49 Financial designed tax-led fractional family office

49 Financial, an Austin hybrid RIA, designed FFO Partners, a fractional family office that supplies CPA-led tax planning and coordinates a family's estate attorney and insurance professionals behind the client's existing advisor.

Work starts with tax: income, capital gains and estate taxes, which founder and CEO Travis Penfield called 'often the biggest levers a family has' in a Wealth Solutions Report interview. The unit pairs specialists and concierge support with the client's advisor rather than replacing that relationship, and it is built as a shared model intended to reduce the time and cost of assembling an in-house team.

For an advisor already referring tax and estate work to outside CPAs and attorneys, FFO Partners offers a way to keep that coordination attached to the relationship without adding staff. The client keeps the advisor they already trust, and the advisor gets a bench instead of trying to be everything, Penfield said. The sequencing is explicit: tax first, then investments, estate and insurance reviewed together — the combination Penfield said the ultra-wealthy have always had.

Penfield framed the alternative. 'A traditional family office works if you have enough wealth to justify hiring your own team,' he said, and most families who need that level of coordination 'might not be there yet.' A conventional wealth relationship, he said, 'usually stops at the portfolio and the plan.'

The interview gives no fees, asset minimums or client count for FFO Partners, and it does not say which entity employs the CPA or whether the advisor or the family pays for the fractional office. Those terms would decide whether the shared bench costs less than the outside referrals it replaces.