Perrotto Private Wealth

Perrotto Private Wealth Independent wealth advisory practice serving families, business owners, and retirees since 2011. perrottowealth.com (SOSI), member FINRA/SIPC.

Coordinated planning across investments, taxes, retirement, and estate. Perrotto Private Wealth is an independent advisory practice based in Rochester, NY, founded in 2011. We work with affluent families, business owners, executives, and retirees who want coordinated planning across investments, taxes, retirement, and estate. For the most current information about our services, fees, and approach,

please visit perrottowealth.com. To schedule a private introduction, visit calendly.com/perrottowealth. Securities offered through Silver Oak Securities, Inc. Investment advisory services offered through Bright Futures Wealth Management, a registered investment advisor. Perrotto Private Wealth, Bright Futures Wealth Management, and SOSI are not affiliated.

I see this all the time. Someone making good money in a high-tax state moves to a no-tax state, takes a big pay cut, and...
07/19/2026

I see this all the time. Someone making good money in a high-tax state moves to a no-tax state, takes a big pay cut, and calls it a win because "no state income tax."

Run the numbers. A $210K salary in a high-tax state takes home about $144,700. A $160K salary in a no-tax state takes home about $120,100. The tax savings do not cover the pay cut. You are down $24,635 a year, and that gap invested over 20 years is about a million dollars.

And cost of living is not just housing. Property taxes, insurance, childcare, and utilities in some low-tax states eat the savings anyway.

One more thing. If everyone around you is cheering the move without asking a single hard question, those are enablers, not friends. Real friends make you defend the decision out loud before you pack the truck.

Sometimes the move is right. But run the math first, then find someone honest enough to poke holes in it.

07/08/2026

A cautionary tale...

A client's husband passed away and left behind a 401(k) with his former employer.

Like so many widows and widowers, she was grieving. The retirement account wasn't top of mind.

She received paperwork from Fidelity stating she had 5 years to address the account.

Unfortunately, buried in the employer's plan document was a provision requiring the account to be distributed within four years.

We've spent over 60 hours over the last several months coordinating with Fidelity to resolve this. As of today, we're still on the phone. Every call is a 20-day response.

If this can't be fixed, she could be forced to take a very large taxable distribution all at once, potentially triggering a significant tax bill, higher Medicare IRMAA premiums, and a whole chain of financial consequences that she never saw coming.

The hardest part is that none of this happened because she was trying to game the system.

Her husband died.

She was grieving.

She relied on the information she was given.

It's a reminder that sometimes the biggest financial mistakes don't come from making a bad investment. They come from paperwork, deadlines, and rules that most people don't even know exist until it's too late.

Oliver Tree died yesterday in a helicopter crash in Rio de Janeiro. He was 32.I was a fan. The bowl cut, the scooters, t...
06/15/2026

Oliver Tree died yesterday in a helicopter crash in Rio de Janeiro. He was 32.

I was a fan. The bowl cut, the scooters, the chaos, the way he could make a country album and a dubstep track in the same year and somehow it all worked. He had just released a new album in April and was in the middle of a world tour.

A 32-year-old does not plan to die. He had tour dates booked into next year. He was making albums. He was in the prime of his life. Then a helicopter goes down over Rio on a Sunday morning and that is the end of it.

We do not get to know. That is the part most people avoid thinking about, and it is exactly the part you have to plan for.

I think about this for my own family. If something happened to me tomorrow, would my daughter be taken care of. Would my wife have to make ten urgent decisions in the middle of grieving. Is there enough life insurance. Is there a will. Is there a guardian named. Is the beneficiary on every account actually the right person.

If you cannot answer those questions cleanly, that is the work. It is not exciting. It is not what gets posted online. But it is the difference between your family being protected and your family being in chaos at the worst possible moment.

Rest in power, Oliver.

to the 2018 Ameritas Leaders Conference in San Antonio. Black tie, the River Walk skyline behind me, and a room full o...
06/05/2026

to the 2018 Ameritas Leaders Conference in San Antonio. Black tie, the River Walk skyline behind me, and a room full of advisors who took this work seriously.

What I took home wasn't a plaque. It was a higher bar. The advisors I met that week were building practices around hard problems other people sent away. I came back and stopped competing on being easy to reach. I started competing on being the person who could actually solve the thing.

Seven years later, Perrotto Private Wealth runs on that idea. Business owners and high earners with a complicated situation, and a plan that holds up.
Grateful for the rooms that raised my standards.

BusinessOwners

"If I had invested [X] instead of buying [Y], I'd be a zillionaire today."This is an unserious trend taking over persona...
05/27/2026

"If I had invested [X] instead of buying [Y], I'd be a zillionaire today."

This is an unserious trend taking over personal finance right now. So I decided to actually run the numbers.

The chart below uses real S&P 500 total-return data. If you had taken roughly $6.25 a month, the price of a toilet paper budget, and invested it from 1993 through today instead, that $2,500 would be worth about $21,596. An 8.6x return.

So the meme is technically right. You see versions of it everywhere. The guy who sold Nvidia 20 years ago to buy his wife's engagement ring. The Bitcoin pizza story. It is provocative, it is funny, and it does make a fair point about compounding.

But here is what it leaves out.

The hindsight problem. There is no guarantee you would have held for 33 years. Look at the green line: to end up at $21,596 you had to sit through the dot-com crash, 2008, and the COVID drop without selling once. Most people did not. The chart shows the reward and hides the discipline.

The cost of living. An engagement ring, dinner with friends, or basic hygiene are not "lost gains." They are the components of an actual life. You cannot reinvest every dollar you ever spent and still be a person.

The takeaway: these charts are useful for showing how compounding works. They are useless for making real decisions. "Shoulda, coulda, woulda" is a terrible way to manage money or live. Learn, adjust, move forward.

And to be clear: keep buying toilet paper. Maybe even double ply.

Just back from the NAIFA Congressional Conference in DC, where I met with staff for senators and House representatives, ...
05/22/2026

Just back from the NAIFA Congressional Conference in DC, where I met with staff for senators and House representatives, including Representative Tom Suozzi of Long Island.

One of the biggest issues we discussed: America has a long-term care problem, and almost no one is prepared for it.

Only about 4 percent of Americans own long-term care insurance. Most people assume Medicare will cover long-term care. It will not. What actually happens is people spend down their assets and end up on Medicaid, which is now the largest payer of long-term care in the country. Qualifying means draining your savings, navigating a multi-year asset look-back, and often accepting care you would not have chosen. Meanwhile Medicaid's long-term care costs keep climbing, and the demographics are only moving one direction.

Here is what NAIFA is pushing for:
A national long-term care public education campaign, so people understand the truth before they need care: Medicare does not pay for it, Medicaid is not a plan, and coverage is far cheaper when you buy it earlier in life. This includes a national clearinghouse where people can actually compare what they can buy, plus media and community outreach.

HR 6324, the Retirement Simplification and Clarity Act. This bipartisan bill would let people 50 and older roll retirement savings into an annuity while still working. The advantage: you can lock in guaranteed lifetime income before you retire, instead of scrambling to build an income plan after. Knowing your income floor also lets you invest the rest with more confidence.

HR 7187, the Clarity for Compensation Act. This one is closer to home. It clarifies regulatory standards around how advisors are compensated, which helps firms grow and serve more Main Street clients.

This is why advisors show up in DC. These are not abstract policy debates. They decide whether a family keeps its savings or loses it to a nursing home.

Day one of the NAIFA Congressional Conference in DC. Tomorrow I meet with Senator Schumer's team, Senator Gillibrand's t...
05/19/2026

Day one of the NAIFA Congressional Conference in DC. Tomorrow I meet with Senator Schumer's team, Senator Gillibrand's team, and representatives from across New York.

The biggest takeaway from today: Congress has figured out how to raise taxes without calling them taxes. They do it through fees, and one of the clearest examples is IRMAA.

IRMAA is the income-based surcharge on your Medicare Part B and Part D premiums. The more you earn, the more you pay. Since 2012-2013, the surcharge has grown 4.6 percent a year on average. Last year it went up 5.9 percent. This year, 9.1 percent. No vote. No tax bill. No headline.

If you are a high earner approaching 65, or already on Medicare, this matters. A one-time income event (a Roth conversion, a business sale, a large capital gain) can push you into a higher IRMAA bracket two years later and cost you thousands in surcharges you did not see coming.

This is the kind of thing that does not get covered on the news but shows up in your bank account. Planning around it is part of the job.

Heading to DC next week to lobby with NAIFA. Here is what is actually on the table right now that could affect your taxe...
05/16/2026

Heading to DC next week to lobby with NAIFA. Here is what is actually on the table right now that could affect your taxes, your retirement, and your health coverage.

Taxes. Congress is in the early innings of writing a new tax bill. Ideas being floated include indexing capital gains to inflation, eliminating carried interest, restrictions on private placement life insurance and certain estate planning trusts like GRATs, and making last year's provisions permanent (Trump Accounts, tax-free tips and overtime, the senior deduction, and the deduction for interest on American-made auto loans, all of which currently expire at the end of 2028). Various "tax-the-rich" proposals are also in the mix, including taxes on unrealized gains and wealth itself, though those are unlikely to move this year.

Retirement. Early work is underway on what is being called SECURE 3.0. One bill I am watching, the LaHood-Panetta bill, would simplify the rollover process when you leave a job and make it easier to allocate part of your 401(k) to lifetime income annuities.

Health. ACA premiums are spiking and both parties know it. Republicans want to redirect ACA subsidies into HSAs paired with high deductible plans. Democrats want to expand the subsidies directly. How this gets resolved will change what affordable coverage looks like for self-employed clients and small business owners.

Most of this will get hashed out next year, especially depending on how November goes. But the groundwork is being laid now, and some pieces (capital gains indexing, the HSA shift) could move sooner.

This is why advisors show up in DC. Policy written without input from the people who actually sit across from clients tends to miss how it works in real life.

Being a financial advisor has taught me that success is rarely just about money.The people around you matter. A lot.Too ...
05/13/2026

Being a financial advisor has taught me that success is rarely just about money.

The people around you matter. A lot.
Too many people are surrounded by enablers disguised as friends. People who avoid hard conversations, validate every impulse, and normalize destructive habits instead of holding each other accountable.

Real friendship tells the truth. Real friendship wants better for you.

The quality of your relationships eventually shows up in your finances, marriage, business, health, and family life.

Nobody drifts into a great future accidentally. And nobody gets there surrounded by people afraid to be honest.

Saw this on the subway and it stopped me.There was a time when getting financial advice meant sitting across from someon...
05/13/2026

Saw this on the subway and it stopped me.

There was a time when getting financial advice meant sitting across from someone who knew your name, your family, your goals. It took effort. You had to show up.

Now it is a 30-second TikTok from someone with a ring light and a hot take. Reddit threads full of strangers telling you to dump your 401(k) into options. Influencers selling courses on how to retire at 35 from people who have not retired from anything.

The advice is cheaper than it has ever been. So are the results.

Real planning is not a viral clip. It is someone who knows your tax situation, your spouse's income, what your business actually does, what keeps you up at night. It is boring, it is specific, and it does not fit in a caption.

Stop taking financial advice from strangers on the internet. Find someone who knows you.

Address

1630 Empire Boulevard
Webster, NY
14580

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+17185517131

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