Simplified Wealth Management

Overview

Kevin McCormick and Andy Ricks established Simplified Wealth Management as an independent registered investment advisor in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in 2018. Both had previously advised clients inside Raymond James's wealth management division. The firm now fields a nine-person team across advisory and administrative roles, including three additional wealth management advisors who joined in subsequent years—Jimmy Carpenter arrived in 2020 after a fifteen-year tenure at LPL Financial. Simplified Wealth delivers what it calls a holistic planning platform that wraps asset management together with tax strategy, estate planning and behavioral counseling. McCormick and Ricks stress that an advisor's job "does not begin and end with investing," a framing that pushes risk management and retirement income preservation to the fore alongside portfolio construction. Geographic coverage concentrates on the Hattiesburg metro area and surrounding Gulf South communities. The firm mentions no allocation to alternative asset classes or institutional strategies—its disclosures describe services for individuals and families only. The team operates from a single office at 14 Orleans Drive and lists no additional locations. Nine professionals are named on the firm's website: four wealth management advisors, one financial advisor, one associate financial advisor, an administrative backbone and a director of impressions. No AUM or aggregate client-asset figure is publicly disclosed. August 2024: the firm expanded its advisory bench by promoting Trey Garraway to Financial Advisor after he joined from a regional banking career at Trustmark and Regions. Simplified Wealth's architecture is distinctly retail and relationship-driven, not products-driven. The firm is not structured as a multi-family office and does not surface fund vehicles, club deals or co-investment programs. Its structural differentiator is a deliberate, local-only service model built around named advisors who live in the communities they serve—a design that competes on continuity of counsel rather than product shelf depth.