Insights from Omaha, Nebraska
Senior Wealth Advisor, Omaha, Nebraska
01Introduction
Brent O’Mara is a Senior Wealth Advisor in Omaha, Nebraska, and this site is the general education encyclopedia published under his name, with every source named. The city around it dates from July 4, 1854, when, as a KETV timeline records, a ferry company founded Omaha on the west bank of the Missouri and the town later served as the territorial capital.1 The entries here treat financial planning the way the CFP Board defines it, as a view of a person’s entire financial picture rather than a single account,2 and they keep to the test a Wall Street Journal columnist described on NPR: a conversation about overall finances, goals and savings rather than a product pitch.3
02The firm
Brent O'Mara is a Senior Wealth Advisor at an Omaha, Nebraska Registered Investment Advisor and a cofounder of an Omaha based organization that supports independent financial advisors. The entry names both as plain fact and explains, from cited sources, what a Registered Investment Advisor is and how independent practices are organized.
The firm03The university
He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, which he attended from 1997 to 2001. The entry covers the degree, the business college that teaches in Mammel Hall and the university that began in 1908 as the University of Omaha.
Education04Featured entries
A coach who once gave seats away to football ticket holders, an arena sold out since 2013, and one evening of 92,003 outdoors.
One paper hands money decisions to a chosen agent during incapacity, another hands medical ones to a proxy, and both lose their force once death arrives.
A professional society that became the largest voluntary heart organization in the country, and what it teaches the public.
The retirement plan that can buy a company from its founder, with the federal rules, the price limits and the alternatives laid out side by side.
The subprime years, the failures of September 2008, the deepest downturn since the 1930s and the official record of why it happened.
The IRS table, the April 1 deadline, the 25 percent excise tax and the inherited account clock, set out from the tax code's own vocabulary.
05Browse by subject
How an owner passes a company on, by sale, by gift or by handing it to the next generation, and what each path asks of the balance sheet.
What families talk about, and avoid talking about, when money and responsibility move from one generation to the next.
Wills, trusts, powers of attorney and beneficiary forms, explained one document at a time.
The ways people give, from a simple check to a donor advised fund or a foundation, and how each one works.
What it means when an adviser is held to a fiduciary standard, where the rule comes from and how it is applied.
How independent advisory firms are organized and regulated, and how they differ from brokerages and banks.
What the published record shows about recessions, falling markets and the recoveries that followed them.
How a working income becomes a retirement income: Social Security, pensions, savings and the rules on withdrawals.
The companies and farms that pass through Nebraska families, and the state laws and customs that shape the handoff.
The foundations, campaigns and civic institutions that make Omaha a city known for giving.
The history, campus and programs of the metropolitan university in the heart of the city.
Game days in Lincoln, the state fair and the open country: the shared life of the Plains, from the published record.
06His writing
He writes about planning for business owners and families on Medium, on his Blogger blog and on his WordPress site. The newest pieces appear below, and the bibliography keeps a reference entry for every published piece.
All writing