In this episode of the Life and Finances Together podcast we continue to get to know Roger and Jake as they dive into a number of aspects of working at Rinvelt & David.
To get started, how long have you been with Rinvelt & David?
For Roger, it seems like forever. Rob started the company. He's the Rinvelt of Rinvelt & David and he began as an advisor back in 1988. Roger joined with him in 1995, and they were together until Rob’s retirement in 2020. And now as Roger likes to say, “I've got the kid with me.” Jake has been with Rinvelt & David for about 10 years, but he’s actually been around all of his life.
So, recording this in the summer of 2024, it's been 28, almost 29 years for Roger, and it's been something that he’s absolutely enjoyed. It's been a labor of love. In a mostly good way. Some of the market volatility he could have done without, but interacting with clients and becoming part of their lives in so many ways has just been an absolute gift over all these years. He has loved working with them. They’ve shared laughs and tears, high-fives and hugs in the office when they meet some of their goals and objectives in life. So, it's been a long time but a good time so far. And it's gone by like a blink of an eye.
For Jake, the almost 10 years has also gone really fast. He likes to joke that he lost his hair because of the market stress, but he actually went bald in college. So, it wasn’t actually caused by the job. Sometimes it seems like he’s been here forever, but it's also the same thing, blink of an eye.
And in all that time, do you have a favorite memory or a couple of favorite things?
For Roger, when talking about favorite memories over the last 28 years, probably some of the most cherished memories and things that he remembers the most are when clients have come to him and the team during times of uncertainty or when something challenging has happened in their lives, which all of us go through. And really what he cherishes most about that is how they're able to work together; how they're able to help the clients through these challenging times, provide solutions and answers, and most of all, reassurance.
“When you sit down with a client who feels like things are unraveling all around them, and they come in and we're able to provide that certainty, that stability, that reassurance, that's what we value most. It's something that I cherish the most and what I'm able to do.”
Of course, we love sharing in the joyous times and the happy times. Graduations and weddings and retirement, are all great! But when we can sit down with clients and say, “you know what, I'm here for you. And you don't have to worry about these things and everything's going to be okay because we're here for you. We're right alongside with you. You're not alone. We're your advocate. And we're going to take care of you. We're going to do everything that we can to make sure that everything comes out okay,” that's probably one of the greatest things we offer in what we do.
He doesn’t like it that our friends who happen to be clients have to go through those things in life, but when we can come to them in their time of need and their time of uncertainty and provide that stability and reassurance, that's really what we want to do. And those are the memories that Roger really cherishes the most. And in 28 years, a lot of things have happened for all of our clients. And we’ve been there with them.
And it's no small number of clients either. For Roger and for Jake, whose 10 years is no small feat either.
Even though he hasn’t been in the industry or part of the firm as long as Roger, or his dad, because of how they trained him, under their tutelage, learning the way that they've interacted and dealt with clients of our firm over all these years, has really gotten Jake the type of experiences that they have as well.
He’s experienced with younger clients the same type of things that Jake himself is going through right now: getting married, purchasing a home, starting a family, those sorts of things. Helping with different workplace benefits is also something that comes up often. But Jake also had the pleasure of working with some of our more established, older clients that are going through their own life events as well.
Unfortunately, he’s dealt with clients passing. He’s worked through challenges with clients having dementia and the issues that they're struggling with as well as their family members, whether it be their spouse or their children that are taking care of them. So Jake has had a lot of similar experiences as Roger, and he believes that it's really helping to build him and mold him into an even better advisor to have these experiences, in addition to a lot of the tumultuous market situations that we've been through ever since Jake started with the firm.
It's wonderful to celebrate all the successes and when the things go well; things go smoothly for clients. But it even feels like it gives us more purpose when we can assist clients when life throws the curveballs at them, whether it be health-related, or just something unexpected. And giving them advice to help them work through those things is really, as well for Jake, something that he really cherishes.
Knowing what we know now, this might be an easy question, but what motivates you to come to work every day?
For Roger, coming to work means being a part of everybody's life.
We host all different kinds of meetings. And by having these meetings, the team and the advisors get to connect with our clients often. And they’re talking about finances, and Jake and Roger do the math, and they're doing the calculations and looking at clients’ financial situations. And through all of that time they are becoming part of clients’ lives.
“They're sharing things with us that, you know, most of their intimate family knows about. And now they're coming to us and saying, ‘Hey, I need to share this with you and we need to have some advice and direction on what we're going to do.’”
The fact that they have this level of trust and confidence in our team, that's really what motivates Roger every day. Anybody who said “yes” to working with Rinvelt & David means everything to us. That “yes” is everything because there's more to it than just that word. There's this trust. There's this confidence. And there's this reliance on our team to make sure that they're going to be okay financially, so they can enjoy the other parts of their lives to the fullest extent and not have to worry about these things that are day-to-day as it relates to their finances. They're relying on us. Their financial lives are in our hands, and that means everything.
So we’re motivated to come every day with our best.
And to put together the team that we have here where everybody's in sync with one objective in mind, to make sure that we're taking care of those clients and their families and really making sure that the reassurance that they have is there, is legitimate.
This is what our passion is, is to make sure that people are okay, and they're taken care of, at least financially, in what we do.
The markets are the markets, and those are things that we have to deal with, and we're trained and educated to handle that. But there are always challenges here and there, and what's great about it is that is that between Roger and Jake, they figure problems out and provide solutions in an efficient way.
There's a lot of things about what the team does that people might say, “well, that's just mundane, just normal things every day.” They're not. People are relying upon our team to “get it done right.” And get things done on their timetable, not on ours.
For Jake, he feels the motivation of wanting to create a detailed financial plan for every client. And along with that, just trying to simply educate clients in all the different facets and all the, frankly, confusing things that go along with this industry. Specifically finance, what's going on in the markets, what's going on in the economy. And then he adds all the other facets of planning, whether it's income tax planning, estate tax planning, even walking them through their workplace benefits. Not a lot of people take personal finance classes anymore. Not a lot of people know where to get objective information about what's going on in the markets and the economy.
And that's what we're here for. We're here to educate. We're here to try to teach clients.
Through their studies, Jake and Roger have learned so much, and they're just trying to educate as many as possible. As Jake sees even more with his generation, people have hardly any understanding of what goes on in the finance industry. They’re kind of just being handheld by their employers and say, “Here's a list of benefits that you have. Just pick them, and you're enrolled.” But what do all of them mean?
So it’s all about really trying to educate clients. That's something that Jake takes a lot of pride in as well, so that more people understand what's going on.
Now, if you were to describe Rinvelt and David to someone new, do you have a nice short little description that you could give… an elevator pitch?
Jake takes a moment to think about how he would explain Rinvelt and David and then gives his answer.
“First and foremost, we are very empathetic with clients, and we try to build a lifelong relationship with every client that we bring in. And how do we begin to build that relationship? Through our onboarding process - through the financial planning that we do. We believe that everybody needs a comprehensive financial plan that details out their life and brings into picture all these different things that are part of their finances, whether it be their benefits through work, insurance policies that they purchased 20, 30 years ago, estate planning documents, all those things.
It's really creating a financial plan to help them understand all these different facets of their financial life, and then to not only give them direction and give them advice, but to be their advocate as well. We want you to call us. We make time so that if clients have a question, if something comes up unexpectedly, that we are available to them, and we're going to continue to give them advice in a timely manner rooted in that financial plan.”
Now it’s Roger’s turn.
“How would I describe the firm? I guess what I'd really like it to be is just an extension of our client's family. That's really what I'd want it to be. That's how I would describe it. I mean, we get questions and calls and concerns and whatever that are not just related to what's the market doing today. There's so much more to that. So I guess the best way to describe it is we're an extension of our client's families. And we love to say that we have friends and family that just happen to be clients, and that's how we strongly feel about it.”
Thank you so much for taking time to read about this insight into Rinvelt & David, into the office, into the team, and what brings the advisors here. If you have any questions about our team, our services, or finances in general, please check out our website. Send us an email. Give us a call. And, of course, please like and subscribe to our podcast, and stay tuned for our next episode.
