Independent.

What does independent actually mean?

Modern Wealth is an independent Registered Investment Advisor (RIA). I am not owned by, affiliated with or paid by a bank, a brokerage, an insurance company, or a fund family. There is no parent company setting a product shelf, no sales manager handing down quotas, and no in-house products I am quietly encouraged to recommend.

That independence changes what you can expect from the advice itself. When an advisor works inside a large institution, part of the job, whether they like it or not, is to distribute that institution's products. Even a well-intentioned advisor is operating inside a system that was built to sell. We built Modern Wealth outside of that system on purpose, so that nothing sits between your goals and the recommendation you receive.

Who do we answer to?

One party: you. Recommendations are not filtered through a corporate product menu, cleared by a sales desk, or shaped by what earns the firm most this quarter. Because I am fee-only as well as independent, the only person paying me is the client on the other side of the table.

Contrast that with a captive advisor at a bank or brokerage. They answer to an employer, a branch manager, and a shelf of approved products, in addition to you. When an advisor is serving two masters, the client is rarely the one who wins the tie. Independence removes the second master entirely.

What it means for you

Independence is not a slogan, it is the reason the advice can be objective. With no products to push and no quotas to hit, the only incentive left is to give guidance that actually works for your situation, even when that guidance is to keep things simple, wait, or do nothing at all.

Why independence matters most for business owners

If most of your net worth is tied up in a company you built, the decisions in front of you, an exit, a liquidity event, how to turn an illiquid business into retirement income, are far too consequential to route through a product shelf. You need advice that starts with your situation, not with whatever the firm is trying to move this quarter.

Independence puts me fully on your side of the table: coordinating with your CPA and attorney, weighing options a product-driven advisor would never surface, and building a single plan around your business and your household rather than around a commission. It is the same reason we put our fiduciary duty in writing and take only fees, never products.

Independent, fee-only, fiduciary. Three parts of the same commitment: there is nobody else I have to please.

Independent does not mean holding your money

The two get confused, and the distinction is the one that matters most. Your assets sit with an independent custodian, not with me. They send your statements, they hold the accounts in your name, and money can only move to an account that belongs to you.

What I hold is permission to advise on and manage those accounts, which is a narrower thing than possession. It is also the arrangement whose absence made the frauds everyone remembers possible: in each of them the adviser held the assets and produced the statements.

So independence cuts two ways here, and both are deliberate. No institution stands between you and the advice, and no adviser stands between you and your money.