Pivoting to Best Career Fit with Derek Merkler
Military to Financial Planner Podcast
Release Date: 01/18/2023
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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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_outlineDerek Merkler joins us today to talk about his career journey. After his initial 8 years in Army aviation, Derek started out in financial planning working for a firm where he cut his teeth in the profession. He realized that there aren’t many financial advisors who work primarily with veterans to put together comprehensive and holistic plans and build long-term wealth. Rather, companies large and small have advisors whose job is to sell their own products, often with commissions and sales targets. For them, a veteran can become merely a number.
Ultimately, Derek wanted some more control over the business model so he decided to launch his own firm, Trophy Point Financial Planning in late 2020. In our conversation, Derek talks about the challenges of starting from zero, what’s worked and hasn’t in his marketing and sales efforts, and the financial considerations for how long it can take to gain traction. I loved his career advice about planning for things to take time. In addition to his work in financial planning, we talk about the most interesting other business activity, or OBA, with his role in thoroughbred horse breeding that has some parallels to the work of financial planning.
https://www.trophypointfp.com/