I am married with three kids. My wife is Vanessa Coleman and my kids are Kaitie Coleman, Lucas Coleman, and Cru Coleman. I love golf, cars, motorcycles, music, traveling with my family and helping people reach their goals in retirement. I'm also a member of St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church in Ozark, MO.
I started working for White River Valley Electric Cooperative on Aug 13, 2007. When I started there I couldn’t have told you the difference between a co-op, a municipal, or an investor owned utility.
However, I was pretty good at basic math, I knew what a Kilowatt hour was, I had a maintenance and HVAC background, and I had the ability to talk shop with a lineman or talk office politics with a CEO, which looking back was and is probably my most valuable skill.
I learned a lot in my time at White River. I learned about load, demand, power factor, inductive loads, watts, megawatts, all the acronyms that co-op folk speak, (which is darn near the equivalent of learning another language lol) but the most important thing I learned was that some of the best humans I’ve ever met work at electric cooperatives. That is true universally at almost every cooperative in the country.
My rule of thumb for judging good character is asking myself would that person help me change a tire on the side of the road? Co-op employees would definitely help you change a tire on the side of the road. That’s one of the main reasons I decided to specialize in working with electric cooperative retirees.
Another reason is this. I sat through all the financial and retirement seminars that you guys did and probably still do. I’m not one to ask a lot of questions in situations like that. I usually sit in the back of a room and observe. What I observed was co-op employees asking questions and not getting direct answers to their questions. That always puzzled me.
I would think to myself I know that answer and I know the presenter must know that answer so why won’t they just tell the person the answer? That really bothered me. I learned later the reason they can’t give you specific advice is because they work for the retirement benefit plan and not for you. It’s literally against the law for them to advise or counsel you about certain things.
I also saw people that had worked for White River for 40 years retire with no actual plan. I saw them take the monthly annuity over the R&S lump sum when that clearly was the wrong choice based on their needs. I saw them leave with a million dollar lump sum and take it to an annuity salesman down the road that would make 8% commission on that million dollars while making all these promises to them about how they would never lose money and their money would be safe and all these other sales tactics that one uses when they are trying to make a sale to a vulnerable person.
In short, I saw people that had given their life to the co-op leave with a lottery ticket that they had no idea how to use or what to do with it.
Let’s be honest. There are crooks and scam artists everywhere in the financial advisor world and most people that don’t work in this business have no idea how to distinguish between someone that is actually trying to help them and someone that is only trying to make money off them. There is a huge difference there.
In 2016, after much thought and prayer, I decided to start the process of becoming a Financial Advisor. I often get asked why would you leave a good paying job at a co-op?. I didn’t leave White River for the money. Financially speaking, the smart move would have been to stay in the co-op world and try to move my way up. I left to help people. I knew I could help co-op retirees and I knew they needed someone they could trust to help them.
In January 2019, I left White River to open my own RIA (Registered Investment Advisor) firm, 80/20 Financial Services. I started with no clients and no revenue whatsoever. Not exactly the easiest path to take in this business, but I knew if I worked hard and trusted God things would work out just fine and they have. At 80/20 Financial Services, we are independent which means we work directly for you and not a retirement plan.
Fast forward to now, 80/20 Financial Services is the steward of approx. $40 million dollars of retirement assets. I don’t say that to brag. I say that in gratitude to everyone that has entrusted me to help them navigate this retirement maze. It’s a responsibility I am proud to have and do not take for granted. It’s a privilege and an honor to serve my clients.
My goal with my business is total transparency. I don’t need any more clients to live a good life. I’m not here to try and sell you or persuade you to work with me. My only goal is to help you make informed decisions about your retirement. That’s it.
So feel free to ask questions that you never got answers to in those retirement seminars at your co-op and I’ll do my best to help you. I may not know every answer, but I have resources at my disposal where I can find those answers.