The firm
Harmony was founded on a simple premise: that the best financial advice is given by people who know you well, are paid only by you, and stay long enough to see how the story turns out. Everything else about how we work is a consequence of that.
Origins
The firm exists for the same reason any small fiduciary firm exists. The work we wanted to do for the people in front of us — patient, in-person, paid only by them — couldn't be done inside a brokerage or a big-box advisory shop. The structure wouldn't allow it. Commissions had to be sold. Quotas had to be met. Conversations had to fit a fifteen-minute window.
Harmony was started to do it the other way. Fee-only, in writing. No products. No quotas. The first meetings happened around kitchen tables in Bergen County. The next round of clients came from those clients. Every client since has arrived the same way.
We've grown deliberately ever since — adding capacity only when the next client deserved more attention than we could give them, and never when a spreadsheet said we should.
The founder
Founder & Principal Advisor
Rich is the founder and principal advisor at Harmony Financial Advisors. He started the firm because the work he wanted to do for clients couldn't be done inside a brokerage or a big-box advisory shop — it needed a fee-only structure, in-person meetings, and the freedom to recommend doing nothing when nothing was the right answer.
How we think
Most of the questions clients bring us look like questions about money. Almost none of them really are. The principles below are what let us answer the question underneath.
We sign a fiduciary oath with every client. It means we're legally obligated to act in your interest — not a brokerage's, not a fund family's, not our own.
One word, big difference. We're paid by you, transparently, and by no one else. No commissions, no kickbacks, no soft dollars.
Personal wealth and business finance share more wiring than most advisors will admit. We work both sides because the decisions touch each other constantly.
The best financial advice usually sounds like nothing happened. That's the whole point — quiet, recurring care, taken seriously over a very long time.
The fiduciary oath
Adapted from the Committee for the Fiduciary Standard.
Begin
We meet in person across New Jersey — at your home or your place of business, or at our office. You leave with a clearer picture even if we never work together. That part we promise.
