Yes. At Progress Wealth Management, your needs come first – ahead of anything else. We have an ethical and legal obligation to do what’s best for you.

Our clients live throughout the country, however, we mainly work as financial advisors in Denver, financial advisors in Arvada, and financial advisors in Boulder.

“WHAT SHOULD I LOOK FOR WHEN INTERVIEWING WEALTH MANAGEMENT COMPANIES IN COLORADO?”

When interviewing wealth management companies in Colorado, there are a few things you need to look for when evaluating whether they are right for you.

First, ask if they are registered investment advisors. This means they must register with the state and follow certain rules and regulations. If they’re registered as a broker or an insurance agent and not a registered investment advisor, it means they’re just going to want to sell you things.

Second, ask how long they have been in the business. If you’re working with someone who’s only been in the financial services industry for a year, it’s hard to justify trusting them with your life savings.

Third, ask about their fees. They need to be competitive. The market rate for investment management is 1% of assets under management and it decreases as your balance increases.

Fourth, ask if they are a fee-only financial advisor or commission based. Commissioned advisors still can be good, however, they also may just be skilled salespeople. Be careful. Fee-only advisors are paid to give you the best advice at every step of the way.

Finally, ask if they are independent or affiliated with any other financial services company. If you are a financial advisor at Fidelity, you’re paid to sell fidelity products even if there are better available. If you work for Northwestern Mutual, you’re paid to sell your company’s products over any other. Being independent means you’re paid by your client to give them the absolute best advice every step of the way. Independent financial advisors have fewer conflicts of interest.

We are a non-commissioned wealth manager and our fees get lower as your balance grows. You can learn more by heading to our pricing page where we share our exact fee structure. No surprises, the way it should be.

Progress Wealth Management is Located at 12183 West 57th Ln, Arvada Colorado 80002. Our Phone Number is (425) 577-0660. We’re open 7 AM – 7 PM MST, Monday through Friday.

Yes, we are! By hiring us, you’d get access to a team of professionals comprised of multiple CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERS™, two non-practicing attorneys, and an EA. These marks indicate that we have completed rigorous training and education requirements, uphold a strict ethical obligation to our clients and continue to educate ourselves on the best financial planning and advice practices to build on.

We do! We’re passionate about serving tech employees (especially those in their 20s-40s). Why? We firmly believe that you are working hard and making a lot of critical financial decisions that you need help with. Too often, hard-working tech employees end up waiting until they’re in their 60s to take a closer look at their finances. Unfortunately, by then, we have lost our biggest advantage, time. When you build your financial plan early, you’re able to leverage your wealth to live an exceptional life now while still planning for an incredible future and retirement.

Today, Progress Wealth Management predominantly serves Gen X & Gen Y tech employees and their families. In layman’s terms, most of our clients’ household incomes are $200,000+ with many households having incomes in the mid-six figures to seven figures or greater and are between the ages of 25 to 50. Net worth can vary drastically for our clients, from -$200,000 (thanks to student loans!) to $5,000,000+.

We absolutely do! The bulk of our founder’s career has been hyper-focused on helping retirees better manage their financial lives. We firmly believe that by working with an expert, your retirement will be happier, healthier, and more reliable. Too often, people only start talking to a financial planner once they retire or get close to it which makes it much harder to afford because they’re missing out on the biggest advantage, time. When you start planning for retirement early on, you give yourself and your financial planner a lot more to work with.

We do! It’s never too early to start building your financial plan. Since we have no minimums, we are very accessible regardless of how small your savings are. We’d love the opportunity to get you on the right track for your future.

No, because we also offer a retainer model. So, regardless of your net worth or how much you’re investing, you still have full access to comprehensive financial guidance, investment management, and ongoing support!

Yes, it is one of our strong points! We have a virtual team that can serve you no matter where you’re located. We have clients all across the country but our main office is in Denver, Colorado.

Yes! We are a certified NAPFA Advisor (under 5% of advisors are accepted), a Zoe Certified Advisor (under 1% of advisors are accepted), and are a SmartVestor Pro. These are prestigious organizations that have requirements like:

1. Be a fiduciary (Be legally bound to always recommend what’s in your client’s best interest).
2. Have a clean U-4 (meaning no lawsuits, DUIs, bankruptcies, etc.)
3. Be fee-only (non-commissioned)
4. Be planning-focused.
5. Have a CFP.

WHAT ARE INCENTIVE STOCK OPTIONS?

Incentive Stock Options (ISOs) are a type of employee compensation plan offered by many companies. Under these plans, employees receive a certain number of shares of company stock upon completion of a specific period of employment. These shares are usually granted at a discounted price compared to the market value of the stock.

WHAT IS FINANCIAL PLANNING, AND WHY DO I NEED IT?

Think about all the uncertainties in regard to all the financial topics in your life. From insurance to cash flow to investing to saving for your goals while still enjoying the lifestyle you want today, it’s a lot to try and figure out on your own. You need to make complicated decisions — and each choice impacts the other ones you need to make. It can feel like trying to balance an endless series of dominos without knocking over a single one — ever!

But what if you knew the right decisions to make? What if you could make those choices with confidence? Imagine having all those uncertainties identified, explained, and planned out into actionable steps for you. Imagine if you had someone to navigate through the financial decision-making process with you, a trained, educated, and objective third party there to help you at every financial crossroads, ensuring you chose the right path.

That’s what financial planning can do for you. We’ll be there every step of the way, offering professional and highly-qualified advice no matter what goals you want to reach. Having a true financial plan built by a CFP® will give you even more confidence to help you create what you want in your life using the resources you have.

Additional FAQs:

Our History

After a decade in the financial services industry at some of the most well-respected firms in senior-level roles, our Founder, Blaine Thiederman wanted to provide his clients with better advice, guidance, and support as he helped guide them through their financial journeys. He believed that, as a certified financial planner, he could do better than what the industry was offering by not selling insurance products or commissioned financial products. He knew that there must be a better way to support his client’s financial situation so he decided to launch his own financial advisory firm.

A Financial Planning Firm Created With You In Mind

Through launching his own firm in the Denver metro area, he knew that he’d find reasonable, hard-working, like-minded clients that would see the value in receiving comprehensive services including investment advice and family office services like asset management, risk management, in-house tax professionals and a legal obligation to always have their best interests at heart. Providing clients easy access to these kinds of services would make Progress Wealth Management a different kind of wealth management firm.

As a fiduciary financial adviser, Progress Wealth Management hopes to help its clients use the most effective financial strategies to improve their retirement plans without the sale of any security. They believe that by providing accurate information and simple steps that they can do in their spare time that they’ll be able to reach their financial goals easier.

Our investment advisory services aren’t dependent on our ability to tell the future or use some fancy product our clients don’t understand. We don’t think anyone can do that effectively and anyone who does likely doesn’t specialize in offering financial planning services.

Regularly, our clients are invested in mutual funds or exchange-traded funds. We believe this is the correct way to manage their funds because historically, investment managers aren’t very good at fortune-telling. Picking out the best stocks is hard, even for the best stock pickers on wall street. Hedge Funds in the last 20 years have far underperformed, on average, a basic ETF portfolio.

The Process Of Work With Our Wealth Management Firm

If this is your first time working with a financial advisor, you may wonder what the process looks like for investing. If that sounds like you, read on.

The first step will be talking with you about your personal information. You should expect a casual conversation where we talk about a lot of general information including your financial goals, obstacles, your career, your family, investment strategies, and much more.

If it makes sense, we’ll move on to building your financial plan and figuring out the next steps. Now, in order to help our clients understand what asset allocation makes the most sense, we start with their financial objectives and risk tolerance and provide them with options that all have a high degree of likelihood of working.

Once we provide them with the options for their investment strategy, we help them decide what options make the most sense for them. This typically involves onboarding their accounts and beginning our investment management program. For clients in the Denver area, we’re happy to help with these forms in person. Alternatively, for clients outside of the Denver area, we oftentimes will guide them through the paperwork remotely.

All investment decisions that we make on our client’s behalf are understood and agreed to prior to us making them.

Following us onboarding your accounts onto our broker – dealer ‘s platform and building your initial financial plan, you’ll receive a client relationship summary that will summarize what tasks you should be working on and what you should expect out of us. This typically is in the form of tasks on your financial planning dashboard which we’ll review once every 6 months, together at the least.

The reason why once every six months makes sense is that, as you and your partner live your financial lives together, you’ll see yourself progress toward your goals but occasionally, you may hit a bump in the road. We want to ensure you pivot correctly when that happens.

You’ll have easy access to your financial planning dashboard and investment management platform at every step of the way so you’ll know how we’re managing your money and why.

What Makes Us The Best Financial Advisors

As your financial advisor, we will be your fiduciary and will take the extra measure to ensure your individual situation is given the time and care that it deserves.

Every advisor that works for Progress Wealth Management is required to have a bachelor’s degree, be a Certified Financial Planner and be financial planning, first. We’re bound by the ethical requirements of the financial planner board of standards, inc as well as by our designation as a fiduciary. We are fully an independent wealth management firm and aren’t organized under LPL Financial registered representatives or any other Hybrid RIA.

We won’t advise on any real estate transactions; only on how to prudently and responsibly reach your financial goals as fast as possible. If you’re looking for someone to help advise you on real estate transactions, we likely aren’t the right advisor for you.

This shouldn’t matter to you, however, we aren’t an SEC – registered investment advisory firm, only the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (member FINRA) meaning you’ll get more attention because we don’t have hundreds (if not thousands) of clients. We aren’t paid to sell any investment products, only give you prudent financial advice and manage your investments. We don’t take any institutional clients. We accept clients all over colorado including Colorado Springs, Northern Colorado, and everywhere in between. We also accept clients in the following states: Arizona, Washington, California, New York, Florida, Oregon, and Utah.

Why You Need To Work With A Financial Planning Firm

Even the most financially astute among us have trouble managing their finances, sometimes. It’s hard to stay disciplined, manage your investments and be able to take a step back and look at our finances from a thousand-foot view, especially when life throws curve balls. This is why we all have doctors when we could very well likely pay for our own labs and use Google to properly interpret them; because getting life-changing decisions wrong ends with terrible consequences.

This is why many people opt-in to hire a financial advisor to, at least once a year, help them understand what, if anything they need to adjust about the way they’re managing risk, their budget, their savings, earning potential, and much more.

We ask that everyone reading this at the very least schedule a free consultation with us to verify if you’re doing a good job on your own or not.