Minerva Planning Group

Minerva Planning Group

Founded in 1987, Minerva Planning Group was established in Decatur, Georgia, well before the rise of the independent RIA movement. President and CEO Micah Porter joined the firm in 2003 and shaped its modern identity. Porter brought an international business background from BMG International and XO Communications into the wealth management arena, earning both the CFA and CFP designations and committing the firm to a fiduciary, fee-only model. The firm delivers financial planning, retirement planning, and tax-efficient investment management to a concentrated clientele. Its service model is unusually tailored for a boutique RIA, offering deep expertise for three distinct cohorts: families and individuals, federal government employees navigating complex benefits systems, and Emory University or University System of Georgia personnel. The asset-class mix and portfolio construction are driven by Porter's CFA-grounded investment strategy, though specific allocations are tailored to individual client plans rather than published as a firm-wide model. True to its fee-only charter, Minerva sells no commissionable products and accepts no referral fees. Minerva runs a lean operation from a single office in Decatur, with a team that includes Financial Planning Consultant Renée Weese and Investment Analyst Syed Adnan Huda, CFA. Weese joined in 2006 after a 20-year career at The Hartford, where she served as President of Omni Insurance Group. The firm serves clients both in person in the greater Atlanta area and virtually across the United States. In a representative 2025 client note, Porter published a guide on evaluating Voluntary Early Retirement Authority offers for federal employees, reflecting the firm's continuing operational emphasis on that niche. Minerva is structurally distinct from most RIAs in its narrow intersection of strict fee-only fiduciary duty and a defined niche in public-sector and university benefits ecosystems. Where many planning firms diversify their marketing across generic retiree or HNW categories, Minerva has spent three decades building authority on the specific Federal Employee Health Benefits system, Social Security optimization for government workers, and the University System of Georgia retirement framework — an expertise embedded in its published insights rather than a broad growth mandate.