At the center of Jeff’s work is a simple belief: each client’s portfolio should be personalized to their unique financial situation and designed to support the life they want to live.
Every client comes with a different life, different goals, different resources, and a different balance sheet. Jeff does not believe those differences can be adequately addressed by placing clients into generic investment models or allowing a risk-tolerance questionnaire to determine how their money should be invested. While understanding how a client feels about risk is important, Jeff believes investment policy should be informed much more deeply by what the client’s financial resources actually need to accomplish.
That philosophy has led Jeff to focus much of his professional thinking on plan-driven investing: using the financial plan itself to help determine how a portfolio should be structured, how much risk is appropriate, where growth is needed, and how investments can best support spending and other goals throughout retirement.
Jeff particularly enjoys helping clients understand this connection. His goal is for every client to have great clarity about where they stand financially, why their portfolio is structured the way it is, and how their financial resources work together to support their plan. He believes that kind of understanding can create something extremely valuable in retirement: confidence.
Markets will always be uncertain. Jeff’s work is not about eliminating that uncertainty, but about helping clients build and understand a plan that allows them to live confidently through it. His goal is for clients to have such clarity about their financial position and confidence in their plan that their finances can take their proper place in life, leaving more time and attention for the people and experiences that matter most.
Jeff also spends considerable time thinking about how investment management can better serve financial planning. He continually evaluates portfolio structures, investment approaches, and ways of presenting financial information that can help clients better understand their circumstances and make sound long-term decisions.
Jeff holds the Chartered Financial Analyst® (CFA®) designation and the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification. He graduated from Minnesota State University, Mankato, in 1996.
Outside of work, Jeff enjoys spending time with his wife, Julie, golfing with his sons, Zach and Ryan, and being outdoors. He is an avid fisherman and spends much of his free time on the water, particularly enjoying bass fishing and the challenge of figuring out what the fish are doing on any given day.