Guerdon T. Ely, MBA, CFP, AIFA, ChFC, is a financial advisor, author, and software developer. His expertise is in retirement plan distribution issues and prudent fiduciary investing. He has been used as an expert resource for financial articles appearing in Newsweek, Forbes, Bloomberg, Trusts and Estates, Retirement Weekly, and The Wall Street Journal. He has also helped prepare educational materials for the California Continuing Education of the Bar, the American Law Institute-American Bar Association, the Notre Dame Tax Institute, and the Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning.
Guerdon is well known for his whimsical financial newsletters and books, in which he conveys complex financial issues in an understandable and entertaining manner. Uncertainty Is a Certainty: Fables for Fiduciaries describes the duties and procedural processes required of fiduciaries for family trust, charitable endowments, and company pension plans. In Lower Your Financial Handicap: Advice from the Financial Caddie, he uses golf analogies to explain investment principles, products, and best practices.
Guerdon is known as the "numbers guy" because of his math, statistical, and programming skills. His two software programs, MRD-Determinator and Pre-Determinator, were favorably reviewed by MorningstarAdvisor.com, Investment Advisor, Accounting Today, and WebCPA for greatly simplifying some very complex and confusing tax regulations. In addition, they were recommended by Natalie Choate in her book, Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits, and by Ed Slott in The Retirement Time Bomb. His statistical calculations have been used in numerous articles, legal proceedings, and educational materials.
Guerdon took a circuitous route to his successful financial advising practice. After graduating from UC Santa Barbara in Economics, he worked as a beekeeper, truck driver, factory worker, store manager, and carpenter before receiving his Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from California State University Chico. Shortly after that, he started his financial career in insurance and investment sales. However, he always focused on planning and saw products as instruments for implementing plans. To enhance his planning skills, he earned the following designations--Certified Financial Planner™, Accredited Investment Fiduciary Analyst™, and Chartered Financial Consultant™.
From the time he was 13, he has been passionate about golf. Even after becoming a financial advisor and starting his own firm, he found time to work part-time as a caddie on the PGA Senior Tour and as a crew member for numerous amateur, LPGA, and PGA Tour golf telecasts. However, his greatest joy was his wife of 43 years, Barbara. He is the proud father of three girls and 10 grandchildren.
Guerdon can be reached at: http://ElyPortfolios.com/
