Lead Financial Advisor - Federal Retirement Planning

WE WILL HAND YOU THE CLIENTS. YOUR ONLY JOB IS TO BE EXTRAORDINARY FOR THEM.

Here's the honest pitch. We're a small firm growing fast, and we have the problem most firms would trade places for: our marketing produces more qualified federal-employee households than our two advisors can serve well. We are not looking for someone to go find business. We're looking for someone to take exceptional care of the business already walking in the door.

No prospecting. No quota. No cold outreach. No networking breakfasts. No asking your brother-in-law for a referral.

We handle all of that. You serve clients like crazy.

WHAT YOU'D BE JOINING

Haws Financial Planning is a fee-only registered investment advisory firm in Sierra Vista, Arizona. Fee-only, fiduciary, always. No commissions, no product sales, no insurance quotas. The advice is the product.

We do exactly one thing: retirement planning for federal employees. FERS pensions, TSP withdrawal sequencing, FEHB and Medicare coordination, survivor benefit elections, and Roth conversion timing across a federal career.

We built one of the largest federal-retirement audiences in the country on YouTube, and it fills our calendar every week without a dollar of paid advertising. This year we're adding paid acquisition on top of it, which is exactly why we're hiring ahead of the volume instead of scrambling behind it.

We'll be straight about the stage we're at. We manage about $115 million today and we are growing fast, with two advisors and a small admin team. We are not a big firm yet. What we are is a firm with a real engine, real momentum, and a clear plan for the next five years, and whoever joins now helps build the thing rather than inheriting it finished.

If you want a large institution with a defined career ladder and a corporate benefits brochure, we're honestly not that. If you want to be employee number six at something growing this fast, keep reading.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

- Deliver comprehensive financial plans to households who have already paid for them. They arrive committed, prepared, and ready to work. You will never be the first person trying to convince them this matters.

- Present the plan and earn the ongoing relationship. At the end of a delivery, the client decides whether to execute it themselves or have us implement it alongside them. You'll make that recommendation honestly. Some will say no. We don't want anyone who has to be talked into it.

- Own a book of federal retiree households and serve them relentlessly. Reviews, tax-aware distribution planning, and the kind of proactive follow-through that makes people tell their coworkers about you.

- Construct, present, and implement retirement, tax, and distribution strategies using industry-standard planning software, with the technical rigor a career federal household deserves.

- Serve as a technical planning anchor for the team: clean case preparation, data integrity, and a planning workflow that holds up as we scale.

- Go deeper than generalists get to go. Every client is a federal employee. You stop context-switching across forty unrelated situations and start compounding: one system, mastered completely, applied at a level of precision nobody serving everybody can reach. Federal benefits are complex, fixed, and finite. There is a bottom to this well, and you can get to it.

One thing we won't be cute about: you will sit with clients and recommend our ongoing service. We think that's a real advisor's job, not a sales job, and we'd rather say it now than surprise you in month four. What you'll never do is go hunting for the meeting in the first place.

WHO WE'RE ACTUALLY LOOKING FOR

We want an A-player. Not a safe pair of hands, but someone genuinely, unreasonably good at this.

- Cares about financial planning as a craft, not a job. Reads the regs for fun. Has opinions about withdrawal sequencing.

- Would rather be the best in the country at one thing than adequate at everything.

- Serves clients obsessively. Follows up before being asked. Notices the thing nobody flagged.

- Can explain something genuinely complicated to a smart person in plain language. Our clients are engineers, analysts, federal law enforcement, and career civil servants. They ask sharp questions and they'll know instantly if you're bluffing.

- Coachable. We have a documented methodology and we want your judgment operating inside it, not a rebuild of it.

QUALIFICATIONS

- Experience: Minimum of 10 years of comprehensive financial planning experience, preferably within an RIA or independent wealth management environment.

- Designations: CFP certification is strictly required. It must be active. We are not considering candidates who are still working toward it.

- Technical expertise: Deep, mastery-level knowledge of tax-aware retirement distribution planning - bracket management, Roth conversion sequencing, withdrawal order, and IRMAA. That is the center of gravity here.

- Software proficiency: Expert-level command of an industry-standard financial planning platform (eMoney, RightCapital, or MoneyGuidePro) and a CRM.

- Soft skills: Strong presentation and interpersonal skills, with a proven track record of building deep trust with clients.

LICENSES AND REGISTRATIONS

- Series 65, or Series 66 combined with Series 7, or eligibility for state registration as an investment adviser representative through your CFP certification.

- No insurance licensing required, and none expected. We are fee-only.

Federal benefits experience is a bonus, not a requirement. We have a 90-day curriculum that turns a strong generalist into a federal specialist. We would much rather hire planning depth and teach FERS than the other way around.

Probably not a fit if you want to build your own book, want your name on the door, or would chafe running someone else's process. All legitimate ambitions, just not this job.

COMPENSATION

- Base salary: $130,000 to $160,000, depending on experience

- Performance bonus: $35,000 to $50,000 target, tied to client retention, plan delivery quality, and the households who choose to stay with us. Never to prospecting activity.

- If you're excellent and you can serve a lot of clients well, we will pay you really well. That isn't a slogan. It's how the math works here, and we'll show you the numbers on day one.

- Health coverage and a 401(k) with company match are being put in place now and will be active before your start date

- CFP dues, continuing education, and one industry conference every year

- Real paid time off, from people who actually take it

LOCATION

Sierra Vista, Arizona is home and we would love to have you here in the office with us. High desert in the Huachuca Mountains, 75 minutes from Tucson, and a cost of living that makes this salary go a very long way. For the right person, we can put together a relocation package. Ask us about it.

In person is our strong preference. That said, we will hire the right person remotely if they are exceptional. If that's you and you're somewhere else, we still want to talk. A remote hire spends their first two weeks on-site with us, then visits a few times a year.

HOW TO APPLY

Two things:

1. Your resume

2. A two-minute video. Your phone is fine. Tell us who you are and walk us through one planning concept you find genuinely interesting. We are not judging the lighting. We want to hear you explain something.

What happens next: a 30-minute conversation, then a real anonymized federal case to build a recommendation on (we pay $500 for your time), then you present it back to us the way you would to a client. We'll tell you where you stand at every step and we won't leave you wondering.