The Plan You Were Given Was Probably Not Built Around You
Most of the plans I review were not built to hold up. They were built to be sold. This is what over twenty years on both sides of that line has taught me.
The Industry I Set Out to Fix
If you are within ten years of retirement and aren't sure your plan will hold up, you are right to be skeptical. Most of the plans I review were not built to hold up. They were built as a one-size-fits-most product designed to be profitable for the firm selling it.
I have spent more than twenty years building businesses, working with individuals, and evaluating investments. Across all three, I have seen the same problem repeat itself: incentives have a way of quietly shaping advice. Income projections are built on the assumption that markets will continue behaving the way they have. Precious-metals companies steer clients toward the coins that generate the highest margins instead of the bullion that may actually serve them best. Annuity agents chase commissions without fully understanding the products they are selling, taking what can be a phenomenal retirement tool and surrounding it with an aura of skepticism and fear. Even financial advice itself suffers from the same problem. Forbes has reported research suggesting that working with a fiduciary advisor can add significant value to investor outcomes (nearly 5%/yr), yet surveys continue to show that financial professionals struggle with public trust. That contradiction is what has fascinated me for years. In many cases, the investment, insurance product, or strategy is not inherently bad. The problem is the incentive attached to the person recommending it. And if you do not understand how that person gets paid, what motivates the recommendation, and where the conflicts are hiding, even perfectly legitimate advice can become expensive, one-sided, or completely wrong for you.
Every recommendation I make is measured against one question: is this in the client's Best Interest. If the answer is ever no, the recommendation does not get made.
Retirement Accounts Beyond Wall Street
What I Look For in a Second-Opinion Retirement Plan Review
A second-opinion review is a careful read of a plan another advisor has built for you. It is never too late for a second opinion! I review the income projections, the recommended products, the fees, and the assumptions behind the numbers. Then I tell you, in writing, what I see and why. You will receive a comprehensive report that you can walk away with.
Most of the people I work with come to me already holding something. A plan another advisor put together. A Social Security strategy they built themselves from a YouTube video. They want a second opinion before they sign, before they retire, or before they decide. An estate plan sold by a lawyer who uses a basic template for all, instead of being based on the goal that a proper estate plan should protect your assets while you are alive, not just simply avoid probate.
When I open those documents, the same things show up. Plans that look professional and read confidently, but would not survive ten or more years of real life. Sometimes the plan is sound, and I will tell you that. More often, there is a conversation worth having about what to keep, what to fix, and what to walk away from.
How I Work For You
Yeah. The idea is strong, but the language sounds like it came out of a compliance department. I'd give it more backbone: What is Best Interest Obligation? I recommend what is right for the client, not what puts the biggest commission in my pocket. That changes the conversation from the start. I am not here just to sell you something. I am here to look at what you have, tell you what I see, explain what could change and why, and just as importantly, tell you what I would leave alone. Then you decide. It is your money. My job is to make sure you understand exactly what you are deciding.
My recommendations have to survive one simple test: if every product paid me exactly the same, would I still recommend this one? If the answer is no, it has no business in your plan. I want you to understand what you own, why you own it, what it costs, and what I get paid. No manufactured urgency. No borrowed credibility. No sales theater. The numbers and the strategy either stand on their own, or they don't.
Over twenty years in business has taught me something I know for certain: no one needs another sales pitch. We need someone willing to tell the truth about what we already own. Bring me the plan, the portfolio, the annuity, the metals, the real estate, and the assumptions behind it all. I will tell you what is working, what is costing you money, what I would keep, what I would change, and exactly why. If we work together, it will be because the case for doing so is obvious. If we don't, you will still leave that conversation better informed than you walked into it.
What I Help With
For more than twenty years, my work has revolved around money in nearly every form: making it, growing it, protecting it, keeping more of it, turning it into income, and ultimately putting it in the right hands when you are gone. I have built businesses, evaluated investments, structured retirement income, navigated taxes and risk, and worked across a wide range of investments and industries, spending years seeing what happens when all of those worlds collide in one person's financial life. That experience taught me to look at money as a system, not a collection of accounts and products. I want to know where the money came from, where it is going, what can threaten it, what is quietly draining it, what opportunities are being missed, and who is getting paid along the way. I know when a CPA or attorney needs to be at the table, but I also know enough about the entire financial picture to recognize the questions that need to be asked and when something simply does not add up. My specialty is relationship coordination. My subject is money. And my job is to understand how all the pieces fit together before I tell you what I think you should do.
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Engineering a financial foundation strong enough to carry what you have spent a lifetime building through retirement, through the unexpected, and ultimately into the hands of the generations that follow. I
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Most people think a retirement account means stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and whatever happens to appear on the menu their brokerage firm gives them. It doesn’t. Depending on the account and structure, retirement dollars can potentially own real estate, farmland, promissory notes, private businesses, certain precious metals, and other alternative assets. Most people I work with have no idea that world even exists because nobody ever showed it to them. The real question is not simply, “What should I invest in?” It is, “What am I legally allowed to own, where should I own it, and what is the smartest structure for doing it?” Once you understand that a retirement account is a tax structure, not an investment, the universe of what your money can do starts looking very different.
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Gold and silver are money, and for thousands of years, kings, governments, banks, and entire nations have fought to control them. Central banks still accumulate gold by the trillions, yet almost nobody I meet can explain why. I help clients understand the role physical metals play on both sides of a financial strategy: offensively, as a way to participate in monetary and economic shifts, and defensively, as an asset held outside the traditional financial system. Then we get into what actually matters: what to own, why you own it, how much makes sense, what you should pay, where it should be held, and how it fits alongside everything else you have built. I do not believe everyone needs gold. I believe everyone with meaningful wealth should understand why the institutions that create, lend, and control money continue to own so much of it.
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Rothification® planning for high-income earners. There is a legal way to fund a Roth even when your income disqualifies you from contributing directly. Most people do not know it exists.
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Retirement Accounts Beyond Wall Street
Pasadena, California
AFEA and Financial Education
I serve as Chapter President of the American Financial Education Alliance (AFEA), a non-profit dedicated to teaching financial literacy in communities across the country. The work is unpaid. I do it because most of what I see in my practice could have been prevented by a single honest conversation a decade earlier.
If This Sounds Like the Conversation You Have Been Looking For, I Would Be Glad to Talk
Give me forty-five minutes. Bring your situation, your questions, and whatever you have been told so far. I will tell you what I see, what I think, and what I would do if I were sitting on your side of the table. No pitch. No obligation. You will leave with a second opinion you can actually use. What you do with it is entirely up to you.