Michelle Gessner, CFP®
Retire to a Life You Love®
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Serving Clients Nationwide
Retire to a Life You Love®
Areas of Focus
- Estate Planning
- Investment Management
- Retirement Planning
- Taxes
- Women & Wealth
About Michelle Gessner, CFP®
As a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional, I am passionate about building a life plan for my clients and helping them see that they have choices, which often comes to them as a pleasant surprise.I am an independent thinker and a huge advocate of my clients’ interests. My greatest joy is working to do what is right for them and be their voice.
As an avid problem solver with a penchant for learning, I love to challenge myself with a new goal each year. I view my role as requiring not just financial aptitude, but also a constant desire for personal and professional improvement.
Teaching others is something that comes naturally to me, so you will often find me leading a retirement planning class at the local community college several times a year. I’m a big believer in partnering with my clients and ensuring that they are empowered to make their own important decisions, so I strive to speak in plain English and simplify complex information.
I have a B.S. in Finance from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and an M.S. in Management from Boston University, Brussels. Growing up in Montana and moving to Colorado for college, I took out student loans and worked my way through all four years.
After graduating in 1987 with honors, I accepted a job at Shell Oil in Houston, and worked my way up the corporate ladder to a management position before leaving in 1992 for Brussels, Belgium, where I lived for 4 years. In Brussels, I learned about different cultures and basic conversational French as well as pursuing and earning a graduate degree in management.
Returning to the U.S. in 1997, I made my way to a boutique financial planning firm and then to MassMutual, where I received an excellent education in financial services and insurance planning like Long Term Care, disability, and life insurance.
In 2015, I formed Gessner Wealth Strategies LLC, and in 2016, borne out of a strong desire to truly help people with an unbiased approach to financial planning, I launched my own independent practice, and have loved every minute of it.
As a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner, I am held to the highest standards set forth in the industry. I surround myself with a back office of experts in tax and investment research so that my clients have the best of both worlds – the resources of a large firm with the caring, dedication, and personal service of a small firm.
I am honored to be able to help others with the decisions that are so personal and important in their lives and can truly say that I love helping others find financial security and peace.
Professional Designations
- CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER ®
- Life Underwriter Training Council Fellow (LUTCF)
Affiliations
- Financial Planning Association
Primary Location
1717 St James Place, Suite 625, Houston, Texas 77056
Video
Meeting Options
- Video Conference
- In-Person
- Phone
Compensation Methods
- Fee Based
- Percentage of Assets Managed
What to expect in the first meeting
Click the 'Book Intro Call' button above to schedule a complementary call. We’ve learned a lot from our clients over the years, and it always begins with a conversation about you. If you’re ready for a simple but meaningful approach to connecting your money to your life, we’d love to hear from you.Offers Investment Management
Yes
About Gessner Wealth Strategies, LLC
As your trusted advisor, our job at Gessner Wealth Strategies is to help you make smart decisions about your money. But our personalized approach is about so much more than that.We strive to understand what is important to you from generating income and protecting your financial security to assisting aging parents and legacy planning. We spend a good deal of time looking for ways to reduce taxes in retirement. And most important, we offer guidance and clarity for decisions that come up throughout the year, because money is tied to all aspects of life.
We want to be your first call when an important decision comes up, because we are passionate about building long term relationships with our clients.
Our firm is independent, which means that we are not beholden to any company’s goals or relationships which could color our recommendations to you. We are a fiduciary advisor, which means we put your interests ahead of our own.
Gessner Wealth Strategies, LLC operates independently of our custodian and investment team. We do not hold client assets but instead use highly reputable firms, such as Charles Schwab, for important checks and balances. The custodian is strictly in charge of recordkeeping and custodial services for your money, such as statement preparation and tax reporting documents. The custodian is in charge of the safekeeping of your assets, and you always have access to your money.
We don’t make bets on single stocks, industries, regions, or the economy. Instead, we work with some of the best minds in investment management to engineer portfolios consisting of a wide diversification of securities which hold a large number of distinct companies across 9 asset classes, 40 countries, and multiple industry sectors. Please read about our investment philosophy here and here for a discussion about why it’s important to hire experts for your portfolio of investments.
Our independent team of highly credentialled CFA® investment professionals create portfolios designed for long-term investors. All of our portfolios are created with these important concepts:
Fiduciary Status | Transparent 100% of the Time
Gessner Wealth Strategies never takes a commission to buy and sell investments in your account, as we believe that system – which the big, national brokerage firms use – is fraught with potential conflicts of interest. Instead, we align our interests with yours by charging a percentage of assets under our management on a quarterly basis, with full disclosure. All of our investment advisory services are offered on a fiduciary basis.
Education
Boston University Brussels Graduate Center (BUB), Master of Science (MS), Management | University of Colorado Boulder - Leeds School of Business, B.S., Finance
Hobbies and Interests
- Family
SEC Lookup
View DisclosureWho We Serve
- Baby Boomers
- Business Owners
- Corporate Executives
- Dual Income Family
- Gen X
- Intergenerational Families
- Living in Retirement
- Parents
- Single Women
- Women Professionals
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Excellence!
Highly Recommend
Looking for sound financial advice and management? Look no further than Gessner Wealth Strategies.
Always makes time for financial inquiries
Gessner is a God send for us
Plan Well, Live Well
Trust
A Successful Life Is Up to You
Our Comfort Zone
5 Stars
5 Stars
5 Stars
5 Stars
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