As a client of Great Waters Financial, you can expect a custom-crafted financial plan that is unique to you and your family. As a firm, we don’t just value what your retirement looks like, we value your journey in getting there. The foundation of your client experience is built by our professional advising teams, financial planning specialists, portfolio administrators, and client service team. Everyone at Great Waters Financial works together to make sure you are fully supported in living out your retirement dreams.

At Great Waters Financial, we have an experienced team of Series 65 licensed advisors, Certified Financial Planners (CFP), Retirement Income Certified Professionals (RICP), Certified Retirement Planning Counselors (CRPC), and Insurance Licensed team members.

Being proactive in planning for this chapter of life allows for individuals and families to create a clear path for when and how they can retire. We believe that retirement isn’t solely about obtaining financial independence, it’s about living now and being able to dream and aspire to live this season how you’ve always wanted to.

There is a common misconception that working with a Financial Advisor boils down to only having someone choose investments for you. Working with a Financial Advisor is so much more than that. When you’re preparing for retirement, you have to create income plans, tax management plans, manage investments, update estate plans, and the list goes on. By working with a Financial Advisor here at Great Waters Financial, we help consolidate all of those items into one place, helping them work in concert with each other.

Our Discovery meeting is designed to help us get to know you and your vision for retirement. We want to know your opportunities, hopes, goals, and the questions and concerns you may have when it comes to your retirement. In this meeting we will also gather important information that allows us to create a thorough analysis of all your accounts. In our next meeting, the Analysis Meeting we will then share our findings, revealing the good, and the areas that could be improved.

Education is one of our top priorities and we have several resources available on our website. From digital video classes to blogs to downloadable assets, our hope is to equip you with the answers you need with preparing for retirement.

We have a set quarterly fee schedule. That fee includes management of your investments, all of the customized, advanced planning, tax planning, and more. The quarterly fee also takes care of relationship coordination with other professionals like your CPA, Estate Planning Attorney, etc.

Great Waters Financial is an independent investment advisory firm. This means we have access to many different types of investments. We are also a fiduciary based firm, which means we have the obligation and privilege of providing only what is in the best interest of our clients. The advice that we give is not swayed by specific financial products or investments.

Many people wonder what they should expect from their advisor. We have provided a resource to help in the evaluation process. Click here to access that resource.

We do not charge any fees to go through our discovery and analysis meetings.

Great Waters Financial was established in 2012 in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Since then, we opened three more offices throughout the Twin Cities Metro and an office in Duluth. Our centralized headquarters in downtown Minneapolis designs all financial plans and manages our clients portfolios. This allows every client to receive excellent, customized planning and advice regardless of what office they’re working with.
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Currently, we serve over a thousand clients. We are debt free and profitable and we plan to be here for years to come.

We take your data’s security seriously. We don’t have your information floating around in file cabinets. We use our SEC compliant, secure server to store all of your documents. Every computer we have uses encryption technology to protect and secure your data.

A robo-advisor’s main focus is rebalancing your portfolio based on set algorithms and parameters for investing. Robo-Advising isn't focused on what you are planning on using your retirement income for. Here at Great Waters Financial, we are. We walk alongside you and help you build a financial plan that is right for you and your investment needs. This includes looking at tax planning, income planning, different types of insurances, estate planning, and major expense funding. We also help to manage professional relationships like your CPA and estate planning attorney to make sure we are all working together in your best interest. We want to make your investment journey as simple and worry-free as possible.

We believe in embracing what academia and research have taught us. That timing the market and stock picking is a challenge (research would suggest it's impossible), and that a low-cost diversified approach to investing is the best way to consistently deliver solid and consistent results. Using modern portfolio theory, we build portfolios that fit the risk tolerance of our clients. We keep taxes and turnover low, diversify globally, rebalance regularly, and keep a long-term view with our investments. We hold true to the statement "time in" the market, is more important than "timing" the market.