Financial Advisor
Aurora CO
Honest, Fee-Only Financial Advice for Aurora, CO Residents
Aurora is Colorado’s third-largest city and one of its most economically diverse. Beneath that diversity sits a substantial and growing population of high-net-worth professionals, healthcare executives, business owners, and families who have accumulated real wealth and reached the point where managing it well requires more than a brokerage account and a generic financial plan.
HighPass Asset Management is a fee-only, fiduciary wealth management firm registered with the SEC, serving high-net-worth individuals and families across the Denver metro area, including Aurora.
Financial Services We Provide to Aurora Clients
Wealth does not manage itself, and it does not manage well when the different dimensions of a financial plan are handled in isolation. At HighPass, we manage every element together.
Investment Management
Custom portfolios built on discipline, fundamentals, and a long-term perspective.
We build every client portfolio from scratch, tailored to that individual’s risk tolerance, income requirements, time horizon, and tax situation. Our investment philosophy is grounded in value investing: identifying quality assets trading at prices that offer a genuine margin of safety, with particular emphasis on dividend-paying investments for their income generation, inflation protection, and favorable tax characteristics.
Retirement Planning
A retirement income strategy structured around your actual life, not a standard planning model.
Retirement planning is where the consequences of imprecise financial advice tend to surface most visibly, and most permanently. The decisions made in the years immediately before and after retirement, including how assets are drawn down, when Social Security is claimed, how healthcare costs are funded, and how taxable income is managed from year to year, collectively shape the financial reality of a retirement that may last thirty years or more.
Tax Planning
In-house CPA expertise that integrates tax strategy into your financial plan from the ground up.
Tax planning is the area where the difference between working with a financially qualified advisory team and a standard investment advisor tends to show up most clearly in dollar terms. Most financial advisors are not equipped to provide substantive tax guidance. Portfolios get managed without a real-time view of their tax consequences, and clients receive the bill at filing time without understanding that a more integrated approach would have produced a different outcome.
Estate Planning
Getting your estate plan from the filing cabinet into actual effect.
We help Aurora clients move from having estate planning documents to having an estate plan that actually performs as intended. That involves a detailed review of existing documents, identification of every gap in implementation, and systematic completion of the practical steps that make a plan operational: trust funding, beneficiary designation updates, asset retitling, gifting strategy, and charitable planning where it is relevant to the client’s goals.
Why Aurora Residents Choose HighPass Asset Management
Compensation That Removes Conflicts at the Source
No commissions, no revenue from investment products, no payments from outside providers whose funds or strategies we might recommend. The roughly 90% of financial advisors in the US who earn some form of commission income face an inherent tension between what generates revenue for the firm and what genuinely serves the client. We eliminate that tension by structuring our compensation so that our only financial interest is in the quality of the advice and service we provide.
Fiduciary Accountability That Does Not Vary by Situation
Our fiduciary commitment applies to every client engagement, recommendation, and circumstance without exception. We are legally required to act in your best interest at all times, disclose any potential conflicts before they influence advice, and make decisions based solely on what is right for your financial situation. Many advisors in Colorado operate under a fiduciary standard in some situations but revert to a weaker suitability standard in others. At HighPass, the fiduciary standard applies to everything we do.
CFA and CPA Credentials Working Together
Having the CFA and CPA represented at the senior advisory level is uncommon in this industry. Ethan S. Braid earned the CFA through 900-plus hours of graduate-level investment study, and Stelio Elenis holds both designations alongside specialized tax experience spanning high-net-worth individuals, trusts, partnerships, and business entities.
Easily Accessible from Aurora
Our office in Denver is a direct and straightforward commute from Aurora via I-225, typically 15 to 25 minutes from most parts of the city. We also conduct a significant portion of our advisory work remotely for clients who prefer virtual meetings. Either way, every client works directly with a senior advisor who maintains a detailed, current understanding of their financial situation and communicates proactively when something warrants attention.
A Practice Designed for Depth
We deliberately keep our practice small enough to deliver the level of attention that high-net-worth financial planning genuinely requires. Client work is handled at the senior level. When the tax landscape shifts, a market development creates a planning consideration, or a change in your personal circumstances raises a financial question, we are the ones reaching out with a considered perspective rather than waiting for the next scheduled meeting.
Who We Work Best With in Aurora
HighPass Asset Management serves high-net-worth individuals and families who want their financial lives managed with the precision, coordination, and objectivity that their accumulated wealth warrants. The clients who consistently find the most value in our approach tend to fit one or more of these profiles:
- Healthcare professionals, medical executives, or government contractors with complex compensation structures, deferred income, or pension considerations
- Business owners planning for a sale, succession, or the transition from active business income to retirement income
- Individuals with significant taxable investment accounts who have never had their portfolio managed with an integrated tax strategy
- Families entering retirement within the next decade who want a concrete, thoroughly tested income and withdrawal plan before they need to rely on it
- People who have recently inherited assets, received a significant payout, or undergone a major financial transition and want to act with discipline and clarity
- Clients who have grown frustrated with the impersonal service model of a large financial institution and want direct access to a senior advisor who knows them
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is HighPass Asset Management located relative to Aurora?
Our office is at 4600 S. Syracuse Street, Suite 900 in the Denver Tech Center, accessible from Aurora via I-225 or E-470, typically a 15 to 25 minute drive depending on your starting point in Aurora. We also serve clients throughout Colorado and nationally through remote advisory meetings.
What distinguishes a fee-only financial advisor from one who is fee-based?
A fee-only advisor receives compensation exclusively from client-paid fees and earns nothing from financial products or outside providers. A fee-based advisor may charge client fees while also earning commissions on the products they recommend, which introduces a conflict of interest that can be difficult for clients to identify or quantify. The distinction is more significant than it might appear because it affects the advisor’s financial incentive on every recommendation they make.
How can I confirm whether a financial advisor in Aurora is a fiduciary?
Ask them directly: are you a fiduciary at all times, in every situation, for every client? A genuine full-time fiduciary will answer that question without hesitation or qualification. If the response involves nuance around registration types, services offered, or circumstances in which a different standard applies, that is worth understanding clearly before entering an advisory relationship. Fewer than 10% of financial advisors in the US operate as full-time fiduciaries.
Does HighPass have experience working with healthcare professionals and medical executives?
Yes. Aurora is home to one of the largest concentrations of healthcare employers in Colorado, and many of our clients come from that sector. Healthcare professionals and executives often face distinctive financial planning challenges including complex pension and deferred compensation structures, significant student loan history, and the particular retirement planning considerations that come with careers in medicine or hospital administration. Our team has direct experience working through these situations as part of a coordinated personal wealth strategy.
How does in-house tax expertise improve investment outcomes?
When a CPA is embedded in the advisory team rather than consulted separately at year-end, every investment decision can be evaluated against its tax consequences before it is made. That means gains are recognized strategically, losses are harvested when they are available, assets are held in account types that minimize their tax impact, and the overall portfolio is managed for after-tax performance from the outset. Over the course of a decade or more, the cumulative difference between a tax-aware investment strategy and a tax-indifferent one can be substantial.
Can HighPass work alongside my existing pension plan or employer-sponsored retirement account?
Yes. We regularly work with clients whose retirement assets include defined benefit pension plans, 403(b) accounts, and other employer-sponsored vehicles alongside personal investment accounts. Understanding how these assets interact with each other and with the broader tax picture is an important part of building a coherent retirement income strategy, and our team accounts for all of it.
What is the minimum amount needed to work with HighPass?
We focus on serving high-net-worth individuals and families. We encourage you to contact us directly so we can understand your situation and give you a candid answer about fit.
What should I bring to an initial consultation?
The first meeting is exploratory and does not require any specific documentation. Coming prepared with a general sense of your current financial picture, your goals, and any specific concerns or questions you have will help us make the most of the time. We will guide the conversation from there and let you know if there is anything specific we would want to review in a follow-up meeting.
Is HighPass Asset Management SEC-registered?
Yes. HighPass Asset Management is a registered investment adviser with the SEC. Our regulatory standing and background are publicly available and can be verified at any time through FINRA’s BrokerCheck.
How do I get started with a financial advisor in Aurora?
Call us at (303) 357-4602 or schedule a free consultation online. We will invest the time to understand your complete financial situation before making any recommendations, and we will give you a straightforward assessment of where working with HighPass would create real value for you.