About John Shipley
John works with business owners, independent professionals and service providers, as well as individuals and families planning for retirement, or already in retirement. His clients want to pay less taxes, protect and grow their portfolios, IRAs and 401(K)s and have someone help them manage their financial lives.
Based in Fort Thomas, KY – just across the Ohio River from downtown Cincinnati, OH John offers his services to clients as far east as Germany, as far west as California, as far south as Brazil – but most clients are in Ohio and Kentucky.
Life before Shipley Financial & Tax Advisors…
In his former life, John earned an MBA from Emory University in Atlanta. He served time at Big 8 and regional CPA firms, where his performance reviews showed he was excellent technically and at working with his clients – and not so great at adapting to the stuffy large CPA firm culture.
Fulfilling a long time dream, John left the corporate world and started his own CPA firm twenty years ago, buying a small practice in Fort Thomas, KY. He says “I originally planned to move the office across the river closer to my home on the east side of Cincinnati, but I liked Fort Thomas so much I decided to stay for a few years. Twenty years later I’m still in the same office.”
Adding Financial Services to his practice….
Extending his services to include financial planning seemed like a natural fit since John’s MBA studies concentrated as much in Finance as Accounting.
After putting together financial plans for clients he would refer them to stockbrokers and insurance agents to implement the plans, only later to find the plans were not being implemented in his client’s best interest. So he decided to get licensed to offer any needed investment or insurance products directly to his clients.
After a long search for a company that he could associate with to offer his clients any financial products needed to implement the financial strategies it became clear the only way for him to offer the best service to his clients was as an independent financial advisor.
“I quickly developed a reputation for annoying big financial company trainers when I would ask them how a particular financial product fit into a client’s financial plan. They seemed more interested in talking about how to sell the product and the commission you could earn. After a while, I wasn’t getting invited to any more training meetings by the big companies”.
So John registered his firm as an independent Registered Investment Advisor.
And today…
John combines his two professional interests – financial planning and designing tax saving strategies. He does this by helping his clients develop tax plans to keep the IRS from extracting any more money from them than absolutely necessary, and by designing financial plans that focus on the best interest of the client, not some investment company.
“Putting together a financial/tax plan for someone is as much art as science. And by being an independent advisor, I can put together the best plan for the client, one that focuses entirely on their needs”.
John lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Debbie, a retired reading teacher who works part time in the business with him. Their son, Jeremy, is a student at the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO. Max the dog, a mostly Labrador Retriever they rescued from a shelter, occasionally visits the office. Max loves to greet everyone – but he hates IRS agents!
