Mick Meiners, founder of Financial Plans & Strategies (FPS), knows financial advice inside and out. A former estate planning attorney, in the 1980s, Mick was obsessed with helping his clients prepare for their financial future. After becoming a Certified Financial Planner™, he began offering financial planning services in earnest, often knocking on doors to meet new customers, guided always by a deep desire to help others—a desire he passed on to his daughter, Maggie.
Maggie found her own path to becoming an RIA. After studying Financial Planning at Purdue and working for a brief stint at a hotel, she joined Vanguard, where she earned her stripes as a client relationship and retirement specialist. She then became a fully-fledged advisor and returned to Indiana, buying into her father’s business, and helping transition FPS from a broker dealer to an RIA.
Today, FPS has over $480M in assets under management, with customers who have been with Mick, and now Maggie, for 40+ years. Built on a bedrock of top-tier talent and client relationships, the firm has grown almost entirely on referrals, a testament to Mick and Maggie’s recruitment and retention strategies, and their unwavering dedication to their clients.
We had the pleasure of sitting down with Maggie to talk about FPS, and how Altruist is helping her serve their clients.
Altruist [A]: First and foremost, talk to us about becoming an RIA. What was the path? Why did you want to follow in your father’s footsteps?
Maggie Meiners [MM]: Honestly, I grew up around it. Both my father and my grandfather sold mutual funds in their day. Being an RIA wasn’t a “thing” back then—my dad was at a broker dealer—but I watched him knock on doors, bring on new clients. He’d open people’s eyes to saving and was obsessed with helping them build a better financial future. And that really stuck with me.
A: So financial advising is kind of in your DNA. Where did you get your start?
MM: I actually worked for FPS before and through college, but I got started in earnest at Vanguard. There, I was a client relationship specialist, then a retirement specialist, before becoming an Investment Advisor Representative in the Personal Advisor Services (PAS) program. I loved helping people make informed decisions about their finances, their lives.
A: But you didn’t stay.
MM: No. I learned a lot working there, but after two and half years, I found that I wanted more. Yes, I wanted to distinguish myself as an advisor, which was hard at such a large firm, but even more than that, I wanted to connect more deeply with every client—to talk on the phone with them for hours, instead of the thirty minutes I was allocated with them every so often. And there was just no way I could do that at Vanguard.
A: You moved back to Indiana in …
MM: 2015. My grandfather had just passed away, and I knew it was time to come home. I bought into FPS, and worked with my dad to grow it, always keeping in mind the importance of client relationships. Every day, I get to connect with, and help, such genuine, down to earth people, and make a positive impact in their lives. That’s what makes the job worth it, and what keeps us growing. Strong client relationships are so much a part of my life that my kids have picked up on it. I come home from work and my daughter asks, “How was your day, mom?” She’s three years old.
A: An advisor in the making! So then, how did you hear about Altruist?
MM: I actually heard about you from two separate sources, at around the same time. First, from our American Funds wholesaler, someone we have a really strong relationship with—again, relationships!—and second, our Vanguard wholesaler. Both of them are trusted sources, more like guides and mentors. They both had great things to say about Altruist.
A: What was your initial reaction?
MM: I did my research. And I discovered that your CEO, Jason, previously ran two RIAs. He’s been there. He’s done what we’re doing, been in our shoes. He knows how to grow a business like FPS. In his interviews, you can also tell he prioritizes relationships, that he puts client needs ahead of his own, that he genuinely cares. Here was a founder who was as obsessed with client relationships as we are. And if that were true, I knew he’d also want to take care of us RIAs, his customers.
A: What convinced you to switch?
MM: Well, before working with Altruist, our custodian was TD Ameritrade (TDA). And honestly, they were doing a great job.
A: If not for the merger, would you have switched?
MM: It probably would have taken us a lot longer to hear about you.
A: But it did happen.
MM: It did. And it changed everything. One of the first and biggest differences was the fees. We were told that fee structures were going to remain the same, but that turned out not to be true. With TDA, distributions were automated, with no fees. After the merger, though, that automation would go away, and there’d be a fee associated with taking a distribution. We have clients who take distributions every month. The message was basically, “Here’s the option. Take it or leave it.” Given the low-cost products we were using at TDA, that just wasn’t going to work for us.*
A: And that’s when you heard about Altruist.
MM: Right. If we stayed put, I felt like we’d just be another number. At FPS, we’re all about relationships with our clients, but we also want to have a relationship with our custodian. We work hard to understand our clients’ needs; we want to work with a firm that understands our needs. That’s something we get at Altruist.
A: How is your business different now that you’re working with Altruist?
MM: It’s the little things. Distributions are automated. Fees are minimal, and always transparently communicated. It’s so easy for us to open accounts, or for our younger clients to move money around. Altruist is truly built for RIAs, built for firms like FPS. Our business is still growing, and growing quickly—we need all the time we can get to build new client relationships and deepen the ones we have. By helping us save time and money, Altruist gives us that time. It’s been such a pleasure to partner with a modern custodian that cares so much about the success of their RIAs.
A: What’s next for FPS?
MM: Client relationships! But also recruiting and retaining top talent. We have a great intern program, picking up top students from Butler, Purdue, and Indiana University. Butler in particular has an incredible career mentor program—the students who come to us have incredible soft skills, they’re so eager to learn. So we get them early, teach them how to be customer obsessed from the beginning. They grow as we grow.
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