A Deck in Nags Head

I don't share this part of my story very often, but I think you need to hear it to understand why Sound Wealth looks different today than it did a year ago.

A few years back, I was on a "working" vacation in Nags Head, North Carolina — and I use that term loosely because every vacation was a working vacation back then. I was sitting on the back deck of our beach rental with my laptop open, phone buzzing, mentally running through client deliverables while my family was inside doing vacation things without me. My wife came outside, and she'd been crying. She sat down across from me and asked me a question I will never forget: "Do you want a divorce?"

I was speechless. Genuinely speechless.

She wasn't asking because of anything dramatic or scandalous. She was asking because of my absence, my anger, my short temper, and the scraps of attention I'd been handing her and our kids after the business got my best energy every single day. The leftovers — the exhausted, frustrated, irritable version of me — that's what my family was getting, and she had finally reached the point where she thought maybe I just didn't want to be there anymore.

The truth? I had built a thriving advisory and tax practice with my business partner, and from the outside it looked like everything was going great. Revenue was climbing, clients were happy, and on paper I looked like I was winning. But here's what I was hiding from everyone, including myself: I was coasting with God. I did all the "Christian" things — showed up on Sundays, prayed before meals, checked the boxes — and I convinced myself that was enough. In reality, Iwas pursuing the gifts and completely ignoring the Giver. And because I had drifted from God, I had drifted from my family too.

I had poured everything into profit and forgotten about the people who mattered most. I thought I was being faithful, but I was really just busy.

That conversation on the deck wasn't an accusation. It was a wake-up call that I desperately needed, and by God's grace, I actually heard it.

The Rebuild

What followed was one of the hardest and most important seasons of my life. The business partnership ended, and in 2021 I made the decision to start over and launch Sound Wealth LLC on my own. Starting from scratch is terrifying when you've got a family counting on you, but this time around something was fundamentally different in my heart. I wasn't just rebuilding a business — I was re-engaging with my wife, re-engaging with my kids, and personally re-engaging with the Lord in a way I hadn't in years. For the first time in a long time, I was asking the right question: What does God actually want me to build here?

The technical skills were there — I had years of experience in financial planning, tax strategy, and business advisory work, and I was genuinely good at the job. But being good at the job wasn't enough anymore. I knew plenty of advisors who were technically sharp and spiritually asleep, and I had been one of them! I didn't want to go back to that.

💡 Key Insight:

There's a real difference between a Christian who happens to be a financial advisor and a Christian financial advisor. The first one keeps faith in the background and does solid work. The second one brings biblical wisdom into the advice itself — not as an afterthought, but as the foundation.

That distinction comes from Ron Blue, the founder of Kingdom Advisors and someone widely regarded as the father of Christian financial planning. When I first encountered that idea during the Certified Kingdom Advisor (CKA) program in 2023, it hit me right between the eyes. I was the first kind, and I knew in my gut that God was calling me to become the second.

From CKA to Calling

The CKA designation is a 20-module educational program that teaches financial professionals how to weave biblical wisdom into their practice, covering everything from stewardship and generosity to investing, wealth transfer, and how to actually have heart-level conversations with clients about what money means in their lives.

What surprised me most about the program wasn't the technical content — it was that it gave me language for convictions I had been carrying around for years but never actually put into practice. Concepts like "Live, Give, Owe, Grow" as a framework for thinking about every dollar that flows through your life. The idea that every spending decision is, at its core, a spiritual decision. The conviction that stewardship is the one area of the Christian life you genuinely cannot fake, because your bank statement tells the real story whether you like it or not.

I finished the program with a new credential after my name, which was great, but more importantly I finished it with a question that wouldn't leave me alone: Why am I not bringing any of this to my clients?

So many of my clients already shared my faith! We'd talk about church, about family, about what really mattered to them over coffee before diving into the numbers. But I wasn't having the deeper conversations — I wasn't asking about generosity goals, I wasn't talking about how to train the next generation to steward an inheritance well, and I certainly wasn't weaving biblical principles into the investment strategy or the tax plan in any intentional way. I was keeping my faith in a completely separate drawer from my financial advice, and the more I studied, the more I realized that God never asks us to compartmentalize like that. He never says "give me your Sundays and I'll stay out of your Mondays." It doesn't work that way, and honestly, I don't think it's supposed to.

📖 Stewardship Lens:

‍"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters."

— Colossians 3:23 (NIV).

Paul wrote this to the church at Colossae as a reminder that our lives aren't divided into "secular" and "sacred" buckets. All of it belongs to God — the worship on Sunday and the spreadsheets on Monday and the tax returns in April and the financial plans we build for the people who trust us with their futures.

The Moment That Changed Everything

In February 2025, I attended the Redeeming Money conference in Orlando, hosted by Kingdom Advisors. It's the premier gathering for Christian financial professionals — thousands of advisors worshiping together, learning together, and honestly wrestling with what it looks like to integrate faith and practice at a deeper level. I went because I wanted to keep growing in this space, and I had no idea how much it would accelerate what God was already doing in my heart.

Ron Blue got up and gave his testimony, and one part of it absolutely wrecked me.

Here's a man who built one of the largest CPA firms in the country, who founded what became a financial advisory firm managing tens of billions in assets, who co-founded the National Christian Foundation (which has facilitated over $15 billion in charitable grants). He has accomplished more in this industry than most people could dream of. And his story wasn't "look at everything I built and then eventually gave to God." His story was that the conviction came first. He didn't build something successful and then dedicate it to the Lord after the fact — he built it for God's purposes from the very beginning. The calling preceded the success, not the other way around.

I sat there in that conference room and I could feel God pressing on my heart: Why are you waiting, Matt? Why are you treating this like something you'll "get to" when the business is big enough or stable enough or successful enough? God wasn't asking me to build something impressive first and then hand it over to Him later. He was asking me to build something for Himright now, with whatever I had, in whatever stage the firm was in. And I knew, in that moment, that Sound Wealth needed to be rebuilt around the calling that God had been shaping in me through all of it — the failure, the rebuild, the CKA, all of it leading to this point.

I left Orlando knowing this wasn't going to be a subtle tweak or a cosmetic refresh. This was going to be a real reorientation of the firm from the ground up.

What's Actually Changing (And What's Not)

I want to be specific here, because "rebrand" can mean a lot of things and I don't want anyone to wonder what this means for them.

Here's what's new: We have a completely rebuilt website, updated branding, and a much clearer articulation of who we are and who we serve best. We've restructured our service offerings and fee structure to meet clients where they actually are — so a young family just getting started receives the right level of service at a price that makes sense for them, and a business owner with complex multi-state needs gets the depth and coordination they require. We didn't just want a tiered fee schedule; we wanted to make sure that every client gets the level of attention and planning that actually fits their season of life.

More fundamentally, Sound Wealth is now a Christian-first firm. That means our planning conversations are built on a foundation of biblical stewardship principles. For clients who want to go deeper, we now intentionally integrate things like generosity planning, training the next steward (which is how we think about inheritance and legacy), contentment as a financial principle, and values-aligned investing into the ongoing relationship. We haven't just added a Bible verse to the homepage — we've restructured how we approach financial planning from the foundation.

Here's what's not changing: The technical excellence. Sound Tax and Sound Wealth still coordinate your entire financial picture under one roof — investments, tax planning, business advisory, retirement strategy, all of it pulling in the same direction. That coordination is what makes us different operationally, and it's absolutely not going anywhere. I'm still the same advisor, my team is still here, and if anything, we've gotten sharper because we've gotten more intentional about why we do what we do, not just how we do it.

⚠️ Watch Out: There's a misconception floating around that "Christian financial advisor" somehow means less rigorous or less professional. I want to be really clear about this: the CKA designation requires an existing professional credential like the CFP®, and then it adds an additional layer of training in biblical wisdom and client counsel on top of that technical foundation. We're not replacing competence with good intentions — we're adding purpose and conviction to the proficiency that was already there.

A Note to Every Client — Especially If We Don't Share the Same Faith

This part matters to me, so I want to be direct about it.

If you're a client of ours and you don't share my Christian faith, you are welcome here. You have always been welcome here, and that is never going to change. I mean that sincerely. Many of our clients come from different faith backgrounds or no particular faith tradition at all, and they are family to us. We work with them closely and we care about their outcomes just as deeply.

The values that have always driven this firm — honesty, integrity, careful stewardship of resources, planning for the long term, genuinely caring about your family's future — those aren't exclusive to Christianity. They resonate with anyone who wants a financial advisor that cares about more than just a portfolio number. I've always operated with these values; the difference now is that I'm being transparent about where they come from and how deeply they run.

You'll still get the same experience: a coordinated financial plan that accounts for your investments, your taxes, your business, and your life goals. The same team, the same responsiveness, the same level of care. What you won't get is a lecture or a sermon — that's not what this is about. But I do think it matters that you understand the heart behind how your advisor approaches your money, and my heart is rooted in a conviction that stewarding resources well, being honest, holding integrity in everything we do, and planning with wisdom rather than just technique — those things make for a better client experience for everyone, regardless of what you believe on Sunday morning.

🗺️ State Spotlight: Sound Wealth is registered in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Texas. Whether you're navigating NJ's famously complex tax landscape, running a business in PA, managing multi-state income across several jurisdictions, or taking advantage of Texas's lack of state income tax, our coordinated planning approach covers the full picture. Rules vary by state and individual circumstance, and our integrated team with Sound Tax accounts for those differences in every plan we build.

Why "Steward" and Not Just "Grow"

Here's the shift in thinking that changes everything about how we approach financial planning: the question is no longer "How do I grow my wealth?" — it's "How do I steward what God has entrusted to me?"

Those sound similar, but they lead to very different financial plans in practice. The first question naturally drives you toward maximizing returns, accumulating more, and measuring success by the number on the statement. The second question leads to a plan that accounts for your lifestyle, your generosity, your obligations, and your legacy. It asks the harder questions: Are you living within your means? Are you giving in a way that reflects your actual values? Are you building enough margin to weather the unexpected? And are you training the next generation to handle what you'll eventually pass along to them?

The CKA program is built around five transcendent money management principles that are rooted in Proverbs and honestly, they've held true across every economic cycle in recorded history:

1. Spend less than you earn.
2. Avoid the overuse of debt.
3. Build margin (save).
4. Set long-term goals.
5. Give generously.

None of those are controversial — most people would read that list and say "yeah, obviously." But here's the thing: very few financial plans are actually built around all five. Most plans optimize hard for one or two of them (usually growth and tax reduction) and treat the rest as nice-to-haves or afterthoughts. At Sound Wealth, every financial plan and investment strategy we build now starts with these five principles as the foundation, not just the return target. And that changes the entire conversation.

🔢 By the Numbers:

There are over 2,350 verses in the Bible about money and possessions. Scripture has more to say about money than about prayer and faith combined! Financial stewardship isn't a side topic in the Christian life — it's absolutely central, and I think that's one of the reasons so many people feel a disconnect between their Sunday faith and their Monday finances.

The Real Reason I'm Telling You All of This

I could have just launched a new website, sent a polished email to our client list, and called it a day.

Instead, I'm sitting here telling you about a deck in Nags Head and a marriage that nearly fell apart because I was too consumed with building something "successful" to notice what it was costing the people I love most. And I'm telling you about sitting in a conference room in Orlando listening to a man in his eighties describe how he built everything for God from the start, and feeling God say to me, "That's what I'm asking you to do too."

I'm sharing all of this because I've learned — the hard way — that the most powerful thing an advisor can offer isn't a clever tax strategy or a perfectly timed Roth conversion. It's honesty and conviction. It's the willingness to say, "I've been where you are, I know what it's like to let money decisions run your life instead of the other way around, and I can help you build something different." I pursued the CKA designation because I believe, deep in my bones, that good financial advice is spiritual advice at its core. Every financial decision you make has its roots in some value or conviction, whether you've thought about it that way or not. I'd rather be upfront about mine than pretend they don't exist.

If any of this resonates with you — whether you've been a Sound Wealth client for years or you're hearing about us for the very first time — I would genuinely love to have a conversation about what stewardship-driven planning could look like for your family or your business. This is what we were built for.

📖 Stewardship Lens:

‍"The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty."

— Proverbs 21:5 (ESV).

Solomon wasn't promising that good planning automatically makes you rich — that's not how Proverbs work. He was making a wisdom observation: diligence and intentionality, applied faithfully over time, tend to produce good outcomes. That's not a financial guarantee, it's a principle. And honestly? Wisdom is a much better foundation for financial planning than market predictions or tax gimmicks will ever be.

What Comes Next

This blog post is the first of many, and I'm genuinely excited about what's ahead! We'll be writing regularly about the intersection of faith and finance, practical tax strategies for real people, business owner financial leadership, retirement planning, and how to think about money in a way that actually serves your life instead of consuming it.

If you're already a client, expect the same excellent service you've always received, with a lot more intentionality and heart behind it. And if you're someone who's been searching for a financial advisor that shares your values and takes stewardship seriously, I'd love to hear from you.

If you know someone — a friend, a family member, a business owner, someone at your church — who's been looking for an advisor that integrates faith and financial planning in a real, practical way, would you send this their way? We'd be honored to serve them.