Jim is the founder and Managing Director of Wealth Management Associates, Inc. as well as being the Manager of our Securities America, Inc. branch office.
After graduating with a degree in Finance from the University of Virginia, Jim started his career in 1986 as a financial advisor trainee with Smith Barney Harris Upham; the firm that "made money the old fashioned waythey earned it." He worked for Smith Barney for several years and then joined the old Philadelphia brokerage firm of Butcher & Singer, which through various mergers and acquisitions became First Union Securities and today is part of Wells Fargo.
Having worked for a major New York brokerage firm, a regional brokerage firm and a bank brokerage, and seeing both the good and the bad of how these different types of firms did business, Jim decided to form Wealth Management Associates in 1998. The goal of "Wealth Management" was, and continues to be, to deliver completely objective and independent financial advice, access to state of the art financial resources and high quality personal service at a reasonable cost.
The first few years were challenging, as the start up of any new enterprise can be. However, thanks to his many loyal clients and the arrival of Jim's good friend and business partner David Hess in 2000, the business survived and over time has thrived. Today, Wealth Management Associates, Inc. has grown to become the largest office of independent financial advisors in South Jersey.
Jim specializes in the needs of conservative investors and business owners. He has built his career helping people plan and achieve a successful retirement. Since he is a fourth generation business owner, running a business comes naturally, as does understanding the challenges of others who have invested their lives into running their own businesses.
Having grown up in a small business family, Jim also understands what it is like to live through good times and bad. Consequently, he has a tremendous respect for the importance of the assets he is helping his clients to manage.
Over the past twenty-plus years, Jim has worked through three bear markets, a precipitous drop in interest rates and the evolution of amazing technological advances. Throughout these ups and downs, he has strived to help his clients take advantage of the wonderful opportunities our great country can provide, while guarding against the greed and fear that can often lead to making foolish decisions. There is no teacher like experience.
Although he has been providing clients with financial advice through quite a few market cycles, Jim is looking forward to the amazing events that are around the next corner and working with his clients and their children and grandchildren for many years to come.