Financial Advisor
Castle
Pines CO
Personalized, Fee-Only Financial Advice for Castle Pines Residents
Castle Pines is one of the most sought-after residential communities along Colorado’s Front Range. The people who choose to live here tend to have built their wealth deliberately, through successful careers, business ownership, sound investing, or some combination of all three. They are not looking for someone to sell them a product. They are looking for an advisor who understands what it took to accumulate what they have and takes the responsibility of protecting it seriously.
HighPass Asset Management is a fee-only, fiduciary wealth management firm registered with the SEC, serving high-net-worth individuals and families in Castle Pines and throughout the South Denver metro area.
For Castle Pines residents who want financial advice built entirely around their interests, with full transparency and no commission-driven agenda, we are ready to help.
Financial Services We Provide to Castle Pines Clients
The cost of fragmented financial advice is real and often invisible until it compounds into something significant. An investment portfolio managed without regard for tax consequences erodes after-tax returns year after year. A retirement strategy built on overly optimistic assumptions creates risk that only becomes apparent when it is difficult to correct. An estate plan that was drafted but never fully implemented leaves a family exposed to exactly the outcomes it was designed to prevent. At HighPass, we address all of these areas together, under one roof, from the same team.
Investment Management
A patient, principled approach to building wealth that does not bend with market sentiment.
We construct custom investment portfolios for each client using a value investing framework centered on buying quality assets at sensible prices, with a meaningful emphasis on dividend-paying investments for their income characteristics, inflation resilience, and tax efficiency. Every portfolio reflects the specific financial circumstances of the individual client: their risk tolerance, time horizon, liquidity needs, and tax position. No standard models, no generic allocations.
Retirement Planning
A retirement income strategy designed to withstand the full range of what retirement can bring.
The financial planning challenges that accompany retirement are genuinely complex, and the stakes of getting them wrong are high. Withdrawal sequencing decisions made in the first years of retirement can have consequences that ripple across decades. Healthcare and long-term care costs are among the most underestimated variables in retirement planning and among the most financially damaging when they are not adequately anticipated. The interaction between Social Security timing, taxable income, and Medicare premium costs alone can easily move a retirement plan from adequate to strained.
Tax Planning
Substantive, year-round tax strategy that most financial advisory firms are not equipped to deliver.
The absence of genuine tax planning is one of the most common and costly shortcomings in financial advisory relationships. Most advisors manage portfolios without meaningful input from a tax professional, which means clients absorb entirely avoidable tax costs year after year without a clear picture of what a better-coordinated approach would have produced.
Estate Planning
Turning a drafted estate plan into one that actually works the way you intended.
We help Castle Pines clients conduct a thorough, practical review of their existing estate plans, identify every element that is incomplete, outdated, or structurally misaligned, and work through the implementation steps that convert a drafted plan into an operational one. Our coordination with estate planning attorneys covers trust funding, beneficiary designation reviews, asset retitling, gifting strategy, and philanthropic planning for those who want their legacy to extend to causes they care about.
Why Castle Pines Families Choose HighPass Asset Management
No Commissions, No Competing Interests
We collect no commissions, receive no payments from investment product providers, and have no financial relationship with any outside firm whose products we might recommend. The approximately 90% of financial advisors in the US who earn commission income face a structural conflict between what generates revenue for them and what serves the client best. At HighPass, that conflict is not managed or disclosed. It simply does not exist.
Fiduciary Accountability on Every Engagement
Our fiduciary commitment is unconditional. We are legally required to act in your best interest at all times, to surface and disclose any potential conflicts before they influence a recommendation, and to place your financial welfare above any other consideration. Many advisors operate as fiduciaries in some contexts and under a weaker suitability standard in others. We do not distinguish between contexts. The standard is the same across everything we do.
CFA and CPA Depth on a Single Team
Our team’s credentials go deeper than most. Ethan S. Braid holds the CFA designation, requiring 900-plus hours of graduate-level study across three examination levels, and Stelio Elenis contributes both the CFA and CPA alongside more than a decade of tax planning experience for high-net-worth clients, estates, and complex business structures.
Convenient Access from Castle Pines
Our office at 4600 S. Syracuse Street, Suite 900 in Denver is directly accessible from Castle Pines. We also work with a significant portion of our clients through remote advisory meetings for those who prefer the convenience of virtual engagement. Either way, every client works with a senior advisor who knows their complete financial picture and reaches out proactively when something in the market, tax environment, or their personal circumstances warrants a conversation.
A Deliberate Practice Size
We deliberately keep our practice small enough to serve each client with genuine care and attention. We do not delegate meaningful client work to junior staff or rely on automated systems to substitute for direct advisory engagement. When your circumstances change or a planning opportunity surfaces, we are the ones who bring it to your attention rather than waiting for a scheduled annual review to raise it.
Who We Work Best With in Castle Pines
HighPass Asset Management is structured for high-net-worth individuals and families who have reached a level of financial complexity that rewards a disciplined, fully coordinated advisory approach. The clients who consistently benefit most from working with us tend to share several of these characteristics:
- Established professionals or executives with significant accumulated assets and a financial plan that has not kept pace with their current wealth or tax situation
- Business owners who are approaching or actively planning a sale, exit, or generational transfer and need coordinated investment, tax, and estate guidance throughout that process
- Individuals with concentrated stock positions, real estate holdings, or other complex asset structures that require careful tax management alongside portfolio oversight
- Families entering or already in retirement who want a stress-tested, tax-efficient income strategy rather than a generic allocation and a withdrawal rate
- Those who have recently come into significant assets through an inheritance, property sale, or business liquidity event and want a structured, thoughtful approach to deploying and protecting them
- Clients who have experienced the limitations of large institutional advisory models and want a senior-led relationship where their financial life is known in detail
Frequently Asked Questions
How far is HighPass Asset Management from Castle Pines?
Our office is at 4600 S. Syracuse Street, Suite 900 in the Denver Tech Center, approximately 20 to 30 minutes from Castle Pines via I-25 north. We also serve clients throughout Colorado and nationally through remote advisory meetings for those who prefer a virtual format.
What does fee-only compensation mean for a client?
It means the advisor earns no commissions and receives no financial benefit from the products or strategies they recommend. Our compensation is a transparent advisory fee paid directly by the client. This structure ensures that every recommendation we make is driven exclusively by what serves the client’s interests, not by what generates revenue for the firm.
How do I verify whether a financial advisor is truly a fiduciary?
Ask them directly and specifically: are you a fiduciary at all times, for all clients, in all circumstances? A legitimate full-time fiduciary will answer that question without qualification. If the response involves conditions, distinctions between registration types, or references to certain services being subject to a different standard, that is meaningful information about how the relationship will actually work. At HighPass, the answer is yes, without qualification.
Can HighPass help manage the tax complexity that comes with a business exit or large liquidity event?
Yes. Large liquidity events require coordinated planning across investment management, tax strategy, and estate planning, often within a compressed timeframe. Our in-house CPA and investment team work together on these situations to address the tax implications of the event itself, the optimal structure for deploying the resulting assets, and the estate planning adjustments that typically follow a significant change in net worth. Engaging an advisor well before a liquidity event produces meaningfully better outcomes than doing so after the fact.
What is the benefit of integrating tax planning with investment management?
When tax planning and investment management operate independently, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Investment decisions get made without a view of their tax consequences, and tax strategy is applied reactively at filing time rather than proactively throughout the year. When both disciplines are managed by the same team, every investment decision is informed by its tax implications, every tax opportunity is captured in the context of the full portfolio, and the result is a measurably better after-tax outcome over time.
Does HighPass work with clients who have real estate holdings alongside their investment portfolios?
Yes. Real estate introduces specific tax planning considerations including depreciation strategy, cost basis management, 1031 exchange planning, and the treatment of rental income, all of which need to be coordinated with the broader investment and tax strategy. Our in-house CPA handles these situations as an integrated part of each client’s overall wealth plan.
What is the minimum level of assets to work with HighPass?
We work with high-net-worth individuals and families. We recommend reaching out directly so we can understand your specific situation and give you a straightforward answer about whether our firm is a strong fit for your needs.
How does the initial consultation work?
The first meeting is complimentary and carries no obligation. We use the time to understand your current financial situation, your goals, and what has or has not been working in your existing advisory relationship. You will come away with a clear picture of how we approach situations like yours and an honest view of the value we can add. There is no sales process, and you are under no obligation to proceed.
Does HighPass manage portfolios in-house or use outside managers?
We manage all client portfolios directly. Our investment team makes every portfolio decision based on the individual client’s specific circumstances. We do not use third-party portfolio managers or wrap programs that introduce additional layers of cost without a corresponding layer of value.
How do I get started with a financial advisor in Castle Pines?
Call us at (303) 357-4602 or schedule a complimentary consultation online. We will take the time to understand your full financial picture before offering any recommendations, and we will be direct with you about where a relationship with HighPass would make a meaningful difference.