Telos Wealth

Telos Wealth

Telos Wealth launched in 2014 when John Mugleston established a registered investment advisory firm in Bellingham, Washington, focused on retirement-income planning. The firm operates independently, without ties to a single custodian or broker-dealer, which shapes its advisory posture. Mugleston positioned the practice around the concept of telos—a Greek word for purpose or end goal—applying that framework to the retirement transition where generating sustainable, tax-efficient cash flow becomes the central mandate. The firm's investment process emphasizes retirement-income architecture over pure asset accumulation. Client portfolios are typically structured across liquid public-market assets, including equities, fixed income, and cash instruments, with allocation decisions driven by income durability, sequence-of-returns risk, and longevity planning rather than relative performance. The practice integrates Social Security optimization, Medicare planning, and tax-aware withdrawal sequencing into its core advisory service. Mugleston has publicly described a philosophy that treats the retirement portfolio as a paycheck replacement engine, which informs the firm's relationship with risk—guarding against deep drawdowns early in retirement receives more attention than capturing upside in bull markets. Telos Wealth operates from its Bellingham office, serving a client base concentrated in the Pacific Northwest. The firm has not disclosed total assets under management or advisory headcount. As a boutique RIA, it does not participate in private-market deals, fund commitments, or direct co-investment programs. No affiliated real-asset vehicles, philanthropic foundations, or co-investor clubs are associated with the practice. In December 2023, the firm was among the Washington-based RIAs that maintained their Form ADV filings with the SEC with no disclosed disciplinary events (per SEC IAPD, December 2023). What distinguishes Telos Wealth is its unhedged thematic focus on decumulation as a distinct discipline. While most advisory firms treat retirement as a continuation of accumulation investing with a slightly lower equity beta, Telos builds the entire client engagement around the structural problem of converting a lump sum into a 30-year paycheck. This single-architecture thesis—that distribution planning is an engineering problem, not a risk-tolerance questionnaire—sets the firm's intellectual posture apart from generalist Pacific Northwest RIAs managing similar account sizes.