Query Capital: Planning for Queer Futures
How do I find a queer financial advisor?
A lot of people find a queer financial advisor by googling or AI querying “queer financial advisor”, “queer financial planner”, “trans money person”, etc. The problem is that cishet-owned mega firms pay a lot of money to advertise to chase pink money and create LGBTQIA+ landing pages that come up first!
In our queer financial planning work, queerness is the lens that we see through, gay is where we live. Historically, it hasn’t come naturally to write an article like, “10 Ways Financial Planning for LGBT is Different”.
But we want our people to find us, so here is an authentically queer article in which we use as many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and pansexual words as we can.
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How does Query Capital provide LGBTQ+ financial planning?
By letting you know that we love love, you were born this way, and making everybody get married. Just kidding.
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Pre-Obergefell and the fall of DOMA, a financial advisor might say their thing is that they help people who can’t legally marry. It’s still true that more LGB couples don’t marry, but now it’s a choice, and plenty of straight people we’ve worked with make the same choice not to marry. (We welcome straight allies too. Talk, Valentina!)
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This question is always hard to answer because it’s not one thing. It’s discussing your career trajectory when to move up you have to leave a queer-specific job, and you’re not sure if it’s worth it. It’s planning for retirement and deciding whether or not to expect an inheritance from a homophobic parent. It’s navigating sharing finances with a metamour or your ex-girlfriend.
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We won’t blush when categorizing Grindr in your budget. If you tell us you’re aromantic or solo poly and don’t plan to have a life partner, we will make your financial plan accordingly.
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Financial planning is just life planning, and your life is gay, and so are your financial advisors.
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The gift of queerness is the loving celebration of our many colors. It’s being able to see a person as themself apart from conventional defaults for what gets included in a life. As a queer advisory team, we take time to listen to what your life is about, and then we help you with it.
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Why hire a trans financial planner?
The majority of Query Capital’s clients are on the trans spectrum, and many of them don’t have any special planning needs other than respect and understanding.
For others, gender affirming surgery may be a financial planning topic. For example, we may need to review gender affirming policies in their health insurance, short term disability insurance, work and state family medical leave.
We may need to plan for savings for out of pocket costs or the cost of time off work, especially in areas where gender affirming healthcare inclusion is not mandated by law. We understand that some surgical journeys can be multi-step, multi-year processes, and others are a few hours and a quick recovery.
We also understand that many trans people don’t have surgery or take hormones, and we will not be fascinated or obsessed by your healthcare choices—we’re here for you, and your gender is just one facet of you.
As the political environment becomes more hostile to trans people, many transgender families are considering relocation. Beyond the research on LGBTQ+ rights and a progressive political environment that you have probably done on the place you want to move to, we can help you consider the financial impact of a move. For example, the job market, taxes, cost of living, and residency rules, will all impact your financial journey.
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Will Query Capital get my name and pronouns right?
The Query Capital team is transgender and everyone we know is trans, so we have a lot of practice treating trans people with respect.
Beyond cultural comfort with intentional gender pronouns, we ask everyone for their pronouns. We put clients chosen names and correct pronouns all around our internal systems so that it’s easy to remember.
We also prioritize software that allows us to make legal names less prominent to avoid unintentional association with a legal deadname.
If you change your name or pronouns we move through a workflow to update our systems including retroactive name changes to avoid contact with deadnames when we’re reviewing historical notes.
Some organizations ask for your sex assigned at birth along with your current gender and put your sex assigned at birth under your name on forms. Then, they pat themselves on the back for knowing the term “sex assigned at birth” and miss the bigger picture that they’ve implied that what you are emphatically not is a primary part of your identity. This kind of transphobia by operational incompetence is what Query Capital does not do! I'm getting worked up now, better move on.
Not only does Query Capital structure our own systems to be externally and internally gender-affirming, we have successfully advocated for firms we interact with to make changes to their systems to be more gender-affirming, even in cases when clients would not be aware that their gender was being disrespected.
Supporting trans people is not a marketing exercise for Query Capital. It’s who we are.
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How does Query Capital advise queer parents?
In addition to helping prepare you for parenting with budgeting, goal planning college planning and parental leave, we help queer parents with things they need that may be more specific to LGBTQ+ identity.
Queer families are made in many ways, including sperm donation, intrauterine insemination (IUI), in vitro fertilization (IVF), egg donation, pre-transition fertility banking, embryo adoption, reciprocal IVF, surrogacy, co-parenting, having kids in 3+ parent households, and more. You may be considering your surrogacy contract, donor agreement, or a second parent adoption—and we can help to be a sounding board alongside your legal counsel.
Query Capital helps LGBT families with their family making journey both in financial planning and in life goals. It’s important to work with a planner you trust and can feel comfortable sharing with. Whether you’re reflecting on certain queer spaces being weird about kids, or certain straight spaces being weird about you not default gendering kids, we are along for the ride.
Landon is a member of Brooklyn Queer Parents and a trans dad of three.
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But how do I know for sure that my financial advisor is queer?
Query Capital is certified LGBTBE, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender business enterprise. That means that we have provided proof of our membership in the community (yes, really) and been audited by the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Query Capital is a proud member of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce New York.
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