Best Certified Financial Planners in San Francisco

Top San Francisco Certified Financial Planners (CFPs)

San Francisco’s financial planning landscape reflects the complexity, ambition, and diversity of the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metropolitan area, where technology executives, startup founders, entrepreneurs, physicians, attorneys, creative professionals, families, retirees, and nonprofit leaders face very different financial priorities. From RSUs and stock options to California taxes, real estate, entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and long-term wealth creation, financial planning often extends far beyond investment management.

The region’s CFPs help clients navigate major financial decisions while balancing personal goals, career ambitions, family needs, and broader values. This makes CFP® credentials only one part of professional credibility, alongside experience, specialization, communication, and the ability to apply financial expertise to real-life circumstances.

At Digital Reference, we look beyond credentials to understand how financial professionals work, what they specialize in, and how they have built their reputations.

For this San Francisco selection, we researched CFPs across the San Francisco metropolitan area, reviewing their websites, LinkedIn profiles, credentials, career histories, specialties, leadership, education, thought leadership, community involvement, and other documented professional contributions to provide greater context behind each professional’s expertise.

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🌉 Our Methodology: How We Built This List of Top San Francisco-Based CFPs

This is a curated, non-ranked list. There is no universal “best” certified financial planner because the right advisor depends on a client's goals, financial complexity, communication preferences, and desired relationship.

Our methodology considers several dimensions:

🔎 Research-driven evaluation: We looked beyond titles and credentials to understand each professional's actual career path, practice, specialties, and approach.

💬 Client-centered perspective: Financial planning is a relationship business, so we considered evidence of communication, education, accessibility, planning philosophy, and client-focused service.

🏆 Professional achievements: Credentials, leadership positions, publications, speaking engagements, awards, media appearances, professional affiliations, and community contributions all provide useful context.

🧭 Specialization: Equity compensation, retirement, tax planning, financial independence, impact investing, business-owner planning, and wealth management can require very different kinds of expertise.

📍 Location relevance: Each professional was considered within the context of the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metropolitan area.

🧩 Context and differentiation: Two CFP® professionals may have completely different business models and client populations. A technology-focused advisor may approach wealth differently from a retirement specialist or an impact-investing practitioner.

📣 Professional visibility: We also looked at how professionals communicate their expertise through websites, LinkedIn, articles, podcasts, educational resources, workshops, and other public-facing channels.

🤝 Leadership and contribution: Firm building, mentoring, nonprofit involvement, community engagement, and professional leadership can provide another layer of understanding.

🔄 Evolving research: This list can grow over time. Financial professionals earn new credentials, develop new specialties, take on leadership roles, and evolve their practices.

The result is intended to provide more context, not simply more names.

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🌟 Digital Reference's List of the Best Certified Financial Planners in San Francisco

San Francisco’s financial planning professionals serve a diverse population of entrepreneurs, technology professionals, executives, business owners, families, and high-earning individuals navigating complex financial decisions.

From investments and retirement planning to equity compensation, taxes, estate planning, and wealth management, these advisors bring specialized expertise and personalized strategies to help clients build greater financial clarity and long-term security. 

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🔶 Spencer Sherman, MBA, CFP®

Co-Founder & Financial Advisor of Abacus Wealth Partners

Spencer Sherman brings a distinctive philosophy to San Francisco-area financial planning, connecting money, mindfulness, values, behavior, and decision-making. As co-founder and financial advisor at Abacus Wealth Partners, his early experience in commission-based financial services led him to pursue a more independent, client-focused approach.

Sherman’s work emphasizes helping clients make thoughtful financial decisions rather than simply managing investments. His philosophy aligns with Abacus’s mission of “expanding what’s possible with money,” with values centered on listening deeply, serving others, and helping clients connect their finances with the life they want to build.

💡 Money and behavior: Sherman has made the psychological side of financial decision-making an important part of his professional identity. His work recognizes that clients don't always make financial decisions based purely on spreadsheets.

🧘 Mindfulness and finance: His professional biography notes more than three decades of mindfulness practice and his work teaching mindfulness. He has also taught at organizations including Esalen and Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

📚 Author and educator: Sherman wrote The Cure for Money Madness, extending his financial philosophy beyond one-on-one advisory relationships and into broader financial education.

🌱 Values-based planning: His approach asks clients to think about what money is actually supposed to accomplish in their lives rather than treating wealth accumulation as the end goal.

🌎 Social and environmental orientation: Sherman has publicly connected his own finances with charitable giving and causes including climate change and world peace. His Abacus profile says he gives 10% of his income annually to charities focused on those areas.

🏢 Firm building: What started as a one-person practice eventually developed into Abacus Wealth Partners, now a much larger advisory organization with a broad team of financial advisors and investment professionals.

Sherman stands out because his professional expertise extends beyond traditional credentials, combining his MBA and CFP® designation with a focus on mindfulness, behavioral finance, values, leadership, and social impact. For Bay Area clients, this broader perspective can be especially valuable for those thinking not just about building wealth, but about how their money aligns with their values, goals, and vision for the future. 

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🔶 Jackie Kleinman, CFP™

CEO Founder of KB Financial Advisors

Jackie Kleinman represents a specialized side of San Francisco financial planning, focusing on technology professionals and complex compensation structures. As principal of KB Financial Advisors, she helps tech founders and employees navigate equity compensation and broader financial planning through a fee-only model.

Kleinman began her career in 1996 at an insurance and brokerage firm before becoming concerned about the conflicts associated with commission-based planning. In 2002, she founded KB Financial Advisors, establishing a practice built around independent, client-focused financial advice.

📈 Technology-focused planning: KB Financial Advisors explicitly focuses on tech founders and employees, making equity compensation a major part of the firm's work.

💰 Equity compensation: The firm's educational resources address practical issues involving RSUs and other forms of technology-sector compensation.

🧾 Integrated planning: Kleinman's philosophy combines investment advice, taxes, and individual priorities rather than treating portfolio management as a standalone service.

🏢 Long career: She has more than 28 years of experience in financial planning, with her career beginning in 1996.

📖 Author: Kleinman is a co-author of The AdviseHERy Board: Create Support, Solve Issues, Grow Business, adding an entrepreneurial and professional-development dimension to her career.

🏫 Community leadership: She was a founding board member of the Julia Morgan School from 2000 to 2006.

Kleinman stands out in San Francisco for her specialized approach to equity compensation, investment planning, and tax strategy. In a market where employees and founders may have significant wealth tied to company equity, clients often need to consider concentration risk, potential taxes, and how equity fits into their broader financial goals. Her long-standing focus on connecting investments, taxes, and individual objectives gives her practice a clear point of differentiation in one of the country’s most equity-driven professional markets.

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🔶 Risley Sams, CFP®, MBA, CPWA®

Founder & CEO of RHS Financial

Risley Sams has built RHS Financial around a distinctly Bay Area challenge: helping technology professionals and entrepreneurs manage complex, equity-based wealth. As founder and CEO, Sams leads the San Francisco-based boutique wealth management firm, serving clients across the Bay Area and globally.

Sams holds CFP®, MBA, and CPWA® credentials, earning his CFP® designation in 2007 and CPWA® designation in 2018. His focus on technology professionals and entrepreneurs is what most clearly distinguishes his approach to wealth management.

But his specialization is what really stands out.

💻 Tech professional focus: RHS Financial specifically serves technology professionals and entrepreneurs dealing with growing and protecting wealth.

📊 Equity compensation: RSUs, stock options, and other forms of equity compensation are central use cases for the firm.

📉 Concentrated stock: RHS works with clients who have significant exposure to a single company and need to think carefully about diversification.

🧠 Behavioral finance: Sams is described by RHS as an expert in behavioral finance and in helping high-net-worth clients navigate complicated financial decisions.

🏦 Independent firm building: Sams founded RHS because he believed he could make a greater impact by running an independent firm according to his own philosophy.

📰 Thought leadership: His LinkedIn profile includes a substantial body of financial commentary and published RHS material covering market behavior, estate planning, investment philosophy, and the role of financial advisors.

🧩 Broad planning model: RHS combines financial planning, investment management, tax planning, equity compensation, and a flexible family-office offering.

RHS stands out in the Bay Area for recognizing that wealth created through technology and equity compensation often looks very different from traditional salary-and-retirement planning. Clients may have substantial equity but limited liquidity, be approaching a major liquidity event, or need to navigate stock options and taxes after leaving a technology company. RHS’s approach reflects these realities by focusing on the broader gap between a client’s current financial position and their long-term wealth potential, rather than simply managing an investment portfolio. 

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🔶 Glen Monroe, CFP®

President & Financial Advisor of Monroe Wealth Management

Glen Monroe has built Monroe Wealth Management around another highly relevant Bay Area niche: financial planning for technology employees and S corporation business owners.

Monroe founded the firm in 2019 after working in the brokerage industry. He serves as President and Chief Investment Officer and has more than a decade of wealth-management experience. His CFP® designation dates to 2016, and he also holds a master's degree in finance.

The firm's specialization becomes particularly apparent in the strategies it discusses publicly.

📈 RSU planning: Monroe works with clients on strategies for unwinding concentrated stock positions created through RSUs.

🧾 Tax strategy: His work includes minimizing Alternative Minimum Tax exposure and considering the tax implications surrounding equity compensation.

🚀 Liquidity events: Monroe Wealth Management specifically focuses on planning around liquidity events and IPOs.

💻 Tech employee specialization: The firm's LinkedIn profile identifies tech employees and S corporation business owners as key specialties.

🤝 Direct relationships: The firm says clients work directly with Glen and the client-services team, without call centers or rotating advisors.

🧠 Behavioral perspective: Monroe's public LinkedIn commentary frequently emphasizes staying disciplined during market downturns and focusing on long-term goals rather than emotional reactions.

📚 Practical education: His public posts tackle subjects including HSAs, 529 plans, stock-based compensation, liquidity strategies, and financial independence.

Monroe stands out for translating complex financial topics into practical questions that matter to Bay Area professionals, from managing HSAs and stock options to navigating concentrated company stock and sudden liquidity events. With a focused niche serving technology professionals and business owners, Monroe Wealth Management brings a practical, accessible approach to financial planning that addresses the real-world decisions clients face as their careers, businesses, and wealth evolve. 

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🔶 Hana Xu Wang, MBA, PPC™, CFP®

Founder & President of Wang Wealth Advisors

Hana Xu Wang brings an entrepreneurial and personal approach to San Francisco financial planning. As founder and president of Wang Wealth Advisors, she focuses on building lifelong client trust through personalized financial guidance and exceptional service.

Originally from Sichuan, China, Wang came to the United States in 1994 and built her experience at Bank of America, Edward Jones Investments, and Wells Fargo Advisors. She launched Wang Wealth Advisors in 2013, reflecting the Bay Area’s international and entrepreneurial character.

🎓 Strong academic foundation: Wang earned a BA in Political, Legal and Economic Analysis from Mills College and an MBA from the Mills College Graduate School of Business.

📋 Retirement-plan expertise: She earned the Professional Plan Consultant designation in 2014, demonstrating a focus on retirement-plan knowledge.

🏅 CFP® credential: Wang earned her CFP® certification in 2018, adding comprehensive financial planning expertise to her professional background.

🏢 Entrepreneurship: She founded her own practice in 2013 after building experience across multiple financial institutions.

🤝 Relationship-centered philosophy: Her firm emphasizes lifelong trust and personalized guidance rather than a transactional approach.

🌎 Cross-cultural perspective: Her personal journey from China to San Francisco adds an international dimension to her professional story.

🎻 Personal interests: Wang is also a classical music enthusiast and has a background in Shotokan karate, where she earned a black belt.

Wang stands out for taking an integrated approach to financial planning, with expertise spanning retirement, estate planning, investments, insurance, taxes, and lifestyle decisions. Her practice recognizes that these areas are closely connected, where a retirement choice can influence taxes, investments can affect estate planning, and family circumstances can shape broader financial strategies. This comprehensive perspective allows her to address the full financial picture rather than treating individual decisions in isolation. 

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🔶 Jennifer (Chang) Dazols, CFP®

Founder & Financial Planner of Modern Family Finance

Jennifer Dazols brings a diverse background in technology, financial planning, LGBTQ+ advocacy, women’s financial empowerment, and entrepreneurship. After more than 15 years in technology, including serving as a director at a Fortune 500 company in Silicon Valley, she transitioned into financial planning.

Through Modern Family Finance, Dazols focuses on helping women and LGBTQ+ professionals in their 30s, 40s, and 50s create greater flexibility in their work and lives. Her firsthand experience in the technology sector gives her a unique perspective on the professional challenges many of her clients face.

💻 Technology background: Her 15-plus-year career in technology gives her direct familiarity with the compensation, career progression, and professional environments common among Bay Area clients.

🏳️‍🌈 LGBTQ+ financial planning: Modern Family Finance explicitly serves LGBTQ+ households and professionals.

👩 Women-focused planning: Her practice also works specifically with women seeking greater financial independence.

🎯 Work-optional planning: The firm's services include financial independence and making work optional, a particularly resonant goal in the Bay Area.

🏆 Fortune recognition: Dazols was named a “Hero of the 500s” by Fortune for her community contributions.

🌏 Global advocacy: In 2015, Dazols and her wife Lisa produced the documentary Out & Around, traveling to 15 countries to interview leaders in the global equality movement.

🚲 Community building: In 2020, they founded Asia Rainbow Ride, an annual charity bike ride in Taiwan supporting LGBTQ+ freedoms in Asia.

🎤 Public education: Their TED Talk about LGBTQ+ life around the world has received more than 3 million views, according to Modern Family Finance.

📊 Equity compensation education: Dazols has also publicly written about optimizing equity compensation without becoming financially trapped by a job, a highly relevant topic for technology professionals.

Modern Family Finance stands out through a communication style that makes financial planning feel personal, approachable, and grounded in real life. Its focus on women and LGBTQ+ professionals recognizes that financial decisions can intersect with career flexibility, family structure, equity compensation, and long-term independence. By emphasizing understanding and trust alongside technical expertise, the practice offers a more human-centered approach to financial planning that considers the client’s broader life context, not just the numbers. 

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🔶 Cathy Curtis, CFP®

Founder & CEO of Curtis Financial Planning

Cathy Curtis has built a fee-only financial planning practice focused on helping women make informed decisions about their money and work toward financial independence. Through Curtis Financial Planning, she provides personalized financial planning and investment management, with an emphasis on aligning financial decisions with clients’ goals and values.

Curtis has more than two decades of experience in financial planning and has developed a boutique practice designed around close client relationships. Her professional background also includes teaching personal finance and contributing to financial education through writing and other public-facing work.

💎 Women-focused planning: Curtis Financial Planning focuses on serving women and addressing the financial decisions that can shape long-term independence and security.

🤝 Boutique approach: The practice emphasizes personalized service and direct relationships between Curtis and her clients.

🏆 Industry recognition: Curtis has received recognition from InvestmentNews and was included on Investopedia’s Top 100 Financial Advisors list during the years the list was published.

🎓 Financial education: Curtis has taught personal finance, including serving as an assistant adjunct professor at Mills College.

🥕 Community involvement: She has served on the board of Foodwise, formerly known as CUESA, including leadership roles within the organization.

🎙️ Public education: Curtis has written about financial planning, financial independence, money, and lifestyle decisions through her professional publications and blog.

📖 Author: Curtis wrote The Happiness Spreadsheet, which explores the relationship between spending, personal priorities, and happiness.

What makes Curtis's approach distinctive is its emphasis on the connection between financial decisions and personal goals. Financial planning is not only about investments or retirement projections; it can also involve questions about independence, lifestyle, spending priorities, and what a client wants their money to accomplish.

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🔶 Sean M. Kenmore, CFP®

Founder & Managing Partner of Affinity Capital Advisors

Sean Kenmore brings more than two decades of finance experience to Affinity Capital Advisors, the independent investment advisory firm he established in 2013.

His professional profile is interesting because it combines financial planning with entrepreneurship, real estate, and a deeply local Bay Area perspective.

Kenmore is a CFP® professional and California-licensed real estate broker. He is also an active real estate developer, currently building homes in Berkeley.

🏢 Independent firm leadership: Kenmore founded Affinity Capital Advisors in 2013.

📈 Long-term financial philosophy: His firm biography describes a conviction that money, when thoughtfully managed, should inspire confidence and improve quality of life.

🏠 Real estate expertise: His California real estate license and active development work add another dimension to his understanding of wealth.

🌉 Bay Area connection: His professional and personal life are deeply connected to the region, including his current development work in Berkeley.

👨‍👩‍👧 Family-oriented perspective: Kenmore's biography describes spending time around the Bay with his wife, two daughters, and their dog.

Kenmore stands out in the Bay Area for combining investment advisory expertise with hands-on real estate development experience. This dual perspective is particularly relevant in a region where housing and real estate can represent a significant portion of a household’s wealth. For clients, property decisions can influence liquidity, leverage, taxes, retirement, estate planning, and overall portfolio concentration. Kenmore’s background across both financial advisory and real estate offers a valuable perspective on how these interconnected decisions can shape a broader financial strategy. 

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🔶 Julie Asti, CFP®

Founder & Principal of Asti Financial Management

Julie Asti has built Asti Financial Management around a straightforward but meaningful objective: helping individuals and small businesses gain control over their finances and use their wealth to support the lives they want to live.

Asti founded the firm in 2005. The firm's philosophy emphasizes honest, high-quality, easy-to-understand financial planning and investment advisory services designed to reduce financial stress and create greater balance.

That communication emphasis is important.

💼 Independent leadership: Asti has led her own financial planning practice since 2005.

📊 Individuals and small businesses: Her firm's work extends beyond household planning to include small-business financial needs.

🎓 CFP® experience: Asti earned her CFP® designation in 2006.

🏛️ Professional leadership: She has been active in the Financial Planning Association of San Francisco and served as president of its board.

🌱 Financial education: Asti has served on the board of the Bay Area Financial Education Foundation, an organization providing free financial education to at-risk youth.

📍 Bay Area roots: The firm's biography describes Asti as a Bay Area native with a strong connection to the region.

👥 Team approach: Asti Financial explicitly describes its practice as taking a team approach to client relationships.

Asti stands out for her focus on making financial planning accessible, practical, and easy to understand. Her ongoing educational content covers topics ranging from retirement planning and market developments to emerging financial issues, reflecting a commitment to helping clients make sense of complex financial decisions. Rather than focusing on a narrow niche, Asti’s approach centers on accessible, comprehensive planning that connects financial concepts to the realities of each client’s life and long-term goals. 

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🔶 Katherine Campbell King, CFP®

Founding Partner of North Berkeley Wealth Management

Katherine Campbell King brings nearly three decades of financial-services experience to North Berkeley Wealth Management, combining financial planning, investment management, community engagement, impact investing, and professional leadership.

King co-founded North Berkeley Wealth Management in 2005. The firm describes her as a leader across client advising, mentoring, business development, and community engagement.

Her background is unusually broad.

🏦 Financial-services leadership: From 1994 through 2001, King served as CFO and President of Protected Investors of America, an independent San Francisco broker-dealer.

📋 Regulatory experience: She has served on the FINRA District Committee, the national FINRA Small Firms Advisory Board, and industry disciplinary hearing panels.

🌱 Impact investing: North Berkeley Wealth Management includes impact investing among its services, connecting financial strategy with broader social and environmental considerations.

🤝 Community engagement: King has worked with local nonprofit organizations on strategy and investment-policy alignment.

🥕 Berkeley Food Network: She was the founding board chair and continues to serve on the organization's board, supporting efforts to address food insecurity and food waste.

🛹 Local leadership: She was also the founding chair of Skate XP, a Berkeley nonprofit supporting skateboarding resources and community building.

🎓 Unusual academic combination: King earned a BA in Chinese Language and Culture from Dartmouth College and an MA in Cultural Anthropology from UC Berkeley.

🌎 Multicultural perspective: Her LinkedIn profile notes that she speaks Chinese and Spanish and describes her graduate work in cultural anthropology as valuable preparation for understanding how individuals and communities make meaning.

King stands out for a context-driven approach to financial planning that looks beyond financial mechanics to understand clients’ relationships, values, families, communities, and long-term goals. Her philosophy emphasizes asking thoughtful questions and understanding the broader fabric of a client’s life rather than simply providing answers. Her experience across wealth management, regulation, nonprofit leadership, sustainable decision-making, and impact investing further demonstrates how financial expertise can extend beyond traditional portfolio management into a more holistic approach to money and purpose. 

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🦞 Using Digital Reference to Find the Best San Francisco-Based CFPs For Your Needs

San Francisco’s financial-planning landscape spans equity compensation, technology-focused wealth planning, retirement, financial independence, impact investing, real estate, tax strategy, behavioral finance, and comprehensive wealth management.

With such diverse needs across the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley area, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Experience, specialization, communication, professional philosophy, and demonstrated expertise provide important context alongside CFP® credentials when evaluating the right financial professional.

As the Bay Area continues to evolve, so do financial practices, specialties, technologies, and client expectations. This curated, non-ranked list draws on publicly documented experience, credentials, specialties, leadership, and professional contributions, with the goal of helping readers understand the different approaches and expertise available throughout the region.

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For Digital Reference, professional credibility goes beyond credentials alone. Through research-driven curation, structured information, verification, professional references, and video storytelling, the platform helps provide a more authentic view of how professionals communicate, create value, and build their reputations. Ultimately, financial planning is about more than managing portfolios—it connects money, careers, families, goals, priorities, and trust, while Digital Reference helps make that professional credibility more transparent, contextual, authentic, and evidence-based.