John Dulmage
In the mid to late 90’s
John found himself in need of good financial advice. He interviewed a number of
advisors and no one seemed right. Each advisor had either hidden agendas or such
narrow focus that they couldn’t give him the holistic approach he was looking
for. One only sold insurance, another, only managed money for millionaires, and
another did investments but not taxes. No one was really interested in helping
achieve what he wanted, they just wanted to either sell him something or
completely take over the management of his retirement funds and other
investments. He talked to friends; no one had any different experience. It
seemed that what he was looking for was just not available.
He decided to get the
knowledge necessary to do it for himself and perhaps he could help some of his
friends along the way. He studied Taxes, Insurance, and Estate Planning,
Employee Benefits, Retirement Plans and Investments. As he studied, he looked
for a place to work at this new profession. He quickly concluded that he would
work for himself.
No one in Northern New
England was advising holistically. The vast majority of advisors sold products
like insurance or Stocks or Mutual funds. John viewed this practice as fraught
with conflicts of interest. How could he give truly objective advice to a client
if his livelihood depended on whether or not they bought some particular mutual
fund or insurance policy?
After studying these
disciplines for a couple years and fulfilling various certification standards,
John encountered Bert Whitehead. Bert, a tax attorney from Tucson, AZ had been
working holistically with Middle Americans. Worth Magazine had rated him as one
of the “Best 60 Financial Advisors in America” every year since 1994.
Best of all Bert had begun to train other planners in the philosophy and
processes he had developed over the 30 to 40 years of his Financial Planning
experience.
John learned from Bert
about why smart people sometimes do stupid things with money. He learned about
Money Personalities or the archetypes of financial tendencies. He also learned
about how we sometimes become stuck in the Financial Life Cycle and our
financial progress falters. He learned about Functional Asset Allocation a
powerful way to balance people’s investments and deliver better returns with
less risk. He also learned to integrate the Money Personality, The Financial
Life Cycle, and Functional Asset Allocation with his knowledge of Taxes,
Insurance, and Estate Planning that he acquired with the previous years of study
into a holistic framework for working with real people who want to make their
financial lives better.
John is now the sole proprietor of Financial Pathways in Londonderry, NH www.financial-pathways.com and a member of Bert Whitehead’s “Cambridge Advisor’s” www.cambridgeadvisors.com an alliance of individual advisory firms that are dedicated to bringing the highest quality holistic financial planning services to real people. Cambridge Advisors help people become Financially Fit and through that financial fitness, we deliver financial peace of mind.