Hi, I’m Ryan Poage and welcome to my blog.
I started this site to provide in-depth articles on important financial planning topics that are geared to help specific groups of individuals. The blog posts I’ve written focus on providing detailed information on specific topics where straightforward information is sometimes difficult to find. The site is meant to be a niche resource for clients, friends, and those that have a connection to the topics and are interested in my work but want to look into it with a little bit of distance.
If you’ve stumbled upon this site without knowing me, here’s my story in a nutshell:
I grew up in a small farm town in mid-Missouri named California.
As a young child I became aware that it was important to know as much as one could about money, and despite the “when I grow up” dreams of being things like a rock star or fighter pilot, the concept of a career in the investment business was ongoing.
I was the lead drummer in school that never gets to stop playing during a parade and managed to only once throw the entire band off beat. Never made that mistake again . . .
Became an Eagle Scout. For my project I planted 30 dogwood trees in my town’s park, but rabbits and a flood wiped them all out. I still learned a lot from the project, the biggest being the obstacle of raising the money to pay for the trees. Another lesson in the importance of finance.
My senior year of high school I placed 3rd in the Finance category of the state DECA competition and went on to receive an honorable mention placing at the national competition in Detroit.
I double majored at Mizzou in Finance & Banking and Real Estate.
Going into my senior year and seeking an internship, I contacted all the stock brokerage firms in Columbia, MO. One of them gave me a break and sponsored me to take the tests to become a financial advisor. I did my first stock trade for a client before I was old enough to buy beer.
I graduated and got a banking job in Kansas City, but after 17 months couldn’t stand not moving forward with my goal of being a financial advisor, so I managed to get hired at one of the nation’s largest firms and was given the responsibility of starting a branch office from scratch at age 23. The week that I opened for business was the same week the Dow peaked before entering the three year tech-bust/9-11/corporate fraud bear market.
After a couple years I was recruited to another firm and continued to grow my practice over the next five years. I was also able to increase the branch’s allocations to stock initial public offerings (IPOs) by tenfold.
In the mid-2000s I had a fun extracurricular activity of being the drummer in a rock band. It was small time, but we had about 45 original songs and occasionally played gigs in KC’s bar district. It ran its course and came to an end, but was a true bucket-list endeavor.
After years of planning, in 2007 I started my own independent financial planning firm. The week that I opened, two Bear Stearns sub-prime hedge funds imploded and started the beginning of the Credit Crisis and Great Recession. Once again, not great timing. It was a really big setback, but I survived.
In 2011 I was included as a Rising Stars award winner by a Kansas City business magazine.
In 2011 I reorganized my company to be its own registered investment advisory firm to allow for greater independence for clients. This is a little understood, but big difference from the common independent financial advisor setup where the advisors are actually independent contractors of some other behind-the-scenes financial company.
In 2015 I set up a real estate holding company that currently has stakes in two downtown Kansas City apartment developments totaling 223 apartments with 16,500 square feet of retail and restaurant space and a 68,000 square foot strip mall outside of St. Louis.
In 2016 and 2017 I was named a Five Star Wealth Manager for Kansas City.
During 2016 and 2017 I received some national media coverage by being quoted on the markets and various financial planning topics in online articles from CNBC, Forbes, Yahoo Finance, and CNN Money.
Yeah, that’s probably more than you wanted to know.
My hope is that people can find the information on this site easy to understand and that it can help them pursue a healthier retirement. The reality of today is that most people are required to kind of be their own pension fund manager (handling their own investments and not having a traditional pension). This is a lot to ask of people, and the studies show that it isn’t working very well. My career’s work is focused on trying to make this situation better for people.
To a better retirement,
Ryan Poage
