Planner's Edge

Planner's Edge

Jeffrey Ross, a University of Michigan Law graduate and CFP, established The Planner's Edge in 1981 on Mercer Island, Washington. The registered investment advisor built its book serving individual and high-net-worth clients across the Pacific Northwest. Ross maintains the firm deliberately stayed lean through the 1987 crash, the dot-com bust, the financial crisis, and the 2020 pandemic — a lived-cycle argument he makes to clients about portfolio durability. The firm deploys capital through individually managed portfolios, financial planning, and retirement-income strategies built around a proprietary framework it calls the Serious Money Approach. Asset-class exposure spans equities, fixed income, and cash equivalents, though the firm does not publish a model portfolio. Planner's Edge executes trades through Charles Schwab & Co., which provides custody and brokerage services, and the firm discloses that relationship prominently to clients. Geographic focus centers on the Seattle metro area and the broader Pacific Northwest, with remote capabilities extending its reach nationally. The firm does not operate pooled vehicles, make direct private investments, or participate in venture or co-investment club deals. The team comprises four professionals. Founder Jeffrey Ross and partner Ryan Rourke — a Seattle University law graduate with a ChFC designation who merged his practice into the firm in the 2010s — share advisor duties. Client service coordinator Deanna Nowadnick has been with the firm for more than three decades, and money-in-motion specialist Ayana Meissner has worked at Planner's Edge since 1999. The firm operates from a single office in the US Bank Building on Mercer Island. It does not maintain additional locations, philanthropic foundations, or related operating businesses. Planner's Edge functions as a classic lifestyle RIA: a small team with no institutional capital, no outside shareholders, and no succession complexity beyond having a multi-generational advisor in Rourke. That structure means clients deal with the same two advisors through multiple market cycles. The firm's structural differentiator is its extreme continuity — the founder still leads advice four decades in, his longest-tenured support staff have been with the firm for 25 to 30-plus years, and the intentional absence of asset-gathering scale or product-manufacturing conflicts means its revenue depends entirely on lasting advisory relationships.