Jumpstarting Your Financial Planning Career with Matt Fizell
Military to Financial Planner Podcast
Release Date: 02/14/2024
Leveraging Military Spouse Skillsets and the Scary, First 6 Months of Firm Launch with Stacy Miller
Military to Financial Planner Podcast
I’m excited to welcome Stacy Miller on the podcast today. She is the founder of Bayview Financial Planning, a flat-fee RIA focused on serving women, widows, and military and veteran families. Stacy is a military spouse to a retired U.S. Army officer. Married for over 30-years to her husband, Jody, who served 28-years in the military, Stacy has experienced many positive and negative transitions. She has seen firsthand how those transitions can impact women, widows, and military/veteran families. Together, her military family moved 14 times during their service, and as a result, Stacy was...
info_outline
Finding the Right Culture Fit and Serving the Military Community with David Evetts
Military to Financial Planner Podcast
In this episode, I’m joined by David Evetts, who serves as the President of the USAA Educational Foundation. Since 1986, The USAA Educational Foundation has served the military community by helping service members and their families become informed financial decision-makers through every life stage. USAA, the founder and sponsor of The USAA Educational Foundation, is a San Antonio, Texas-based financial services company that provides auto, homeowners, and life insurance products and, banking and investment services. While USAA is the sponsor, The USAA Educational Foundation does not endorse...
info_outline
Financial Education, Working for a Nonprofit, and Serving the Special Ops Community with Drew Stamp
Military to Financial Planner Podcast
I’m excited to welcome a friend and colleague who has a little bit different career track today. Drew Stamp serves as the Chief Operations Office for the Donovan and Bank Foundation - a, nonprofit organization that focuses on helping special operators transition to a life of peace, balance, and contentment. We chat about Drew’s early personal finance experiences, how he learned he loved to teach and help other with financial literacy, what studying for the CFP exam was like even though he had never worked in a traditional job in financial planning before, and how he found his way to...
info_outline
Finding the Right Firm, Fit, and Focus with Matt Stephens
Military to Financial Planner Podcast
Today on the podcast I’m joined by Matt Stephens from Willow Chute Financial. Matt has had a winding career path that has taken him to a variety of roles, firms, structures, and responsibilities. During his career in financial services, he has also served as an officer in the Army Reserves since 2008. In our discussion, we chat about the pros and cons of a variety of financial services compensation and service structures and how that factored into his career decisions. Given the variety of structures as well as front and back office roles, I ask Matt about the traits he found for those that...
info_outline
Walking the Walk along with Talking the Talk of Military Transition with Heather Walrath
Military to Financial Planner Podcast
I’m so grateful to have Heather Walrath joining us on the podcast today. She currently serves as financial education and accredited financial counselor at the Navy Mutual Aid Association. As part of the Education Team, Heather speaks one-on-one with servicemembers and spouses and provides group presentations to servicemembers and families across the country to increase their knowledge and understanding of financial matters. Her areas of expertise include military and survivor benefits, including VA benefits and Survivor Benefit Plan. Heather talks about her early career interest...
info_outline
Tax Preparation alongside Financial Planning, Teaching CFP Classes, and MQFP Update with Paul Allen
Military to Financial Planner Podcast
I’m excited to have Paul Allen on the podcast today. In this wide-ranging conversation we discuss his first exposure to the financial services industry which rubbed him the wrong way and sparked an interest in doing his own financial planning work. Later on, Paul wanted to help educate fellow members of his military community so he got his CFP so he could teach financial literacy classes, all the while wondering if there was a way he could just get paid to give financial advice instead of selling financial products. Paul shares how he stumbled into the world of fee-only RIAs and tax practice...
info_outline
Learning About the Planning Profession and Building College Planning Expertise with Mike Hunsberger
Military to Financial Planner Podcast
In this podcast episode, I sit down with Mike Hunsberger to learn more about his career journey across an Air Force career and launching his own RIA, Next Mission Financial Planning. He shares about his early experiences with being sold permanent life insurance and high fee mutual funds which led him to get more interested in personal finance. Thanks to many years of his own good financial decisions, including building lots of spreadsheets to analyze his own military career analysis, gave him options to consider financial planning as a second career. As part of his exportary foray, Mike...
info_outline
Cross-border Planning and Military Spouse Careers with Stephanie Higgins
Military to Financial Planner Podcast
In this podcast episode, I’m joined by Stephanie Higgins to talk about her journey into the financial planning profession. As a military brat as well as military spouse, she has spent a great deal of time overseas so we talk about the challenges of employment and building a career while OCONUS. I love hearing about her personal journey of learning about finances as she took over her household money management and the blending of that with her prior career background and education in psychology. Stephanie shares how she pursued the AFC and MQFP as well as currently preparing for the CFP...
info_outline
DoD Skillbridge Transition to Financial Planning with Omen Quelvog
Military to Financial Planner Podcast
I’m excited to welcome Omen Quelvog to the podcast today. If his name sounds familiar to you, it’s because we have talked about him on this podcast before when Sean Gillespie and I chatted about the DoD Skillbridge program and how Omen was the first MFAA Skillbridge intern. We cover a lot of ground in this episode including Omen’s own financial experiences and love of spreadsheets and personal finance. I love the personal anecdotes and stories that Omen weaves in including how his own personal financial plan set him and his family up for options post-military life. As the first...
info_outline
Networking, Reframing, & Doing Your Own Financial Plan with Arcelia Wicker
Military to Financial Planner Podcast
We continue the recent theme of podcast listeners becoming podcast guests as I’m joined by Arcelia Wicker on the episode today. He is a financial planner at Bay Capital Advisors in the Virginia Beach area. We chat about his personal experiences of personal finances and how going through Financial Peace University helped him and his wife get their own financial house in order before going on to help host and teach the program for many years. When he realized that he would do that kind of work for free, it sparked an exploration of how to break into the world of financial advice and...
info_outlineI welcome Matt Fizell on the podcast today after admiring his work for quite awhile. Matt is the founder of his own RIA, Harmony Wealth based in Madison Wisconsin. But as we discuss in this interview, Matt took a circuitous route from his initial undergraduate training in financial planning, working in a broker dealer, finding out about fee-only financial planning, and networking across the breadth and depth of opportunities and careers.
One of the main reasons I invited Matt on this podcast was to have him share about his experience helping new planners break into the financial planning profession. Matt has so much experience in this role with hundreds of conversations across the profession, especially in his past role as co-host of the You’re a Financial Planner Now What. Side note, if you haven’t added that one to your to-do list, I would encourage you to dive into their past archives of great conversations.
Matt shares his extremely helpful career advice and how he helped create a course called the New Planner Collective. The goal of this course is to help teach new people to this profession how to build a career, not just the technical skills. I loved what he shared as it provides another helpful perspective. Be sure to check out the links in the show notes to learn more about these opportunities and where to learn more about this course and Matt.
Follow Matt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MattFizell
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-fizell-cfp%C2%AE-0606134a/
Matt’s RIA: https://planwithharmony.com/
IAPD Website: https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/
New Planner Collective: https://newplannercollective.com/