What Makes Momentous Wealth Advisors Different?

When you think about wealth management, what comes to mind? Investment returns? Tax strategies? Retirement planning? While these elements are important, at Momentous Wealth Advisors, we believe they're just pieces of a much larger picture.

So what truly makes our approach different, and why does it matter for your financial future and, more importantly, for the life you want to create.

Most financial advisors focus exclusively on your money. We focus on your life—and how your wealth can serve as the foundation for a life of meaning, accomplishment, impact, and rich experiences.

Values-Based Approach

At the heart of our philosophy is a simple but profound belief: your financial decisions should reflect your deepest values. Many advisors begin with the numbers—your assets, income, expenses, and financial goals. At Momentous, we start by exploring your values. What matters most to you? What kind of legacy do you want to create? How do you define a life well-lived?

Through our thoughtful discovery process, we help you articulate these values, sometimes uncovering priorities you hadn't fully recognized before. This clarity becomes the compass for every financial decision we make together.

When your financial strategy aligns with your core values, something remarkable happens. Decisions become clearer. Trade-offs become easier to evaluate. And your wealth begins working in harmony with your life vision, rather than as a separate concern.

This values-based approach means we often have very different conversations than you might expect from a financial advisor. Yes, we'll talk about investment strategies and tax planning, but always within the context of what matters most to you.

True Fiduciary Relationship

You may have heard the term "fiduciary" before, but it's worth understanding exactly what it means in practice. As fiduciaries, we're legally bound to act in your best interest at all times. This is different from many financial professionals who are only held to a "suitability" standard, meaning they can recommend products that benefit themselves as long as they're "suitable" for you.

But at Momentous, we take the fiduciary relationship much further than just a legal obligation. We see it as a sacred trust. Our entire business model is designed to eliminate conflicts of interest. We don't sell products. We don't receive commissions. Our success is measured entirely by your success and satisfaction.

This true fiduciary approach means unbiased advice, complete transparency, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing your advisor's interests are perfectly aligned with yours.

Beyond Financial Advice: Life Coaching

Financial decisions don't happen in a vacuum. They're intertwined with your career choices, family dynamics, health considerations, and personal aspirations. Recognizing this reality, we've developed expertise that extends beyond traditional financial planning.

We help you clarify goals, overcome obstacles, and create meaningful change across all dimensions of your life. This integrated approach means we can help you navigate major life transitions, make difficult decisions, and stay accountable to your highest priorities.

For example, if you're considering a career change, we don't just analyze the financial implications. We help you explore how the change aligns with your values, affects your work-life balance, and impacts your sense of purpose. This holistic perspective leads to better decisions—and often, to transformative life changes our clients might not have otherwise pursued.

Wealth with Purpose

Money, in itself, has no inherent meaning. It's what money enables that matters. At Momentous, we're passionate about helping you deploy your wealth purposefully.

We've seen too many people accumulate substantial assets without a clear sense of what those assets are for. The result is often a nagging sense of "Is this all there is?" despite financial success. Others defer enjoyment and impact indefinitely, saving for a "someday" that may never arrive.

Our approach to wealth with purpose helps you strike the right balance. We work with you to identify meaningful ways to use your resources now, while still planning responsibly for the future. This might mean funding experiences that bring joy, supporting causes you believe in, helping family members, or investing in your own growth and fulfillment.

When wealth is aligned with purpose, it becomes a powerful force for good in your life and in the world. And paradoxically, by focusing less on the money itself and more on what it can achieve, many of our clients find they actually make better financial decisions.

Life by Design, Not by Default

Many people live life by default rather than by design. They follow conventional paths, meet external expectations, and wake up years later wondering if they've been living someone else's life rather than their own.

At Momentous, we help you create a life by design—one that reflects your unique values, priorities, and definition of success. This intentional approach applies to both your financial decisions and your broader life choices.

Through thoughtful planning and ongoing coaching, we help you design a life that doesn't just look good on paper, but feels deeply right for you. This often means challenging conventional wisdom about career trajectories, retirement timing, spending patterns, and asset allocation.

When you live by design rather than by default, you avoid the twin regrets of "I wish I had" and "I wish I hadn't." Instead, you move forward with confidence that your choices reflect what matters most to you.

The M.A.D.E. Life Framework: Our Proprietary Approach

To bring these principles together in a systematic way, we've developed the M.A.D.E. framework—a proprietary approach that guides our work with clients. Let me explain what each element entails:

M - Meaning:

This is where we begin—by exploring what brings genuine meaning to your life. Through guided conversations and reflective exercises, we help you articulate your purpose, values, and vision for the future. This foundation of meaning informs every aspect of your financial plan.

For example, one client discovered that her deepest sense of meaning came from mentoring younger professionals in her field. This insight led us to restructure her retirement plan, creating space for paid and pro-bono consulting work that keeps her engaged with her purpose even after leaving her full-time career.

A - Accomplish:

With clarity about what matters most, we help you set and achieve meaningful goals across all life dimensions—career, relationships, health, learning, and of course, finances.

Our approach to goal-setting goes beyond the typical SMART goals framework. We help you identify truly motivating objectives that connect with your core values. Then we break these down into actionable steps, establish accountability systems, and regularly celebrate progress.

Whether you're saving for a child's education, planning a career transition, or working toward a significant charitable contribution, the Accomplish element ensures your most important goals become reality.

D - Difference:

We believe that making a positive difference—through your work, relationships, and resources—is essential to a fulfilling life.

The Difference element helps you identify where and how you want to create impact. For some clients, this means structured philanthropy through a donor-advised fund or foundation. For others, it means mentoring, volunteering, or supporting family members. And for many, it means building social responsibility into their investment strategy through ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing.

Whatever form it takes, we help you maximize your positive impact while integrating these efforts seamlessly with your overall financial plan.

E - Experience:

Life isn't meant to be postponed. The Experience element ensures you're using your resources to live richly in the present, not just saving for some distant future.

We help you identify experiences that bring joy, growth, and connection—whether that's travel, learning, culture, or time with loved ones. Then we create specific "experience accounts" within your financial plan, ensuring you have both the resources and the permission to invest in these life-enriching activities.

Many clients tell us this element has been transformative, freeing them from an overly restrictive mindset without sacrificing long-term security.

The Momentous Difference

When you work with Momentous Wealth Advisors, you experience a fundamentally different approach to wealth management. Instead of focusing solely on returns and risk metrics, we measure success by how well your wealth is serving your life.

This doesn't mean traditional financial expertise isn't important—it absolutely is, and we bring decades of experience in investment management, tax planning, and estate strategies. But this technical expertise serves a larger purpose: creating the financial foundation for a life of meaning, accomplishment, impact, and rich experiences.

Our clients often tell us that working with Momentous has changed not just their financial outlook, but their entire approach to life. They make decisions with greater confidence, experience less financial stress despite market fluctuations, and feel a deeper alignment between their resources and their values.

In a world where wealth management often feels transactional and impersonal, we offer something different: a relationship built on deep understanding, shared purpose, and a commitment to your holistic wellbeing.

If you're looking for more than just investment advice—if you're seeking a partner who will help you use your wealth as a tool for creating a truly meaningful life—we invite you to experience the Momentous difference.

Brian D. Muller, Founder and Senior Wealth Advisor

Brian is a Fiduciary Financial Advisor in Woodbury, Minnesota.