Looking Back to Look Ahead: Celebrating Schmitt Wealth Advisers’ 8th Year
Have you been introduced to Schmitt Wealth Advisers? We believe it’s important to find a financial planner you connect with. On August 4th of 2023, we celebrated our 8th anniversary as an independent, family-owned Registered Investment Adviser company.
Find a Financial Planner: Managing Member Andy Schmitt’s Background
Schmitt Wealth Advisers is the company I started in 2015, and here is my story. On July 6, 2023, I marked my 31st year in the financial services industry. I grew up in Fairport, New York, a small village located on the Erie Canal on the east side of Rochester, New York.
Growing up in the 1970’s in Fairport, me and my neighborhood friends would spend summer days biking into the village, exploring nearby fields and woods, or playing pick-up football or baseball games in a friend’s yard.
In the village, we frequented TK’s Pizzeria for our favorite pizza, The Swirl for a chocolate and vanilla twist ice cream cone, and Towne Club Beverages for local sodas and snacks. TK’s Pizza is still operating in its original location on Lift Bridge Lane and is some of the best pizza anywhere (in my opinion).
A Mow & Snow Entrepreneur
When I was 11 years old, my great Aunt Mary gave me an old, rear-engine riding lawn mower she could no longer use. My dad and mom helped me land my first job cutting and trimming lawns for several neighbors every week. But the summer season was short.
Fairport winters were cold, and nearby Lake Ontario sent us lots of lake-effect snow. With my savings from a few summers of lawn mowing, and help from my dad, we eventually invested in a bigger lawn tractor, which had a wider cutting deck and a snow blower attachment. For a few years, I mowed lawns and did snow blowing for neighbors. The snow blowing business was usually more altruistic than profitable, helping neighbors get out from under a few feet of snow, but I was paid for some of it.
Find a Financial Planner Who Has Always Loved Finance
I kept a meticulous accounting journal of every lawn and driveway I did, how long it took, how much gas I used, and what I was paid. I suppose you could say I’ve always been a financial planner at heart. In my Fairport High School years, I worked at the Mobil gas station in nearby Penfield New York. At that time, we still pumped gas for customers, even during sub-freezing blizzards, checked oil levels, refilled washer fluid, and the high school crew did some minor auto work like, rotating and balancing tires, oil changes, and fixing thermostats.
Early Roots in Ohio, Both College & Professional
After graduating Fairport High School, I left New York for the University of Dayton, Ohio. In college, I qualified for a work-study financial aid program. I was guaranteed some type of job, and freshman year, I worked the snack-bar in my dormitory. By my junior year, I was General Manager of the three snack-bars on UD’s campus at that time (Stewart Hall, Founders Hall, and Marycrest Hall). I was responsible for scheduling student workers, tracking inventory, ordering product, re-stocking, and co-opening the main snack-bar on Sunday with the full-time cafeteria workers.
Summers during college, I continued part-time at the Mobil station and did full-time work at Shadow Lake Golf Course in Penfield. I was part of the grounds crew, and I cut cups and moved the tees every morning. The summer before my senior year in college, I interned at the Yellow Pages agency L.M. Berry in nearby Webster New York. The Berry Company was headquartered in Kettering, Ohio, and they hired me there full-time as my first job after college.
After that, I worked for Western New York Computing Systems in Penfield, New York. Initially, I sold medical billing systems to doctors, and later did credit and collections for my employer.
My current career started in 1992 when I moved my wife Barb and our first child from Penfield, New York to Cincinnati, Ohio for my new career at Merrill Lynch in the Cincinnati downtown office. After 15 years there, I left for Raymond James & Associates for eight years and in 2015, opened Schmitt Wealth Advisers.
Do You Need a Whole Life Story to Find a Financial Planner?
Why does any of this matter? Doing business with someone you know and someone you know and trust is paramount. Since I started mowing lawns at the age of 11, most of what I have done is take care of people. Even in the 1970’s good-looking lawns were important to my customers, so I made sure they looked their best. In fact, I learned a valuable lesson early in my lawn mowing days when one of my regular customers told me he felt I did a “rush-up job” on his lawn. I went back to fix it and never did a sub-par job again, whether mowing lawns, pumping gas, cutting cups, or developing goal plans and managing money for our clients today.
In our business, taking care of people is really job #1. An expertly prepared goal plan and disciplined investment management is essential, of course, but both are part and parcel of taking care of people. And that’s what you need to know to find a financial planner.
Enough about me! Everyone has a story. What’s your story? Let’s talk!
For expert advice from the financial advisers of Schmitt Wealth Advisers, view Our Outlook blog. Looking to find a financial planner? contact us.
This material is provided by Schmitt Wealth Advisers, LLC for informational purposes only. It is not intended to serve as a substitute for personalized investment advice or as a recommendation or solicitation of any particular security, strategy, or investment product. Opinions expressed by Schmitt Wealth Advisers are based on economic or market conditions at the time this material was written. Economies and markets fluctuate. Actual economic or market events may turn out differently than anticipated. Facts presented have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Schmitt Wealth Advisers, however, cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of such information. Past performance may not be indicative of future results.
