Rick Miller

CFP®, PhD

Sensible Financial Planning

Founder and CEO

Rick Miller

CFP®, PhD

Sensible Financial Planning

Founder and CEO

As a fee-only financial planner, my focus is to offer unbiased financial advice to help you achieve your life goals. - Rick Miller, CFP®, PhD

Fee-Only financial planner located in Waltham, MA, serving clients locally and across the country

Rick Miller is a Waltham, MA fee-only financial planner. Sensible Financial Planning provides comprehensive and objective financial planning, portfolio management, and ongoing financial guidance to help clients organize, grow and protect their assets through life’s transitions. As a fee-only, fiduciary, and independent financial advisor, Rick Miller is never paid a commission of any kind, and has a legal obligation to provide unbiased and trustworthy financial advice.

Rick Miller’s disciplined and analytical nature served him well as he earned his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago. Now, as Sensible Financial’s founder and CEO, Rick’s strong theoretical background and data-driven nature helps clients realize their financial dreams.

Early in his career, Rick was a business consultant specializing in financial services. He dealt with regulators, industry experts, and senior executives. This allowed him to see financial product marketing from the inside. Later, at Scudder Investments, Rick learned the inner workings of mutual funds and developed a financial planning business plan for one of the investment firm’s largest institutional clients.

Rick’s rigorous academic training in family economics and lifetime planning and his experience in the financial services world prepared him to start his own financial planning and investment firm. In April of 2002, Rick founded Sensible Financial Planning and Management®. At Sensible Financial, Rick combines hard data, thoughtful analysis, and personal attention to present high quality advice and efficient financial products and services to each client. He and his team tailor a plan to every client’s needs.

“My job as a financial planner is to look at the big picture and ask a lot of questions,” says Rick. “Is your human capital correlated with the stock market? Do you like your career well enough to stay with it until you retire? How much are you saving for your childrens’ college versus your own retirement? Do you plan to move to a larger house or buy a vacation home? Does your disability insurance provide sufficient protection? How will changes in your life affect these decisions? Once we understand where each client wants to go, we can build a customized plan to help them get there.”

Rick is a CFP® certificant, and a member of both NAPFA, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, where he has served as the program director for the Boston chapter and on the faculty of NAPFA University, and the Financial Planning Association. In 2009, Rick was a member of both the Trends in Financial Planning and Job Analysis task forces of The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. He is a strong advocate for the Life Cycle Planning and Investing approaches within the profession, and conducts professional seminars on those subjects.

Financial planning may seem like a fundamentally intellectual exercise, but to Rick, it’s much more than that. “I started out thinking that financial advising was a purely analytical career. I remember being surprised by how personal it was. Leveraging my technical skills to help people achieve their personal and family goals is very satisfying. I’m honored that people are willing to share their personal stories, their needs, hopes, and fears with me. It’s a privilege to learn what’s important to each of my clients and to help them.”

Rick has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Businessweek.com, NPR’s Nightly Business Report, and other local and national media, and is a Forbes.com contributor.

Rick Miller is a Member of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors

The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) is a leading professional association of Fee-Only financial advisors - highly trained professionals who are committed to working in the best interests of those they serve.

NAPFA members live by three important values:

  • To be the beacon for independent, objective financial advice for individuals and families.
  • To be the champion of financial services delivered in the public interest.
  • To be the standard bearer for the emerging profession of financial planning.

Company History

About us: We founded Sensible Financial® Planning and Management in 2002 to make state-of-the-art, unbiased and personalized financial advice more widely available, especially to people who haven’t been comfortable using a financial advisor or who thought they couldn’t afford one. Deregulation and ever falling computing costs are steadily increasing competition in financial services, potentially benefiting consumers. Lower priced, higher quality financial products are increasingly available.

Unfortunately, access to more good products hasn’t helped people figure out which ones to buy. People need independent advice to make sound choices in their own best interest. But the sales commissions paid by some financial products provide incentives for salespeople to sell products that produce large commissions for themselves, not necessarily the ones that best fill the needs of their customers.

Declining computing costs have enabled experts in financial planning and investment strategy to translate their approaches into computer software. This software’s strength – leading-edge customized advice – can’t overcome its weakness – people often don’t understand how complex software works and are unwilling to rely on the results. However, there is enormous potential – a skilled advisor can harness the software’s full power to deliver high-quality advice tailored to each client’s circumstances at a reasonable price. We use the best software available to develop and deliver advice systematically, and efficiently. We recommend excellent products that don’t pay commissions (and don’t need to).

Each year, we deliver more financial plans, and advise more clients on how to invest and manage their assets. That so many people and families trust us to advise them about issues so central to their lives and dreams is a great honor. We invite you to join them (and us).

Fee-Only, Fiduciary, Independent: Three Important Criteria to Consider When Choosing a Financial Advisor.

Specialties

  • Comprehensive Financial Planning
  • Retirement Income Planning
  • Investment Management
  • College Education Planning
  • Tax Planning

Ideal Clients

  • Retirees and Near Retirees
  • Growing Families
  • Business Owners and Executives
  • Sudden Money Situations
  • Novice Investors

Working Together

  • In-Office Meetings
  • Virtual Meetings
  • Clearly Defined Fees
  • No Product Sales
  • Complimentary Initial Consultation

Professional Designations & Affiliations

Contact Rick Miller

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Office Locations:

  • 203 Crescent Street
    Suite 404
    Waltham, MA 02453
  • 600 B Street
    Suite 300
    San Diego, CA 92101

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