Jermaine CarterCFBS, MSFS, AEP® · Founder & Managing Principal
Fiduciary planning for the whole financial life.
Jermaine founded Applied Wealth Management to answer one question: why do families with good advisors still end up with bad outcomes? Sixteen years of guiding families and business owners produced his answer, an independent, fee-based fiduciary firm where one advisor is accountable for the whole picture.
- Role
- Founder & Managing Principal
- Credentials
- CFBS · MSFS · AEP®
- Office
- Bakersfield, California
- Serves
- Clients nationwide
- Focus
- Retirement income, succession, and estate strategy
Our founder and managing principal.
Jermaine Carter is the founder and Managing Principal of Applied Wealth Management. He holds a Master of Science in Financial Services (MSFS), the Accredited Estate Planner (AEP®) designation, and the Certified Family Business Specialist (CFBS®) designation. Over more than 16 years, he has guided individuals, families, and business owners through complex financial decisions: retirement income planning, business succession, estate coordination, and tax-efficient wealth transfer.
His practice runs from retirement income engineering to the situations most firms send elsewhere: preparing a business for sale or succession, aligning estate documents with the financial plan alongside clients’ attorneys, and guiding athletes and entertainers through short earning windows and long financial lives. He built The Vantage Formula, the firm’s planning process, so that every one of those decisions gets made with the whole picture in view.
The firm itself exists because of a question Jermaine could not stop asking: why do so many families with good advisors still end up with bad outcomes? The answer was always the same. The advisor’s incentives and the client’s interests were not aligned, and could not be, in a system built on commissions, proprietary products, and captive insurance arrangements. So he built something different: an independent, fee-based fiduciary firm with no proprietary products and no commissions on investment management.
“You are not hiring us to pick stocks. You are hiring us to be accountable for the outcome of your financial life.”
Jermaine Carter
One plan, with every part in view.
Jermaine’s practice covers the decisions where a family’s wealth is most exposed: the income, the business, and the estate. Each is engineered inside the same plan, so nothing gets decided in isolation.
Income
Engineer the paycheck that replaces the paycheck.
Social Security timing, Roth conversion windows, withdrawal sequencing, and RMD coordination, built into one tax-efficient income designed to pay you reliably for life.
Business
Make the business transferable.
Succession and sale preparation, owner equity planning, and family business strategy, so the value you built survives the handoff and happens on your timeline.
Estate
Send assets exactly where you intend.
As an Accredited Estate Planner®, Jermaine coordinates with your estate planning attorney so legal documents and financial strategy stay fully aligned, and nothing slips through the cracks when it matters most.