Experience:
Along the way Vern helped found the firm Independent Financial Services in 1983 and then Hayden Financial Group in 1987. He sold Hayden Financial Group to Northeast Community Bank in 2007 as part of a multi-year transition to focus on a boutique curation of clients, most of whom had become lifelong friends. Vern joined the Harrison, NY firm, Rightirement, in 2021 serving as a mentor to the younger partners and ensuring that his current clients would be served well beyond Vern’s working years. He continues to work with some of those clients today and is enjoying the broadened level of services that the 2024 merger of Rightirement and Moneco Advisors now offers their clients. Looking back, Vern comments that historically many insurance companies and brokerage houses only wanted to sell insurance, stocks and bonds. Vern was starting a financial planning business in 1972 and decided to represent clients first, and not the products. As a result, the local life underwriter’s association for whom he worked asked Vern to leave his role. Correspondingly, the local newspaper in Marin County, California was curious about this new thing called financial planning and wrote a very complimentary and educational article giving Vern credit for helping people in a more objective way. Vern used this clients’ first approach and launched his first financial planning business in San Rafael, California. He then enrolled in the new CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ program and was designated as such in 1978.