Newman, Dignan & Sheerar Providence, Rhode Island A private wealth practice · Est. 1993
Less noise, more control
Woman on a wooden swing in a white lace dress, surrounded by orange quince blossoms

Midlife requires
delight.

Give me five minutes. I'll show you the one thing quietly running your money.

Stop carrying your decisions alone.

If this is you

You are the one holding it all

You are in midlife. You are helping your parents, launching your kids, and quietly wondering what your own next chapter looks like. Usually in the same week.

You do not need another lecture about the market. You need one person who sees the whole picture and helps you make the next right decision.

Here is how I help
  • One advisor who knows your whole life, not just your accounts.
  • We start with the life you want, then build the money around it.
  • Independent, so the advice answers to you and not a product shelf.
  • Tax-aware decisions, so more of what you build stays yours.

Five minutes. No cost. Start anonymously.

What is quietly driving your money?

Most of what we want, we did not choose. We picked it up along the way, from a parent, a sibling, a neighbor we watched years ago and never quite forgot.

Twenty short questions will name the one pattern shaping the money decisions you are already making. Including the one that is hardest to see.

Show me my pattern

Five minutes  ·  no email to start  ·  drawn from the work of Luke Burgis and René Girard

What you stop carrying alone

What gets lighter

The noise.

You stop waking up to twenty priorities competing for your attention. There is a way to think about things one season at a time.

The conversations.

With parents. With children. With one another. They become easier to begin when there is finally a plan gentle enough to hold real life.

The future.

Not because uncertainty disappears. Because you stop facing it without perspective, or someone to help you carry it.

A man in a linen shirt standing beside a banana plant

The work, as it actually happens

What lands on my desk
Aging parents
The decisions that don't fit on a spreadsheet. The ones nobody wants to be first to bring up.
Children, in motion
College, weddings, first homes. Real costs, arriving while the runway gets shorter.
Retirement, soon
When the math becomes the smaller question and identity becomes the larger one.
Portfolio design
Designed around your life, not assembled from parts. The difference matters more than it sounds.
Tax & estate
Coordinated with everything else. Nothing handled in a silo.
A single relationship
One advisor. Ongoing. For as long as it serves the work.
A woman in white linen sitting quietly on a garden bench

The work, step by step

How this actually goes
Step 01

See clearly.

What do you actually want?

Before strategy or allocation, the first question is what the money is for. Most plans start with the money. We start with the life.

Step 02

Examine.

Why do you want it?

The wants beneath the wants. Whose are they, and which still belong to you. This is where the blind spots surface.

Step 03

Design.

Build the conditions to get there.

A portfolio is not a plan. A plan is not a life. We design the conditions, cash flow, structure, protection, and sequence, so the life you named in step one becomes the one you actually live. Not optimized. Tended.

A couple walking together along the beach

The quiz may surface one of these

The eight, named carefully
Each one is a story about where your wants came from. The last is the belief that none of this applies to you.
The Legacyi
The Rivalii
The Provideriii
The Mirroriv
The Ghostv
The Expertvi
The Scapegoatvii
The Romanticviii
A man in white linen pants leaning beside a banana plant

A little about who's writing this

About Parker
Parker is a Senior Investment Advisor at Newman, Dignan & Sheerar, a private wealth practice in Providence, Rhode Island.
· · ·
Before joining NDS, he founded and led his own independent advisory practice. That followed fifteen years at Capital Group, home of American Funds, where most of what he understands about portfolio design, he first learned.
He holds an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School of Management in Claremont, California, and the CIMA® designation from the Investments & Wealth Institute. His undergraduate work in economics was done at UC San Diego, with later studies at Cambridge and Carnegie Mellon.
· · ·
He lives in Jamestown, Rhode Island with his wife Erin and their five children — a fact that, more than anything else on this page, shapes the work he does for families in the middle of life.
· · · · · ·
About Erik
Erik S. Manchester, CFP®, is an Investment Consultant at NDS. He came to the firm in 2014 from Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, where he managed portfolios for individuals, family trusts, endowments, and retirement plans.
· · ·
Before financial services, he was an account manager for a specialized manufacturing company in North Kingstown serving the offshore and military industries. He is a graduate of the College of Business at Florida State University with a degree in finance, and an Eagle Scout.
· · ·
Erik lives in North Attleboro, Massachusetts with his wife Kerri and their three children.
A woman in a white sundress with a woven bag, beside palms

A short note, sent each week

A letter, on Mondays
One thing worth noticing. One thing worth doing. About five minutes to read. No selling, ever.
A man in a white linen shirt beside a tall banana plant

Some short films, made slowly

Things we keep noticing
Thumbnail for The 4am List

The 4am List

i. — a short film
Thumbnail for The Dark Night of the Soul

The Dark Night of the Soul

ii. — a short film
Thumbnail for The Retirement Cliff

The Retirement Cliff

iii. — a short film
the rest of them, here
Find your pattern