Featured on Inside Information
Written by Bob Veres
Approximately ten percent of all American families in America have one or more members who qualify as “special-needs” for financial planning purposes,”
Mike Walther, of Oak Wealth Advisors, LLC, in Deerfield, IL, is telling me over breakfast at the AICPA PFP Conference in Las Vegas. “I’m shocked,” he adds, “at our profession’s lack of attention to the unique planning needs of this group.
Walther at this moment is picking through a modest breakfast that he has selected from what may be the world’s longest, largest buffet, a 50-yard-long array that includes many kinds of prepared eggs, sausages and bacons, pancakes, pastries, specialty cheeses, assorted meats and seafood, cereals and oatmeal, blintzes, potatoes, every kind of sliced fruit, yogurt and muesli, mysterious sauces, pizzas, pasta dishes, a variety of salads, bagels and perhaps a million calories worth of desserts. He tells me that he doesn’t consider himself an evangelist on the subject, but he has quietly become a special-needs planning resource for advisors all over the country. Walther’s website (www.oakwealth.com) is a gateway to national service providers and organizations that can guide special-needs families through the labyrinth of local services.
