Welcome to our Web site.  We hope you will find it to be a wealth of information. We have included research reports, press releases, and copies of our newsletter articles.

At Planning Strategies, we take great pride in telling you about our organization. We founded our firm in September 2001, shortly after the terrible tragedy of September 11th.  This event was one of the darkest moments in our Nation’s history. It was in turn followed by one of the worst market declines since the great depression. Together, these events created an environment that was arguably the worst possible time to start an independent investment advisory firm. Despite these challenges we not only survived those turbulent times, but grew in the midst of them. 
 
In 2006, two partners Steven Mitchell and Scott Smith published "Taming the Retirement Octopus", which drew notable media attention and is currently published by the Premier Institute for Financial Freedom.  In 2008, our Country and our markets were once again confronted with enormous challenges, and once again our firm not only survived, but grew our client family. We consider this to be a testament to the philosophies and ideals upon which we built our organization.
 
Each associate of Planning Strategies had spent well over a decade in the financial services industry, before coming together to start our firm. Our diverse experiences in the areas of insurance, planning, and investment services gives us a special sense of how the financial services industry works, and how it is changing.  More and more, we saw large organizations spending less time on service, and giving less and less attention to all but the largest accounts.  The larger these organizations became, the less they knew their customers, and the idea of a “client family” became more and more distant.
 
Our dissatisfaction with that evolution was the impetus for our formation. It also represents our core philosophy of how to grow and build our firm.  We have no desire to be one of the biggest planning firms, we just want to be the best.  To us, being the best means creating a firm where long lasting client relationships are our top priority.
 
We hope your visit will help you understand the opportunities and potential rewards that are available when you take a proactive approach to your personal financial situation. We have created this Web site to help you gain a better understanding of our core philosophies of how we approach the financial concepts behind insurance, investing, retirement, estate planning, and wealth accumulation and preservation. Most important, we hope you will see the value of working with skilled professionals to pursue your financial goals.