Celebrating 20 years of financial planning excellence
In July of 1998, what is now Moisand Fitzgerald Tamayo, LLC was born.
Much has changed in 20 years. Back then, a cell phone was the size of a blackboard eraser and only made phone calls! One could walk all the way to the gate in the airport to meet travelers. Saving Private Ryan was released, and Tiger Woods had only won one major golf championship. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was roughly one-third of its level today. A 1-year CD paid about 5% interest. Things were certainly different.
Of course, the firm founders were different too (and younger!) and Charlie even sported a mustache. We’ve all grown a lot of grey hair since then.
We have also grown professionally. We’ve helped many clients retire, stay retired, educate their children and grandchildren, make the best use of their company retirement plans, keep the tax man at bay, and keep focused on the things that matter. We lived our motto, “A sanctuary from the noise®” before it was our motto. We’ve received numerous awards and accolades and have been blessed to serve in many leadership positions within the financial planning profession along the way.
But as much as things have changed, it’s the things that have not changed which we believe have led to these successes.
We still believe being legally required to act solely in our clients’ best interests is not a burden. Rather, it the most basic underpinning of a true professional and the best way to serve clients. It is this belief that keeps us truly independent, working (literally) for no one but our clients.
We still believe when financial planning is the central decision-making process for advising clients and is done well, families can realize far more financial security, less anxiety, and are much more likely to have their finances support their life goals. It is this belief that keeps us focused on working with families who see investments as an important means to an end but want to make good choices in other areas of their finances as well.
We still believe the world of personal finance will get even more complex. It is this belief that keeps us voracious in our pursuit of knowledge and how to apply it for our clients’ benefit, active in our professional community, and dedicated to lifelong learning.
We still believe one’s experience with an advisory firm, great or not so good, is determined in large part by the interactions with the firm’s personnel. It is this belief that drives us to keep our firm a wonderful place to work.
In fact, if we could highlight only one thing about Moisand Fitzgerald Tamayo, LLC, … it would be our staff’s stability.
In fact, if we could highlight only one thing about Moisand Fitzgerald Tamayo, LLC, it wouldn’t be any of the awards we’ve won, articles we’ve written, articles written about us, leadership roles we’ve held within our profession, or the professional conferences around the world where we’ve spoken.
No. If we had to keep it to one thing, it would be our staff’s stability.
Since the founding of the firm 20 years ago, only one Financial Advisor has ever left. One. Further, since 2009, when we restructured our ownership, not a single Client Service Manager has left the firm. Not one. This is remarkable in a world where at most businesses, there seems to be a revolving door with service personnel turning over frequently.
Now, we readily admit there is an element of good luck in those statistics. Life happens, and people change jobs. However, we also believe luck is a small factor. The primary factor is we strive to make this a great place to work.
We are careful about who we hire. We hire smart people who relish working for the betterment of our clients. Employees stay with our firm because they have taken ownership of the firm’s mission to provide top-notch service to our clients. We effectively collaborate with each other and with our clients. We genuinely enjoy taking care of our clients, and find our clients respond to that care. We have a lot to be thankful for and number one on that list is that our clients are a joy to work for and are genuinely nice people. So thank you!
What will the next 20 years hold for the firm? As you will see in our News & Notes section, the financial planning community is recognizing the talents of this firm go beyond those of the people with their names on the door. Because of this, we believe we are poised for many more decades of serving clients well.
News & Notes
Congratulations, Mike Salmon! We are proud to share that our own Mike Salmon has been named to this year’s 10 Young Advisors To Watch feature in Financial Advisor magazine. We’ve always admired Mike’s talents and it’s nice that the rest of the country can get to know a bit about him too.
It is important to us that the firm be able to serve our client families for decades. Mike is a big part of making this happen. We place a special significance on the quality of our team members and the importance of developing young talent as we grow. Explains Mike, “We’re becoming involved with several academic financial planning programs and we’re trying to hire a person per year going forward.” Read the whole profile here.
Congratulations, Tommy Lucas! On June 21st, we were notified that Tommy Lucas had satisfied all the requirements and is hereby authorized by the CFP Board to use the marks CFP® and CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™. Tommy’s accomplishment makes him our firm’s seventh CFP Professional. He is also one of our three Enrolled Agents (EA) licensed by the IRS itself to represent taxpayers in matters before the agency. He has been promoted to Senior Financial Analyst.
Welcome, Ryan Osborne: We are pleased to welcome our newest employee, Ryan Osborne, to the Melbourne office. Ryan comes to us from Western Kentucky University where he earned his Bachelor of Science in Finance, with a concentration in Financial Planning and a minor in Economics. The WKU Financial Planning program is run by a good friend of our firm and is regarded as one of the best in the U.S. Ryan will be working on a wide variety of projects for the firm and assisting Lynne and Dan with their financial planning work. He will sit for the CFP exam soon and should have all the other requirements met by the end of 2020.