Financial Planner for Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley
CFP®-Led · Women & Couples · Pasadena & San Gabriel Valley
I'm Renee Cohen, a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ based in Los Angeles, working with women and couples in Pasadena and the surrounding communities — and virtually across the country.
CFP®-Led
Women & Couples Focus
With over 11 years of experience working with women and couples in Los Angeles and across California, I understand the financial landscape of the San Gabriel Valley: the long-term real estate appreciation, the professional and academic income structures, the multigenerational planning considerations, and the California tax environment that shapes every major financial choice. I bring your retirement planning, tax strategy, investments, and estate considerations into one structure — built around your actual situation.
Financial Planning for Women and Couples Ready for a Coordinated Plan
Comprehensive guidance for women and couples in Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley in their late 30s, 40s, and early 50s — navigating established careers, significant assets, and financial lives that have grown more complex than any single advisor or account has been built to address.
A Planning Relationship Built for the Long Term
A 12-month (and beyond) comprehensive planning relationship for Pasadena-area professionals who want a dedicated thinking partner — for retirement, investments, tax strategy, estate planning, and the significant decisions that surface at this stage of life.
Focused Planning When a Specific Decision Can't Wait
A typically 3-month engagement for navigating a defined financial question — a pension election, a business transition, an inheritance, or a major real estate decision — with a clear framework and confident next steps.
Financial Planning Built Around Pasadena's Financial Reality
Pasadena and the surrounding communities — Arcadia, San Marino, Altadena, La Cañada Flintridge, Sierra Madre, and Monrovia — are home to a distinctive mix of professionals, long-term homeowners, and multigenerational families navigating financial lives with real depth and complexity. Physicians and healthcare executives managing practice income alongside personal investments. Academics and researchers with defined benefit pensions that need to be integrated into a broader retirement plan. Business owners with assets accumulated over decades. Couples who have built significant wealth through a combination of real estate appreciation, careful saving, and careers that have evolved considerably over time.
What these clients share isn't a single financial profile — it's intentionality. They've made thoughtful decisions over many years. What they're ready for is a plan that pulls it all together.
How I Help Connect Each Financial Piece
Retirement income clarity
Learn MoreUnderstand exactly when work becomes optional — integrating pension income, Social Security timing, investment accounts, and real estate equity into one retirement picture that actually holds together.
Purpose-driven portfolio design
Learn MoreBuild an investment strategy around your goals and timeline — not inherited allocations, outdated risk levels, or reactions to market volatility.
Spending confidence
Learn MoreKnow what you can confidently spend at this stage — balancing the life you want now against the retirement you're funding, in a market where property wealth and liquid assets often tell very different stories.
Strategic debt payoff decisions
Learn MoreNavigate mortgage payoff decisions, refinancing timing, and how debt fits alongside investing and retirement funding for long-term homeowners with significant equity.
Year-round tax coordination
Learn MoreManage the tax complexity that comes with California rates, practice income, real estate transactions, and the layered financial picture that tends to build over a long career.
Protection planning
Learn MorePut the right coverage in place as assets, obligations, and legacy intentions grow — including long-term care planning, which deserves more attention at this stage than most clients give it.
Long-term asset transfer
Learn MoreBring clarity to how your assets, values, and intentions will be carried out — coordinated with your estate documents and the people and causes you care about most.
Equity and exit coordination
Learn MoreNavigate business transitions, professional practice sales, and significant career changes with a clear plan for both the financial mechanics and what comes next.
Financial Planning Questions I Hear Most in Pasadena
Long-term real estate and concentrated home equity.
Many Pasadena-area homeowners have held property for decades — which means significant appreciation, meaningful property tax considerations under Proposition 19, and a real question about how home equity fits into the broader retirement and estate plan. Whether the question is whether to sell, how to think about a potential downsize, or how real estate factors into legacy planning, these decisions deserve to be evaluated as part of the full financial picture.
Pension and defined benefit income.
Physicians, educators, and public sector professionals in the Pasadena area often have defined benefit pensions that represent a meaningful share of retirement income. Integrating pension elections — including survivor benefit decisions — with Social Security timing, investment withdrawals, and tax strategy requires a coordinated approach that most financial plans don't account for explicitly.
Multigenerational wealth and estate complexity.
For clients in San Marino, La Cañada Flintridge, and Arcadia in particular, estate planning often involves multigenerational considerations — how assets transfer, how to handle inherited property, and how to structure giving in a way that reflects both financial and personal values. A financial plan that isn't connected to an estate plan is working from an incomplete picture.
Professional practice and business income.
Physicians, attorneys, consultants, and business owners in the Pasadena area often have income structures that don't fit neatly into conventional financial planning frameworks — variable distributions, practice-related retirement accounts, and assets that are tied up in the business itself. Planning for this complexity requires someone who understands how business and personal finances connect.
Working With a Financial Planner in Pasadena
I work with clients in Pasadena, Arcadia, San Marino, Altadena, La Cañada Flintridge, Sierra Madre, Monrovia, and surrounding communities — as well as virtually with clients across California and nationwide. Meetings happen in person or by video, depending on what works best for you.
If you've been looking for a financial planner in Pasadena who understands both the financial complexity and the life behind it, the next step is a conversation.