Surface conditions.
Who Stratton is, why the firm exists, and what we hold to at bedrock — before a single layer of your plan is laid.
Small firm. Long memory.
Stratton is five people in Traverse City who plan retirements for 140+ families, and that is the whole business. A portfolio is not the product here. The plan underneath it is.
Twenty-six years in the same town teaches a firm what actually keeps clients: answer the phone, keep your word, and review every plan on schedule whether the markets are calm or not. None of it is clever. All of it compounds. The families who joined us in the early years are, for the most part, still here.
Why Stratton exists.
Most people arrive here carrying one question: will the money hold once the paychecks stop? It is a fair question, and it deserves a plain answer — not a product.
I spent enough years in this business to watch good savers get handed sales scripts dressed up as advice. Stratton is the answer I could stand behind: one fee, one loyalty, and plans built one family at a time.
“Markets are weather. A plan should be geology. We still check the ground twice a year.”
The questions we’re built to answer.
Twenty-six years of this work narrows down which questions actually decide a retirement — the ones that surface at two in the morning:
- Can we afford to stop working?
- Are we paying more tax than the law requires?
- Is the portfolio built for the years ahead, or the years behind?
- If something knocks the plan, what holds?
We put plain numbers on each of them — and review the answers with you twice a year, every year.
One fee. One loyalty. Yours.
Fee-only means our only paycheck is the planning fee you can see. No products to push, no quiet incentives — a fiduciary obligation to act in your interest is not our marketing, it is our legal structure. After 26 years in this work, Dan built the firm that way on purpose.
One transparent fee
Fee-only fiduciary planning. Our compensation is the fee you can see — nothing hidden underneath it.
Your name on every account
We never take custody of your money. Assets stay held in your own name at Charles Schwab, where you can see them any day you like.
Plain English, across a table
Plans are built and tracked in RightCapital — and explained in words, not jargon, until every decision makes sense to you.
Small on purpose
140+ families, not 1,400. Two real reviews a year for every plan, with the person who built it.
Start with a conversation.
No obligation, no pitch, nothing to prepare. We will talk through where you stand, what enough means in your case, and whether this firm is the right place for your plan. If it is not, we will tell you plainly and name someone who is.
Call the office and a person picks up. Most days, that person is Dan.
- Structure
- Fee-only fiduciary planning · One transparent fee
- Custody
- Assets held in your own name at Charles Schwab — we never take custody of your money
- Office
- 412 Harborview Road, Suite 200, Traverse City, MI 49684
- Phone
- (231) 555-0147