Upon passing this final level, Elias became a CFA^® charterholder and full member of Marotta Wealth Management’s Investment Committee.

As a child, Elias remembers that his dad would give him a one dollar bill and say, “Always keep a dollar in your pocket.” Coming from a family that lived mostly hand-to-mouth, Elias saw at an early age how valuable financial freedom and security are if you can attain them and what can happen if finances are not planned accordingly.

In grammar school, Elias started mowing lawns and saved his earnings in stocks for the first time. Back in those days, he owned a utility mutual fund and remembers checking the morning paper for the prior day’s price changes while his mom drove him to school.

Though he had this early exposure to stocks, his real interest in finance didn’t began in earnest until college. In pursuit of an International Business degree at Bryant University, Elias decided to concentrate in Finance after developing a strong connection with some of his professors. In his classes, he found he had a growing interest in learning more financial concepts like the time value of money and the weighted average cost of capital.

After graduating from college, Elias was an International Management Trainee for Delhaize Group and worked for local real estate investment firms. Around March 2016, Elias was hoping to transition from real estate management to equity management and talked with a staffing solutions temp agency to see if they could help.

This is when Elias met Marotta Wealth Management. At the time, we were hiring temporary employees through the agency to fill our open receptionist role. Making the connection between our firm and Elias, the temp agency placed him in our receptionist role so he could see how he liked the field. After three months when his temp employee contract ended, we hired him full-time to continue as our receptionist while also training in portfolio management and rebalancing.

Since then, Elias has passed his receptionist role on to others and become one of our primary portfolio managers. He is part of the trading team for over 200 portfolios and is one of our main employer sponsored retirement plan advisors. In our Retirement Plan Management service, he helps with employee education, enrollment, and paperwork. He has also aided the Investment Committee as our Investment Committee Secretary and with the administrative and investment decisions for employer-sponsored plans, specialties he continues to have now that he is a full Investment Committee member.

A Brief Interview with Elias