№ 01 — Why this practice exists
Two retirements I watched disappear.
My grandmother served in the Second World War and spent her career in medicine. Then the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, a collapse most people have forgotten, left her counting every penny in an uncomfortable apartment in Iowa. Years later, the gifted ski coach I learned under in high school, retired early with time to coach and travel, watched his retirement vanish with the energy company that funded it. That company was Enron. Coaching went from hobby to full-time job overnight.
Neither of them did anything reckless. They trusted structures that were never really built for them.
I watched it again from the inside: nearly eight years in hospitality seeing fortunes rise and fall, then working and studying straight through the 2008 crisis. That history is why Menominee Capital is an independent, fee-based fiduciary RIA. Not as a marketing line — as the arrangement that legally binds me to act in your interest, the strictest standard of care this industry has.
Most financial mistakes aren't math mistakes. They're human ones — timing, fear, neglect. The math matters. The counsel is the job.
