Important Business Announcement from Growing Fortunes Financial Partners LLC
November 2022
When I opened Growing Fortunes Financial Partners LLC in 2007, my goal was to provide financial advice to “regular people” without conflicts of interest. Based on this goal, my firm has grown tremendously, thanks in large part to loyal and trusting clients like you. However, that growth has also made it more difficult for me to provide the level of personalized service you expect, and which I strive to provide, while maintaining a good work/life balance. During 2022 I have been considering how to address this issue.
As I look forward to the next few years, I’d like to spend more of my “work” time focused on clients’ financial issues and questions and less time on some of the other parts of serving clients and maintaining a practice – such as scheduling and related follow-ups, billing, technology, compliance… important work that needs to get done, but that others can do better than I can. This year, I welcomed Beth Frakes to help me with most of the administrative work, and have been working with a paraplanner “behind the scenes” to help with some of the data entry and detailed projection preparation.
As part of transitioning some of the compliance, billing, and tech, my firm, Growing Fortunes Financial Partners LLC, will end its registration with the states of Illinois and Arizona on December 31, 2022, and I will become an investment advisor representative (IAR) of CGN Advisors, LLC, an SEC-registered firm. The CGN team is young, vibrant, experienced and, most importantly, trustworthy, honest and client- focused. I have known one of the founders, Justin Nichols, since my early financial planning days as a member of the Garrett Planning Network. Justin and his partners, Chad Chase and Mike Greim, also share my belief in giving back to local charities with time, talent, and financial resources. I’ve been working with a CGN paraplanner for over a year now, and believe that the additional support of their compliance and administrative expertise would be of benefit to me and my clients.
What does this mean for you? Being part of CGN provides a package of state-of-the-art financial planning tools and robust technology resources that will help me continue to provide up-to-date advice and support you and your vision for your financial future. A higher level of continuity of service and additional administrative support will allow me more time to serve you and your financial planning needs. As a member of CGN, I will be able to offer additional services, such as asset management for clients who no longer want to manage portfolio transactions themselves.
Partnering with CGN Advisors will allow me to maintain a sustainable business model well into the future, while keeping my firm’s culture. I remain fully committed to improving and enhancing my service levels to you. As part of the CGN Advisors team, we will benefit from an expanded team of Certified Financial Planners and paraplanners, including the paraplanner who we have been working with over the past year. Like any change, there are of course some uncertainties. I will do everything I can to make this transition to CGN Advisors as seamless as possible. We will walk you through each step and make sure you are informed and comfortable with the changes.
Here’s what’s not changing: I will continue to provide fee-only financial planning services on a fixed-fee basis, without requiring asset management. My contact information will remain the same. And here’s what happens next: As soon as possible (we are targeting the week of November 28th), I’ll send out more information about updated fees and begin the process of bringing you over to CGN Advisors. A new client contract will be needed, which will be emailed as soon as possible after compliance approvals. Our expectation as of now is that your current service agreement with Growing Fortunes Financial Partners LLC will be terminated effective 12/31/2022, with the final payment to Growing Fortunes Financial Partners LLC being payable in January 2023, and payments to CGN Advisors due in February 2023. I’ll let you know if there is a change to any of the target dates.
Thank you for your continued confidence and trust, which I do not take for granted. I value my relationship with you and look forward to working with you well into the future.
Best,
Cheryl