Eighteen years. Six firms.
One independent practice.

I started in financial services in 2007, the year before the market fell apart. That timing taught me something early: people don’t need someone to predict the future. They need someone who will sit with them, tell them the truth, and help them make a plan they can actually keep.

For the next decade and a half, I learned this business from the inside of nearly every part of it. I began at MassMutual, then spent three years at MetLife handling annuities — the income-and-guarantees side of retirement. From there I advised clients at Edward Jones, and then spent eight years as a relationship banker at Wells Fargo, where I sat across the desk from working families day after day, talking through their money in plain terms.

I saw the same thing at every stop. Good people, working hard, unsure whether they were on track. Often holding products someone had sold them, without a plan that tied any of it together.

After a stretch as a licensed agent at Farmers, I founded Howard Insurance Agency in 2024 to do protection my own way — independent, straightforward, built around the client instead of a quota. Howard Financial Services is the next step: the planning side of that same promise, for people who want the full picture, not just a policy.

I built this practice independently on purpose. I’m not tied to one company’s products or pushing this quarter’s featured fund. My recommendations answer to one thing — what’s actually right for you.

I’m a graduate of Simpson College with a B.S. in Business Administration, and I’m raising my family right here in the Des Moines metro. Before any of this, I served in the U.S. Army with the 101st Airborne — where I learned to show up, tell the truth, and do the work. I bring that same standard to your money.

What I offer isn’t complicated, and that’s the point. A real relationship. Plain English. A plan that fits your life — and someone who picks up the phone when it changes.