Financial Advisors & Financial Planners - San Francisco, CA

Apella’s San Francisco team provides a range of planning and investment services to successful families and businesses seeking advice, guidance, and ongoing planning customized to reflect their specific needs and financial goals.

We make every effort to understand your lifestyle choices, personal values and views on the role finances play in your life. Taking care of loved ones, estate planning, a comfortable retirement, and peace-of-mind are all intertwined with personal finances, managing cash flow, and making investment decisions.

Our holistic approach integrates sophisticated wealth management, comprehensive financial planning and the support of other professional partners. We take the time to make sure you understand our relationship, your investments and whether you are on track to meet your goals. As your chosen wealth management firm, we are truly committed to a caring, long-term partnership that provides the individual attention, unbiased advice, objective recommendations, ongoing consultation and guidance you need for financial success.

Our team has been serving families and business owners in San Francisco since 1997, previously as Union Financial Planning before joining Apella in 2017. Today, we tap into Apella’s vast resources, investment research, and educational tools while maintaining the highly personalized service we’ve always delivered to every client we serve.

We’ll help you anticipate and prepare for life’s biggest financial hurdles, so you can worry less about the future and be more present in the moment. Whether it’s determining the best college savings approach for you and your family, or a strategy to maximize your Social Security benefits, we’ll develop a road map designed to help you get you where you want to go.

Regardless of whether you’re just beginning your personal financial journey, or you’re seeking help with more intricate planning and investment needs, we’re committed to putting our collective knowledge and experience to work for you.

Diana Bacon, CFP^®

Partner & Senior Financial Advisor

dbacon@apellawealth.com

For more than 25 years, Diana Bacon, CFP® has built her work on a fundamental belief: exceptional financial planning begins with truly understanding the values of the person across the table. Since 1998, she has guided executives at Fortune 500 companies, small business owners, retirees, and multi-generational families through every financial chapter of their lives.

Diana's work with corporate executives is comprehensive and deeply integrated. She specializes in helping clients make decisions that optimize long-term outcomes rather than short-term gains. Her planning extends well beyond the portfolio: income and estate tax planning, retirement savings, investment management, and cash flow strategy are all woven together into a single, coherent financial picture.

That same holistic philosophy extends to the families she serves. Diana works closely with parents and trustees to prepare the next generation — teaching beneficiaries and children how to budget, manage money responsibly, and ultimately transition from family support to full financial independence. She understands that wealth is most meaningful when it is accompanied by the knowledge and confidence to steward it well.

A particularly meaningful dimension of Diana's practice is her long-standing commitment to the LGBTQ+ community and their families. She understands that LGBTQ+ individuals and couples have historically faced a distinct set of financial challenges - from navigating the patchwork of legal protections across states and countries, to estate planning in the context of complex family structures, to retirement strategies that account for healthcare costs and potential gaps in survivor benefits. Diana stays current on the evolving legal and tax landscape so her clients don't have to, and she creates a space where clients can speak openly about their lives, their relationships, and their goals without reservation.

Whether working with same-sex couples on joint financial planning, advising transgender clients on name and beneficiary updates across accounts, or helping LGBTQ+ families think through adoption-related financial considerations, Diana brings both technical expertise and genuine personal commitment to every conversation. She believes that sound, comprehensive financial planning should be available to everyone, and she has made that belief a cornerstone of her practice.

Diana has a particular passion for working with women navigating significant life and career transitions. She meets clients where they are whether facing a career change, a divorce, the loss of a spouse, or a milestone birthday - and helps them move forward with clarity, confidence, and decisions grounded in a thorough understanding of their financial picture. Her goal is always the same: to turn uncertainty into a plan.

Outside the office, Diana and her spouse have two children and two rescue dogs. She is a committed community leader through her church and various charitable organizations. The values that drive her in those roles - service, trust, and a genuine investment in the people around her are the same ones she brings to her clients every day.