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McLean Asset Management
McLean Asset Management opened in 1984 and today operates from Tysons, Virginia, with an additional presence in New Hampshire. The firm is run by Managing...
McLean Asset Management
McLean Asset Management opened in 1984 and today operates from Tysons, Virginia, with an additional presence in New Hampshire. The firm is run by Managing Principals Alex Murguia, Paula Friedman, Dean Umemoto, and Jessica Wunder, alongside retirement-research director Wade Pfau. Unlike many registered investment advisers, the firm runs an in-house research engine, Retirement Researcher, and owns the Retirement Income Style Awareness (RISA) profiling tool. These instruments feed a planning process built on the premise that a retiree's tax, insurance, and estate variables determine portfolio survival as much as asset allocation does. Asset-class exposure spans taxable and tax-advantaged equity and fixed-income portfolios, annuities, and insurance-based solutions, with each engagement structured around a client's specific retirement-income personality. The firm does not run commingled funds or publish a single model portfolio; instead it constructs individual mandates for high-net-worth households and trusts. Its process models different life-stage events and distribution scenarios to minimize the gap between gross income and spendable cash flow. Tax efficiency figures prominently: the firm's own published research argues that the average tax rate shown on a return is backward-looking and irrelevant for forward planning, and that tax structure must be built, not discovered one April at a time. McLean employs 24 professionals, including eight CFP certificants and multiple holders of the RICP, ChFC, and CFA charters. The firm was named to Financial Planning Magazine's Best RIAs to Work For in 2024 and held a Best Places to Work in Virginia designation every year from 2021 through 2025. In May 2024, the firm maintained that workplace recognition for a fifth consecutive year, which it publicly attributed to an operating model that blends academic research with client-facing planning. Adjacent vehicles include Retirement Researcher, which sells educational tools and academy memberships to self-directed individuals, and McLean Insurance Solutions, an affiliated insurance agency. McLean's structural differentiator is its longitudinal, research-first posture. Rather than benchmark against a composite index, the firm runs a proprietary retirement-income personality framework — RISA — that forces allocations to conform to a client's behavioral profile, then overlays internal academic research to decide which assets to liquidate in which order. This makes it closer in function to an academic consultancy with an RIA attached than to a conventional wealth manager, and it has allowed the firm to retain clients into their third decade of service.
General information
Firm type
Bank / Wealth / Trust
Year founded
1984
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Tysons
Corporate office
1900 Gallows Rd Suite 350, Tysons, VA 22182, United States
Additional offices
New Hampshire, United States
Principals
Alex Murguia
Executive Chairman and Managing Principal
Paula Friedman
Managing Principal and CEO
Wade Pfau
Principal, Director of Retirement Research
Dean Umemoto
Managing Principal
Jessica Wunder
Managing Principal, Wealth Management
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who runs investment and planning decisions at McLean Asset Management?
Day-to-day investment and planning decisions are shared among five managing principals: Alex Murguia, Paula Friedman, Dean Umemoto, Jessica Wunder, and Wade Pfau. Pfau, a CFA charterholder with a PhD, directs the firm's retirement research and shapes portfolio-construction methodology. The firm lists 24 professionals on its website, including eight CFP certificants who execute client plans.
What is the RISA profile and how does it influence portfolio design?
RISA — Retirement Income Style Awareness — is a proprietary profiling tool that identifies a client's retirement-income personality. The output determines which distribution strategies and income sources align with the client's natural preferences. McLean uses RISA to anchor recommendations so that asset allocation and withdrawal sequencing follow behavioral fit rather than a one-size-fits-all model.
How does McLean Asset Management generate revenue?
McLean offers two engagement tracks: standalone financial planning, which charges a fee for a baseline retirement-income plan without ongoing asset management, and comprehensive wealth management, which bundles advanced planning with discretionary portfolio management. The firm also operates Retirement Researcher, a subscription-based educational platform, and an affiliated insurance agency, McLean Insurance Solutions, where licensed agents sell insurance products in an individual capacity.
What investment strategies does McLean explicitly avoid?
McLean's published materials distance the firm from prediction-driven investing — the firm states outright that it is 'not in the prediction business.' It avoids constructing portfolios that rely solely on long-term market appreciation and does not treat asset-class diversification as a sufficient risk-management tool in isolation. Instead, every portfolio is built around a retirement date that falls inside a specific, potentially volatile market window.
Does McLean operate commingled funds or offer its own investment products?
The firm does not advertise any proprietary commingled funds or in-house mutual funds. Client portfolios appear to be constructed from individual securities and third-party funds, and the firm's research emphasizes customized distribution modeling over packaged product sales. McLean Insurance Solutions is a separate legal entity through which individual agents may place insurance products, but the RIA itself does not manufacture financial products.
How is Retirement Researcher related to the advisory practice?
Retirement Researcher is an affiliate that sells educational tools, calculators, workshops, and an online academy membership to self-directed individuals. The brand operates as a distinct funnel: consumers who want DIY education use Retirement Researcher, and those who need full-service planning or discretionary management are referred into McLean's RIA. Both share intellectual property and research leadership through Wade Pfau.
What is McLean's posture on tax planning within a portfolio?
The firm's published research treats tax-efficiency as a structural design problem, not an annual compliance exercise. McLean argues that the average tax rate on a filed return is backward-looking and that the effective marginal rate on the next dollar of income determines withdrawal strategy. The planning process coordinates tax, insurance, and estate recommendations with portfolio construction, and the firm states that taxes are one of the highest costs in retirement that respond directly to how decisions are made.
Profile maintained by Altss using OSINT (open-source intelligence), regulatory filings, licensed data partners, and verified direct submissions. Read the methodology. Last updated: . Continuous refresh with full update cycles at least every 30 days.
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