Fiscal fitness — with Jeff Smith and Jennifer Scherer

Jeff Smith decided the time had come to commit to a fitness program. He realized he couldn’t do it alone, so he went to a holistic wellness center in his community of Fredericksburg, Va., where he became a client of fitness coach Jennifer Scherer.

“I quickly realized Jeff was a dream client,” Jennifer recalled. “He was committed to the program, he followed everything to a T and he achieved great results.”

Jeff and Jennifer’s professional relationship bloomed into a friendship and then into marriage. Along the way, they also married Jeff’s financial planning practice and Jennifer’s health and fitness expertise to educate clients and the public about financial and physical wellness.

Jeff owns The Retirement Smith, where he helps clients work toward their dreams through a well-thought-out retirement income strategy. Jennifer owns Fredericksburg Fitness Studio, where she is a registered dietitian nutritionist, medical exercise specialist and certified personal trainer. Their two businesses are located in the same building in downtown Fredericksburg, a city of about 29,000 people located 48 miles south of Washington and known for its proximity to Civil War battlefields.

The two teamed up to create the Fitness & Finance Radio podcast, available on Apple Podcasts and YouTube. They discuss a number of topics about keeping healthy and how it can impact overall finances in retirement. Some of the podcast topics have been about fitness, meeting finances, not allowing others to derail your success, whether you are doing enough, return on intensity, overeating and overspending, and childhood food and money habits.

Jeff began his career as a property/casualty insurance agent soon after graduating from the State University of New York at Potsdam. 

“I’ve loved insurance ever since I discovered it,” he said.

He eventually went to work for a well-known insurer, where he obtained his life insurance license and became a top producer. But he wanted to do something different with his career, so he took the $2,500 that he had to his name and struck on his own, founding The Retirement Smith in 2022.

“I love insurance, and I love financial planning,” he said. “But I would like to see less flash and less attitude of a particular way being the only way to succeed. I want to bring some clarity in fundamentally sound moves and decisions.”

Financial planning industry is ‘broken’

Jeff said he believes the financial planning industry is broken and too difficult to navigate on one’s own. Middle-class investors are in danger of falling through the cracks, and most people don’t realize that there are gaps in retirement planning that an advisor must help them navigate.

“I think there’s a lot of confusion regarding retirement planning,” he said, “and when people are confused, they often don’t do anything. When you couple that with the fact that the 401(k) is the primary driver for everybody’s retirement, now there’s no attention to advice. It’s just ‘put your money in this.’ I feel it’s kind of canned, and I think people have to look at planning beyond trying to get the highest return. Everybody’s looking for a silver bullet versus what works.” 

Jeff said he wants his practice to be “cutting-edge boring.”

“We want people to do the fundamentals the right way and not have to worry about getting a 10% or 12% return in order to survive when they hit retirement,” he said. “I think a lot of advisors look at working with people who have a million dollars, and folks who are below that line are not even considered. Some advisors require people to have a minimum amount to invest in order to work with them. I find that can be a challenge for people who need the advice and need the help, but maybe they don’t have the assets quite yet. Or they may have income, they have equity in their house but they don’t have the investable assets.”

Fredericksburg has a sizable population of military and federal employees — a population that makes up much of Jeff’s client base.

“We don’t really necessarily target that group, but that’s who typically needs the most help. These are folks who have kind of flown under the radar, and they quietly save money and then they find themselves within six months of retirement and ask, ‘What do I do now?’ That’s usually who I serve.”

Jeff said he realizes many people find it intimidating to take the first step and meet with an advisor.

“We need to make the process less complicated,” he said. “We try to be as welcoming as we can and break everything down to be understandable. The entry point doesn’t need to be so difficult.”

Helping people with a way of life

Jennifer’s journey began when she decided to pivot from her original plan of going to medical school to follow her passion for fitness. She became a certified personal trainer and began working in a local gym. That atmosphere wasn’t a good fit for her, and she decided to take an entrepreneurial approach.

“I started traveling to people’s homes,” she said. “I bought some equipment and put it in the back of my car. I put up a website with my dad’s help, and the rest is history.”

Jennifer’s company grew to having a staff of 11 employees who work with clients on everything from medical exercise to Pilates. She obtained a master’s degree in nutrition a few years ago and is now a registered dietitian.

“I have more of a holistic wellness center where we’re doing more than just fitness; we’re helping people with a way of life.”

Much like clients may be too intimidated to reach out for financial advice, clients also may be hesitant about beginning to work with a wellness expert, Jennifer said.

“First of all, we meet them where they are. No case is too complicated,” she said. “I let everyone know up front that they’re never too far gone. We create a safe place for them.”

After a client provides Jennifer and her staff with the information they need to help reach their goals, “we put it down on paper and plan it out and say this can be achieved, but here’s what you have to do,” she said. “So it’s a matter of planning, similar to what Jeff does with his clients.”

Jennifer’s typical client is someone aged 55 or older who can afford private training. “A lot of them have preexisting health conditions that need a medical exercise approach,” she said. “They’re coming out of physical therapy, maybe recovering from surgery. Most of them are at an age where they realize they might have neglected themselves, and now they want to make the most out of their later years.”

So many things in common

Jeff and Jennifer said the idea of working together “came about by accident.”

“We saw that we do have an overlap of the same types of clients, and we thought a lot of the same principles — planning and executing and accountability — apply on both ends,” Jeff said. “We have so many things in common, plus we love spending time together. Some wonderful things have come out of it, and we continue to dive deeper into these concepts.”

The Fitness & Finance podcast began from conversations that Jeff and Jennifer had about their clients’ concerns and what those concerns have in common.

“Financial strain is a big factor in marital issues, and fitness can be a big factor there too. We want healthier relationships and healthier lifestyles, and we want people to not just make it to retirement but thrive in retirement,” Jeff said. “Also, it can be very expensive if you don’t have your health. Just look at the cost of long-term care.”

Jennifer said one of their most popular podcasts was on the topic of saboteurs in both fitness and finance.

“I find, as a dietitian, there’s often a lack of support in the household, where, for example, one spouse says that they’re going to get healthy and get fit, and they start exercising, and they start choosing healthy meals, and then their partner says, ‘Oh, come on, it’s just one piece of pizza.’” 

Jeff said that on the finance side, he often finds one partner is a spender while the other is a saver. “I’ve become a part-time marriage counselor to my clients in a lot of ways. And I’ve been weaponized a few times. A client will say something like, ‘Jeff, can you please tell him that he can’t buy any more fill-in-the-blank?’” 

Another popular podcast topic is childhood messages about money. For Jeff, this hits home, as his mother was the caregiver for his grandmother for several years.

“My grandmother had a stroke and lived in our living room for years. And it had a huge impact on me, seeing this once-dignified woman in our living room and having to be taken care of by my mom. So it was very impactful for me, and I vowed that I would never be in that situation or let anybody in my circle be in that situation.”

Jennifer has plans to expand her wellness practice, perhaps incorporating weeklong wellness retreats or having Jeff create to-go meals for clients based on their dietary needs. The couple has spent the past year and a half deep diving into Pilates, training to become master-level Pilates instructors. 

Meanwhile, Jeff plans to eventually hire a junior advisor and continue on a path of growing his practice slowly.

“I want to be fundamentally sound and amazingly boring,” he said.

Susan Rupe is managing editor for InsuranceNewsNet. She formerly served as communications director for an insurance agents' association and was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Contact her at [email protected].