of those describe you, tell me and I will say so on the call rather than build you an illustration.
What the risks actually are. Policy performance is not guaranteed beyond what the contract guarantees, and the contract guarantees less than the illustration shows. Rates move. If the policy underperforms or borrowing costs rise, the loan can require more collateral, more premium, or both. If it cannot be serviced, unwinding it has real cost and real tax consequences. None of that is a reason not to do it. It is the reason to model it properly first, and to know in advance what the bad years look like. Any illustration I give you will show those years, not only the good ones.
Tax-Advantaged Retirement
Most high earners have already filled the accounts that come with rules attached. The 401(k) is maxed, the deferred comp is elected, and what is left is a retirement taxed at whatever the rates turn out to be, drawn on a schedule somebody else wrote.
This is about where the income sits after that. Structures that accumulate on a tax advantaged basis, that are not tied to a required distribution age, and that can be drawn on in the order that suits your actual exit rather than the order the tax code defaults to.
Who it fits. People whose income has outgrown the conventional vehicles, and people whose retirement date is a decision rather than a date on a calendar. Business owners whose exit and whose retirement are the same event.
Who it is wrong for. Anyone who has not yet taken the employer match, filled the qualified plan, or dealt with expensive debt. Those come first and they are not close. If that is where you are, I will tell you, and there is nothing for me in that conversation.
Life Insurance
Term is the honest answer more often than people in my business admit. If the need is protection for a fixed number of years, a young family and a mortgage, buy term and put the difference to work in your business.
The rest of it, whole life and accumulation designs and the structures that get complicated, earns its place when cash value, creditor position and how the money passes are actually the point rather than a bonus. That generally means ownership income and an estate large enough for the tax treatment to matter. It is also the funding mechanism behind a buy sell agreement, which is the difference between a partnership that survives a death and one that becomes a negotiation with a widow.
Who it fits. Anyone whose family's plan depends on their income. Owners whose business depends on their presence. Partners who have a buy sell agreement on paper and nothing funding it.
Who it is wrong for. If you are under the line where the tax treatment is the point, the advanced structures are an expensive way to buy something simpler. Term is not a consolation prize and I will say so.
Estate & Legacy Planning
Most of what I see is a will from a decade ago, beneficiary designations nobody has looked at since, and assets titled whichever way was convenient at the time. Each piece is defensible. Together they do not hold, and the failure usually shows up at the worst possible moment.
My work is making the insurance and accumulation pieces line up with the estate structure rather than fight it. Beneficiary designations override wills, and that surprises people. Titling decides what passes outside probate and what does not. An estate plan built before the business grew is often the largest unforced error in an otherwise careful financial life.
Who it fits. Families with real assets and a plan they have not reread. Owners with a succession question they have been postponing. Anyone whose estate has grown faster than their paperwork.
What I do not do. I do not draft, I do not file, and none of this is legal advice. I work alongside your attorney. If you have already built the structure, I work inside it rather than around it. If you do not have one, I will tell you that you need an attorney before you need me.
Annuities
A floor under the bills that arrive whether or not it has been a good year. Guaranteed income, sized to essentials, so that the rest of the portfolio can stay invested rather than being sold at the wrong moment to cover a mortgage payment.
The case for it is not the return. It is that a bad market in the first years of retirement does far more damage than the same market ten years later, and income that does not move takes that risk off the table for the part of your spending that cannot flex.
Who it fits. People close enough to retirement that the order of returns matters more than the average. People who would behave badly in a drawdown, which is most people, and who would rather not find out. I place fixed and fixed indexed annuities, and the minimum is $150,000 in investable assets.
Who it is wrong for. Anyone looking for growth. Liquidity is limited, surrender terms are real and they are the first thing I will show you. If the essentials are already covered by a pension and Social Security, you may not need this at all, and I will say so. We size it before we talk about products.
Long-Term Care Planning
The risk that quietly undoes the rest of it. One extended stay can consume what took decades to build, and it usually lands on the family member least able to argue about it.
Two ways to handle it. A standalone policy, which is cheaper and pays only if care is needed. Or a hybrid design that pays a benefit either way, which removes the what if I never use it objection that stops most people planning for this at all. Which one is right depends on your health, your age and whether the unused premium bothers you more than the higher cost does.
Who it fits. People in their fifties and early sixties, while underwriting is still straightforward. Adult children watching a parent's care consume an estate and deciding they will not do the same to their own family.
Who it is wrong for. Nobody, really, but the honest constraint is cost and timing. It gets more expensive and harder to qualify for every year you wait. If you are already in your seventies or already have the conditions that drive underwriting, the options narrow quickly and I will be straight with you about what is left.
The process
One. Fifteen minutes on video. You tell me the situation, I tell you whether any of this fits. Plenty of times the answer is that it does not, and that is a complete answer rather than the opening of a sequence.
Two. An underwriting reality check. Before anyone builds anything, we establish whether a policy can be underwritten and on what terms. Everything downstream depends on it, and there is no point designing around an assumption that has not been tested.
Three. Design and modeling. The policy and the loan get built against each other. You get a real number for your out of pocket and your collateral rather than a range from a brochure, and the model shows the downside years alongside the good ones.
Four. Review, including yours and your advisors'. Take it apart. Bring your CPA or your attorney. I would rather lose the sale than have you agree to something you did not understand, and the conversation is better with them in it.
Five. Implementation, then annual review. A structure like this is not set and forget. Collateral position and policy performance get looked at every year, because both sides of it move.
Step one costs you fifteen minutes. Nothing past it happens without you asking for it.
Working with other professionals
A meaningful share of my work comes alongside someone else's. Estate and tax attorneys, CPAs, business brokers and M&A advisors, title and settlement professionals.
What I do not do. I do not draft, I do not file, I do not give tax or legal advice, and I do not go near your client relationship.
Where I fit. Usually after a liquidity event, when a client is holding proceeds and the question is what those proceeds become. Sometimes alongside an existing estate plan, where there is room for an asset that accumulates tax advantaged and passes outside the taxable estate.
What I want from you. Scrutiny first. I would rather you take a structure apart in a fifteen minute call than have it reach your client unexamined. If it does not hold up, I want to know.
Fifteen minutes
No deck, no one-pager, no follow-up sequence. You tell me the situation, I tell you whether any of this belongs in it.
Every engagement starts with a conversation, not a product recommendation. If a structure does not clearly serve you, I will tell you that.
Or call 1-856-905-6073.
Dan Sharpe, Jr. is licensed in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Washington, D.C. and Florida. Nothing on this page is tax, legal or investment advice, and nothing here is an offer of insurance. Policy performance is not guaranteed beyond contractual guarantees. Premium financing involves borrowing, collateral requirements and interest rate risk, and is not suitable for everyone. Any illustration provided is a projection based on stated assumptions, not a prediction. Discuss your situation with your own tax and legal advisors before acting.