Bill Stadler

What sparked your interest in financial planning? What fuels you every day in your work?

While working at Fidelity Investments, I got excited about investments and the study of what influences the performance of a portfolio. But, what really got me interested in making this a career, was discovering how the broader, on-going service of “Financial Planning” could have such a dramatically positive influence on people’s lives. For some clients, it’s a simple matter of helping them create structure and better habits. Our money habits are so often influenced by the surroundings we grew up in, and the experiences we’ve had in our earlier adulthood. For others, creating a concrete framework of saving and spending, (along with check-ins & reminders) changes everything. Wrap that all together with the study of various investments strategies, the business cycle, and the world economy – this is pretty exciting stuff!

How do you feel you help to create impact for clients?

Impact is a great word. How impact is created is different for each client. Some clients just want to see the number go up and that makes an impact on their satisfaction level. That’s nice.
Determining how we can “manage” those numbers to impact their ability to retire when they want. That’s great.
But when I feel I can really make an impact for clients, is when I help them truly marshal their full resources – their interests, talents, skills, relationships, their time, their health and their finances – to make a direct impact on their most important priorities, which may not have only to do with The Number.
I specialize in Senior Life Financial Planning. Whether we’re talking about the initial post-retirement time of “what am I retiring to”, or sorting through the myriad complexities of the “sandwich generation”, i.e. I’m still raising kids and now I’ve got parents that need help caring for themselves, or being the individual wrestling with the later life issues of “what type of support do I need to remain at home” and understanding the continuum of care in various retirement community choices. This is a primary time when financial planning goes beyond the numbers to define what’s most important, to maintain dreams, maintain control, and maintain the support you need to remain in good health.
Let’s pull together all those resources, direct them at those one, two, or three most important priorities and make an impact you can feel AND celebrate. That’s how we create “impact”.

What do you enjoy most about working at Modera?

I’ve admired Modera from afar for a number of years. Our industry has changed A LOT in the past 20 years, but “fee-only” is still a differentiator and an important benefit to our clients. The financial industry is just as complicated as ever, maybe more so, and being fee-only is a structure that simplifies some of this tangled web of services & sales.

I also admire the slow, more mindful growth track that we’re following – joining with like-minded firms and taking time to feel sure the level of service to our clients can be maintained.

How do you do good in your community?

This is a new community for me, but I’m excited to have become involved with the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership – an organization working to continue the revitalization of downtown Winston-Salem.

My work on the board of The Alex Manfull Fund is also very personal & very important to me. The organization is named for the daughter of dear friends, who passed at the age of 26 due to what was at the time, a little known neuroimmune disorder called PANDAS. This was triggered by a common staff infection. The tricky thing about neuroimmune disorders such as PANS & PANDAS is normally the onset causes sudden behavioral changes which involve common mental health symptoms, such as OCD, depression, explosive rage, etc. So, it’s usually treated with typical mental health medications and protocols, to no beneficial effect. From research thus far, PANS & PANDAS are caused by an infection passing through the blood brain barrier and causing destruction of neuro synapses in particular parts of the brain, which requires very different treatment.

We raise funds to sponsor researchers through multiple universities across the US, Europe, and the Nordic regions through conferences, and hold symposiums with many of the same researchers to educate physicians and other medical practitioners regarding how to identify and treat PANS & PANDAS, as well as other related neuroimmune disorders.