I'm Mike Dunlop, a CFP® in Cedar Falls, Iowa. I run Ignite Financial with Casey Redmond, CFP®. We're fee-only and flat-fee. You pay a set number, and that's it — no commissions, no percentage of your nest egg, nothing to sell you. I built the firm this way because I got tired of watching good people pay for advice that had a sales pitch buried in it. If your portfolio doubles, our work doesn't double, so our fee shouldn't either. Most of the people we work with are about five years out from retirement or already there. A lot of them are Iowa public employees trying to make sense of IPERS — when the Rule of 88 actually hits, which payout option to take, what the taxes do to it. We spend a lot of time on Social Security timing and Roth conversions too, because a big pre-tax account is kind of a ticking time bomb once RMDs show up. We have to pay our share, but we don't have to leave Uncle Sam a tip. I was trained as an accountant, so my numbers run conservative. Both Casey and I have the heart of a teacher — if you don't understand what we're doing, you won't trust it, and you shouldn't. Air Force veteran, four kids, an acreage in New Hartford with chickens and too many tomato plants. Ignite Financial is a state-registered investment adviser serving a diverse client base including institutional and individual investors. The firm employs a primarily passive, index-fund investment approach grounded in Modern Portfolio Theory, along with additional analytical methods and the capability to recommend outside managers.

Casey Redmond is a CFP® with nine years of industry experience and is currently affiliated with Ignite Financial in Cedar Falls, IA. Prior to joining Ignite Financial, Redmond spent five years at Peeling Back Layers and has been involved with Don Bosco Catholic High School for over a decade. Ignite Financial is a state-registered investment adviser serving a diverse client base that includes institutional and individual investors. The firm employs a primarily passive, index-fund investment approach based on Modern Portfolio Theory, complemented by fundamental and technical analyses and the use of outside managers.