MEANINGFUL RESULTS

As a young man, it was never part of F.J. Phillips’s life plan to one day raise his family in the town he grew up in—Wilmette.

“Both of my parents were raised in the same part of Wilmette. We have lots of roots in this area going back to the mid-40s,” Phillips says. “My kids are now the third generation to attend Central School.”

But after his freshman year in college where he was studying to be an architect, Phillips returned to Wilmette to deal with a financial crisis his family was facing. The crisis, which resulted in the sale of his childhood home and some very difficult decisions, taught him at a young age about the devastating effects that result from a lack of financial planning.

“When things were finally settled at home and I could return to college, I changed my major from architecture to finance,” Phillips says. “I wanted to see if I could help others avoid some of the same pitfalls we experienced.”

After Phillips graduated from college in 1997, he joined Merrill Lynch.

“Once I got through the training, I went to work building a business of my own,” he remembers. “Then one day I was sitting at my desk when Tom [Kilborn, today’s Managing Director of Kilborn Phillips & Associates] tapped me on the shoulder and told me that his business was growing, that he needed help, and that he wanted me to come and work with him. I didn’t hesitate for one moment.”

Phillips mentored under Kilborn for a few years before growing into an equity partner in what ultimately became Kilborn Phillips & Associates where he is now Senior Vice President and Wealth Management Advisor. The group’s focus is comprehensive multi-generational wealth management and retirement planning. They strive to make a difference in clients’ financial lives by prompting them to understand opportunities and risks. Phillip’s ability to simplify complicated financial strategies allows his clients to make informed decisions.

“We have an approach that’s really grounded in identifying and meeting our client’s needs,” says Phillips. “We don’t lead with a product. We do a deep dive with our clients to determine the best financial plan for them.”

Phillips says the most productive client onboarding sessions begin with a yellow pad of paper and the acronym “LISA:” · Lifestyle · Income · Savings · Assets.

“People can be intimidated by the financial planning process,” he says. “But if we break it down to these four things, our clients are much more receptive, and we can come up with an initial plan that becomes a working document. Nobody can tell you what things will look like in 20 years, but we have a series of decisions we can make today and a number of levers that we can pull. A visual depiction of this can be very powerful.”

“COVID taught us a lot of lessons and reinforced the importance of not emotionally reacting to a volatile market,” he says. “I know the conversations I had with my clients would have been very different had we not spent so much time talking in the beginning about the financial security they were building.”

“There was definitely an unseen, gravitational pull that brought my family back to Wilmette,” Phillips says. When it was time for our growing family to make the move from the city, my wife fell in love with Wilmette and knew this was where our family should be.” “I want my clients to trust that I will take the same care and concern with their financial future that I do for my own family,” he says. “My clients should expect nothing less.”

For more information, visit fa.ml.com/kilborn-phillips.