Meet Melinda Parks of Freestate Advisors

Today we’d like to introduce you to Melinda Parks

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started my career as a CPA in Big 8 public accounting. After leaving public accounting, I worked in banking and financial services for several years before landing at Sprint in 1997. I spent 20 years at Sprint, 8 in Finance and 12 in Marketing executive leadership roles.

One of my former Sprint colleagues left in 2009 and founded Freestate Advisors with a business partner. Their extensive experience in corporate finance provided an understanding of the business cycle and its relationship with investment risk. In a quest to achieve better investment outcomes, they developed a unique management approach to protect from catastrophic losses when recession risk was higher due to the business cycle. Eventually, they were looking for a succession plan. They approached me and another person to consider coming to work in the business, with the agreement to buy out the partners eventually, which we have now fully executed. Being an owner at Freestate has allowed me to utilize all the skills I have developed throughout my career.

Freestate Advisors is a full-service Registered Investment Advisor firm. My business partner and I have continued to utilize the founders’ investment research and advanced analytics while incorporating financial planning and personalized client service. We believe that understanding each client’s unique situation and doing the right thing for people leads to the best outcome for both clients and Freestate.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We bought into ownership at the end of 2019, right at the market’s peak. And the market has been anything but smooth since then. Managing investments is different when it’s someone else’s money – you have a sense of obligation different from managing your own. We take our responsibility very seriously. However, managing investments through market volatility is challenging because clients never like to see their balances decline. Neither do we.

We’ve learned over time that we have to understand each client’s situation and find the investment solution that is best for that client and for each account the client has. We believe financial planning is foundational to understanding the client’s situation and informs how we think about investing.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Freestate Advisors?
We’re a registered investment advisor. We serve as a fiduciary to help clients manage their investments. Freestate is a boutique firm located in Overland Park. We’ve been in business since 2009 and are second-generation owners. We believe financial planning is foundational to the client relationship, and we perform that service for our clients at no additional fee. We believe we do financial planning differently because we not only look at the current situation and forecast, we also spend time thinking about what can go wrong. We want to make sure our clients understand the levers that will have the most impact on their long-term financial security.

As a brand, we’re proud of who we are as people. My partner and I both grew up in rural Kansas, where we learned the values of hard work, planning, and saving. With that background, we’re just ordinary people who genuinely care about our clients and their financial futures. Our underlying belief is that if you do the right thing to take care of the customer, everything else will work out fine.

Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
We love to help people plan for their financial future. That may include helping answer the question of “when can I retire?” or “I lost my job – how much do I really need to earn for my next job?” or “when should I take my social security?”. We help people think about saving for college. We help people plan what to do with their assets when they die and everything in between. We love to meet prospective clients and hear more about their situations. This helps us understand what they are looking for rather than just coming at clients with a specific solution.

Let’s schedule some time to get to know one another and see what you might need.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.freestateadvisors.com
• Facebook: https://Facebook.com/FreestateAdvisors
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/freestate-advisors-llc
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@FreestateAdvisors