Peter Egolf

Investing Insights

Investing can be simple but is often made unnecessarily complicated. How is that possible? Designed complexity.

If you have ever been to an IKEA store, you may have found it nearly impossible to find your way out. Complexity and time transfer your money to other people, and in the case of investing, to the financial industry.

One Day In July seeks to eliminate many of the problems common in the financial industry: conflicts of interest, excessive fees for advice, and significant investment fees. I experienced these issues as an investor and joined the firm as a fiduciary financial advisor to teach other investors how to avoid these financial mistakes and build their wealth.

My goal is simple: simplify investing for my clients. I provide advice with a high degree of emotional intelligence, acting as your strongest financial advocate and a trusted partner for your life. In addition, I build customized investment plans for my clients tailored to their goals and risk tolerances, all while minimizing the cost of their advice and investments.

Every investor should receive their share of market returns regardless of whether they invest $250K or $25M. The introduction of ETF index investing has made this a reality by significantly reducing the cost and complexity of investing.

I endeavor to provide superior personalized service to my clients, a concept that is widely lacking in the financial industry. I want my clients to understand their investments, including the logic and reasoning for each position in their portfolio. I encourage my clients to ignore Wall Street and the media, whose noise tends to promote poor investment behavior often in favor of the financial industry. We will develop a risk-based plan that aims to purchase the whole market while avoiding the unnecessary fees, hidden costs, and taxes that erode investment returns and wealth.

Career

After a decade of personal investing experience, I executed my first estate and saw first-hand the difficulty of receiving simple, unconflicted financial advice. As a scientist by training, I was used to consulting for corporations, law firms, and state/federal governments investigating their environmental liabilities - defining intangible environmental risks and designing tangible solutions to maximize stakeholder return. I became fascinated by the parallels between scientific consulting and finance - beginning with little pieces of information, collecting data, developing strategies, tweaking solutions based on additional findings, and presenting simple plans on complex topics.

I returned to graduate school at the University of Toronto to study finance and business in my MBA. I focused on sustainability, entrepreneurship, and social impact, including consulting for science/technology startups and not-for-profits¹, and researching corporate gender diversity policies.²

As a generalist by nature, I continue to implement ideas from other specialties in finance and investing.

Meeting Locations

I grew up in Wayne, Pennsylvania, on the Philadelphia Main Line - spending time visiting the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania, seeing family in Vermont, and exploring the Maine Coast. I now reside in Burlington, Vermont, and spend the balance of my time between these locations – serving clients across Vermont, the Northeast, and beyond.

1. Creative Destruction Lab
2. The Institute for Gender and the Economy