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A Closer Look
At Silverling Financial, we assemble broad-based, diverse strategies that create confident paths for our clients and their future.
We believe no matter who you are or where you come from, everyone deserves a fair shot at financial freedom. We are fiercely empathetic, and we approach our clients with compassion and respect.
That's why we do this work: to help people and families find ways out of the maze of financial confusion and into the light of clarity, control, and confidence.
Mission & Vision
Our mission is to give people like you the tools they need to make informed decisions about their finances and build wealth for themselves and their families.
Leadership
Mike McMeans
Certified Financial Planner™
A Lionhearted Financial Champion for his clients, his dedication is evident in everything he does. Mike truly believes that everyone can achieve success if they have the right plan and the right team behind them. He has over two decades of experience in financial planning and investment management, and he is passionate about helping others achieve their goals.
Mike McMeans is a man on a mission. A mission to provide families, retirees, and young professionals with the strategies they need to grow and retain their wealth.
Background & History
After graduating from The Ohio State University in 1999 with a B.S. in Industrial Organizational Psychology, Mike went to work for the Ohio Bicentennial Commission and ultimately into grassroots political advocacy. He then pursued his financial planning professional
certification from The Ohio State University, and in 2013 became a CFP® certificant. He lives in Hilliard, Ohio with his wife Tiffany and five children Ella, Ava, Delilah, Stella, and Noah, where they are very active in their church and the community.
From 2007-2010, Mike was with Edward Jones Investments where he was a Financial Advisor. In this role, Mike oversaw client assets more than $15 million and had specialty focus in such areas as securities, insurance, debt management, financial strategy, college planning and business retirement plan construction and administration.
Frustrated with the way clients in his industry were being treated, he created his own business model to serve them better. He wanted to make clients feel like they're not alone, so he set out to launch Silverling Financial in 2010- a consultancy that truly listens and counsels to empower their clients achieve financial freedom.
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Can a financial planner help me manage my 401k?Yes. This is one of the great values we bring to clients, helping them not only manage the retirement plans they have at old jobs, but also managing the ones they have at current jobs. All your retirement accounts should be thought of as being in suitcases; you can pick them up and take them wherever you want. They are yours, and there are expensive and inexpensive ways to manage them. So don’t just go and consolidate your accounts. Talk to us first. There are some very easy ways to save significant expense, and many similarly easy ways to create additional growth (often without increased risk).
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What can you do for me that I can’t do for myself?Most people carry around “the weight of the undone,” or the guilt of not having gotten to it yet, or whatever you want to call it. It’s really not so much a question of “can you do it.” If you want to put in a lot of time and effort and make financial planning and management your main thing, you can probably do it. But most people don’t want to do that. Hire what you either don’t have time to do, or what you’re not great at, or both! We create affordable options for people at any stage of the game to get started, to organize their accounts, to create confidence in their strategy, and to design a cohesive plan.
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What is a fiduciary and why is it important?A fiduciary is a person who has a professional obligation to put the interests of their clients before themselves. We are CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERS™ or CFP®’s, and, by definition, act as your fiduciary. It is crucial that when you hire a planner to help you with your financial life, he or she be a fiduciary. It’s really the only way to know whether they are actually doing this or not.
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What is the difference between a financial planner and an advisor? Financial Planner vs Advisor?Advisors try to create investment returns to help people have enough to stop working at some point. Planners do the same thing, only they take into account all the variables that can potentially impact that effort. You may have heard the saying “it’s not what you make; it’s what you keep.” A planner helps with cash flow, risk management through all types of insurance, investment management, tax planning strategies, retirement income and planning strategies, and estate planning. As you can see, an advisor generally helps with only one, maybe two, of those areas. A planner – a CFP® – helps far more comprehensively, dealing with not just returns, but all the areas that together determine successful financial outcomes.
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What are the six areas of planning that a financial planner helps people optimize?In priority order from basic to advanced, cash flow management, risk management (insurance coverages, etc.), investment planning, tax planning strategies, retirement planning strategies, and estate planning. I would add that a good planner also consults on the effective use of debt (kind of a combo of cash flow management and risk management), how and when a guaranteed income may be an appropriate solution (kind of a combo of risk management and retirement planning), Business transition strategy (how to sell, transfer, and structure a business transition deal), and being strategic about other types of investments including real estate and small business venture capital investments.
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Should I hire one person as an accountant, an attorney, and financial planner? Or should each be separate?Separate. Some companies are big enough to have a tax division and an investment division. There are also some professionals who claim to be able to do everything. Generally, in almost every situation, you should have three people, one for each role. For example, as a financial planner, I am not an accountant and I am not an attorney, and everything I say about those two fields is not final and should be checked against an expert in that field. That said, I often consult together with accountants and attorneys (and often insist on it) and am very familiar with what they do, what it costs, and what structure may be best in a given situation.
