Head of Wealth Management, Meridian Trust Bank · CFP · Former U.S. Navy supply officer
Portland · Meridian Trust Bank · 911+ connections
I spent nine years in the Navy as a supply officer, two deployments aboard USS Nimitz, provisioning five thousand people. A plan that cannot survive contact with reality is not a plan. I have carried that into every financial plan I have written since.
I spent a decade at a national brokerage and grew uncomfortable with how much of the job was selling products. In 2016 I came to Meridian Trust to build a wealth-management practice that charges a flat fee and sells nothing. Our plans are five pages, not fifty. If you cannot explain your plan to your kids over dinner, you do not understand it yet.
Every spring we run a free workshop for seniors on reading financial documents. More than 600 people have attended. It is the most important thing my team does.
Our eighth annual 'How to read your financial documents' workshop for seniors is November 12 at the Portland branch. Free, no sales, no sign-up sheet that becomes a lead list. Bring the annuity contract you never understood. Last year we found two people paying 3.1% a year for a product that paid 2.4%.
Why we charge a flat fee and sell nothing: a client in 2019 had been sold an annuity by her previous advisor that she did not understand and that paid him 6% up front. It took me four months to unwind. If my pay depends on what you buy, I am not your advisor. I am a salesman with a nicer office.
This is the incentive problem in one paragraph. Compensation and governance committee agrees, formally.
Provisioning an aircraft carrier for six months and writing a retirement plan are the same skill: list what you'll need, assume something will go wrong, keep a reserve, and make the plan short enough that someone can act on it at 3 a.m. Our plans are five pages. Fifty pages is a plan nobody opens.
Built a flat-fee, no-product advisory practice from zero to $610M under advice; runs the annual seniors' document-literacy workshop (600+ attendees).
Advised 300 households. Left over the product-sales model.
Provisioning and logistics aboard USS Nimitz (two deployments) and at Naval Station Everett.
B.S. Finance, Washington State University, 2007
Certified Financial Planner (CFP), 2010
I attended as a civilian in 2022 and learned something about my own pension statement. Recommending it to my bridge club.