Honest answers. No marketing.

A CFP®, or Certified Financial Planner, is held to a fiduciary standard by the CFP Board and trained across six integrated planning domains: cash flow, tax planning, investments, insurance, estate planning, and retirement income planning. A bank advisor is most often a broker or product specialist whose 'suitability' standard allows them to recommend the bank's products as long as those products are appropriate for the client. In practice, the CFP® writes a written financial plan; the bank advisor sells what the bank offers. At Chesapeake Financial Planners in Forest Hill, Maryland we run all six planning domains together so the tax answer doesn't fight the estate answer, the retirement income answer doesn't fight the Social Security claiming answer, and the insurance recommendation is right-sized to the household's actual risk, not anyone's quota.

Yes. I'm a CFP®, ChFC®, CLU®, and AEP®. The advisory work is done through Great Valley Advisor Group, an SEC-registered investment advisor. Fiduciary duty applies whenever I'm acting in that capacity.

Look for three things: (1) the CFP® mark, which carries a fiduciary duty under the CFP Board; (2) an advisory affiliation registered with the SEC or the state, ours is Great Valley Advisor Group, an SEC-registered investment advisor; and (3) a clear, written description of how the advisor is paid, including any commission, asset-management, and flat-fee components. Chesapeake Financial Planners is a Harford County fiduciary practice based in Forest Hill, ten minutes from downtown Bel Air and about forty minutes from downtown Baltimore. We serve households across Forest Hill, Bel Air, Fallston, Jarrettsville, Aberdeen, Havre de Grace, Towson, Lutherville, Cockeysville, and the surrounding Baltimore-area communities, plus clients nationwide who work with us remotely.

The Accredited Estate Planner (AEP®) is a graduate-level designation from the National Association of Estate Planners & Councils (NAEPC). Holders must have at least five years of estate-planning experience, pass two graduate-level courses, and maintain a continuing-education and ethics standard. Fewer than 1,500 advisors nationwide hold the AEP®. It matters in Harford County because most of our clients own real estate, a closely held business, or both, and Maryland is one of a handful of states that still levies a state estate tax, with a threshold well below the federal exemption. As an estate planning financial advisor in Harford County, we coordinate with your attorney on documents, titling, beneficiary designations, gift strategies, and charitable structures, and make sure the survivor plan is in writing.

Yes. Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), Incentive Stock Options (ISOs), Non-Qualified Stock Options (NQSOs), and Employee Stock Purchase Plans (ESPPs) each come with their own mechanics: vesting calendars, supplemental withholding traps, ordinary-income vs. capital-gain treatment, AMT exposure on ISO exercises, and concentration risk when a single employer's stock crowds out the rest of the portfolio. Most local advisors near Baltimore don't see enough equity compensation to plan it well. We do, routinely, for employees who relocated to Forest Hill or Bel Air for the space but kept tech, biotech, or pharma jobs at Johns Hopkins, UMBC, T. Rowe Price, McCormick, or remote tech employers further afield. The plan separates what to sell on vest, what to hold, how to manage AMT, and how to redeploy the proceeds inside the broader retirement, tax, and estate plan.

Yes. Chesapeake Financial Planners is a fee-based fiduciary practice located at 2402 Scotlon Court in Forest Hill, Maryland 21050, ten minutes from downtown Bel Air. Co-founders Jeff Judge (CFP®, AEP®, ChFC®, CLU®) and Mark Rossbach (CPA, RICP®) lead the practice together, serving Harford County, Baltimore County, and the greater Baltimore region. 'Fee-based' means client fees can be charged as a flat planning fee, an asset-management fee, an hourly engagement, or, occasionally, a commission on an insurance product when insurance is the actual answer and a no-load product doesn't exist for that need. The structure is chosen for the work, not the marketing.

A fee-only financial planner is paid only by client fees and refuses any third-party compensation, including commissions on insurance, annuities, or mutual funds. A fee-based planner can charge client fees and may also receive a commission when, for example, life insurance is genuinely the right tool for the job. Neither structure is automatically more ethical. What actually matters is whether the planner acts as a fiduciary on the advisory work, whether they disclose how they're paid in plain English, and whether the chosen structure fits the client's situation. Chesapeake is fee-based for exactly that reason: it lets a CFP® near Baltimore Maryland use the right tool for each household, not the one that markets best.

No. New client relationships at Chesapeake typically satisfy one of: investable assets of at least $250,000, household income of at least $200,000, an engagement for ongoing Financial Management Oversight, or referral from an existing client. Plenty of households we serve have a paid-off home in Forest Hill or Bel Air, a healthy 401(k), and a real planning question without being 'millionaires' yet. Those are exactly the conversations where the planning earns the most: the gap years between retirement and Social Security, the Roth conversion window, the Maryland estate-tax exposure nobody flagged at the bank, and the FERS-vs.-stay decision for federal employees near Aberdeen Proving Ground.

Yes. Federal retirement planning is one of the busiest lanes for the firm because we're based fifteen miles from Aberdeen Proving Ground. We routinely model FERS pension elections (full, reduced, or survivor), TSP allocation and rollover, the FERS supplement, retiree health-insurance continuation (FEHB), and Social Security claiming as one integrated decision rather than six independent ones. The right retirement date is rarely the one HR quotes you, it's the date where pension, health-insurance bridge, taxes, withdrawal sequence, and household cash flow line up. We model the trade-offs side by side, run them past Mark for the tax-projection layer, and write the plan around the answer. We do the same work for federal employees at Edgewood, Fort Meade, and civilian roles across the Baltimore-DC corridor.

No — I only work with ongoing clients. If you need a one-time tax projection, Roth conversion analysis, or second opinion, you'll get better service from an hourly planner or a CPA. Happy to point you toward a good one via email.

Almost always, yes. Inheritance opens a narrow window of consequential decisions: titling, step-up in basis, inherited-IRA distribution rules, the 10-year rule for non-spouse beneficiaries, real-estate retention vs. sale, life-insurance proceeds, and the emotional weight of moving family money. We see this often with Harford County families inheriting a parent's home in Forest Hill, Bel Air, or Fallston, plus a 401(k) or IRA with distribution rules nobody explained. The right first call is to a fiduciary financial planner who can model the next ten years before any one transaction is locked in, not to a broker eager to 'put the money to work.'

Maryland taxes most pension and 401(k) distributions as ordinary income, with a partial exclusion for taxpayers age 65+ and a more generous exclusion for military and certain public-safety pensions. Pennsylvania, by contrast, fully exempts most retirement income at the state level, and Delaware applies a meaningful pension exclusion as well. For households comparing Forest Hill to a move across the line into Pennsylvania, or evaluating retirement in Delaware vs. staying in Maryland, that single difference can be worth thousands of dollars per year, and tens of thousands across a 30-year retirement. We run that projection with Mark Rossbach, CPA, RICP®, in the building, alongside the Maryland state estate tax analysis.

Yes. Mark Rossbach, CPA, RICP®, is a co-founder of the practice and runs the tax projections alongside the financial planning work. That means multi-year Roth conversion modeling, withdrawal sequencing across taxable, tax-deferred, and Roth accounts, IRMAA Medicare-surcharge management, and entity-level decisions for business owners are reconciled in one room, not batted between two offices. If you already have a CPA you love, we coordinate directly with them, share working files, and stay in sync through tax season.

Reviews on the firm's Google Business Profile run consistently 5-star and are embedded on this page. Common themes from real Harford County and Baltimore-area clients: plain-English explanations, real coordination between the financial plan and the tax projections, candid answers even when the answer is 'you don't need what you think you need,' and a willingness to recommend a different advisor on the fit call when that's the right move. Jeff Judge has also been named a Baltimore Five Star Wealth Manager eleven times (2014, 2017–2026), one of the longest-running honoree records in the Baltimore region for a fiduciary financial planner in Harford County.

The honest answer is "depends on the client and the work." Chesapeake uses several compensation structures because, as I've written elsewhere, picking one and calling it virtuous is mostly marketing. We talk about it on the fit call and pick the one that fits the problem you're trying to solve. If the structure ever stops fitting, we change it.

Both. The firm is registered at 2402 Scotlon Court in Forest Hill, Maryland, but it isn't a walk-in storefront, all client meetings are by secure video, with in-person meetings at the client's home or office when requested. Local Harford County, Baltimore County, and greater Baltimore households are the most common in-person visits, but a meaningful share of the practice is national. Secure document portals, encrypted video calls, screen-shared financial planning software, and written plans are the workflow either way. The planning depth, the fiduciary standard, the in-house CPA coordination, and the written deliverable are the same whether you live in Forest Hill, Bel Air, Towson, or two time zones away.

New client relationships typically need to satisfy one of the following: Investable assets of at least $250,000; Household income of at least $200,000; Engaged for annual Financial Management Oversight; or Referral from an existing client.

Yes. The firm is in Forest Hill but I work with clients across the country, mostly remotely with two or three in-person meetings a year for clients who want them.