Founder and lead advisor
Advisor, then planner, then tax advisor.
Each one taught me something the last one couldn't, and all three are at the table now. I'm the founder and lead advisor at Talley Wealth in Johnson City, and every client works directly with me.
David Talley CFP® ChFC® EA
Why I do this
They've done the saving. They've made the right decisions for thirty years. And then they reach the chapter where all of that is supposed to turn into a life, and nobody has sat them down and shown them how.
So they guess. Some guess low and spend twenty years under-living the plan. Some guess high and run out of room later. Both endings are avoidable.
What gets in the way, almost every time, is that the plan, the investments, and the taxes never get looked at together. So that's the work: get all three to one table, and make sure you understand what's decided there well enough that it's yours.
How I got here
Three jobs, in order, and each one fixed something about the last.
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First
An advisor
Mostly what I learned was what people actually ask, and it's almost never the thing on the form.
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Then
A planner
The plan started leading, and the investments started making a lot more sense because of it.
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Then
A tax advisor
Because the return is where every decision shows up eventually, and I wanted to be in the room for that part too.
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Now
Talley Wealth
One table, where the plan, the investments, and the taxes get decided together. That's the whole idea, and it took all three to get here.
On paper that's three credentials: CFP® for the planning, ChFC® for the strategy, and EA for representing you before the IRS. If you've ever wondered what those letters actually license someone to do, here's the plain-English version.
On the first call
The questions people ask me first.
Every one of these was asked on a real call this summer. Tap one for the answer you'd get from me.
Beyond the office
Outside the firm.
- On stage
- I've spoken on the TEDx stage in Johnson City, on taking something that looks complicated and making it usable.
- In the classroom
- I'm the interviewed voice of a college minor in AI for business at ETSU and Tusculum University.
- In print
- Quoted this year in MoneyWise on what to do after a big investing loss, and in U.S. News & World Report on long-term care. MoneyWiseU.S. News & World Report
- On a board
- I serve on the board of CrushingIt.ai, a nonprofit helping people and businesses use AI in practical, grounded ways.
At home
Kaitlyn and the kids.
Happiest somewhere outside if the weather allows, and almost always cheering for Tennessee football. A scratch golfer on a good day and a mediocre one on a bad one. I read too much, learn something new every week, and try to be the kind of advisor I'd want my own family to have. Daisy greets visitors at the office, and she's better at it than I am.
