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

Midlife requires
delight.

Because responsibility expands faster than awe.

Stop carrying your decisions alone.

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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.

Quince blossom illustration, top-right corner
Quince blossom illustration, bottom-right corner 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 — and the ones, more often, that nobody wants to be first to bring up
Children, in motion
college, weddings, first homes — the late expenses of love, arriving on a runway that's getting short
Retirement, soon
where the math becomes the smaller question, and identity becomes the larger one
Portfolio design
not construction — design. the difference, it turns out, matters more than you'd think
Tax & estate
held together with the rest of it. nothing in a vacuum, nothing in a silo
A single relationship
one person. ongoing. for as long as it serves the work and the friendship both
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Quince blossom illustration, top-right corner Quince blossom illustration, bottom-left corner
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, before allocation — what is the life you're trying to live? Most plans start with the money. We start with what the money is for.

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, sequence — so the life you named in step one becomes the one you actually live. Not optimized. Tended.

A woman in a knit cardigan walking past yucca leaves

Twenty questions, five minutes, no cost

A small inquiry
The Wanting Audit
drawn from Luke Burgis & René Girard
· · ·
Most of what we want, we did not choose. We caught it — from a parent, a sibling, the neighbour whose driveway we noticed twenty years ago and never quite forgot.
The audit is twenty questions. It names which of eight patterns is most likely shaping the financial decisions you're already making — and surfaces the one, if you'd like, that's the hardest to see.
· · ·
begin the audit
five minutes  ·  no email required to begin
A couple walking together along the beach

The audit may surface one of these

The eight, named carefully
each one is a story about where your wants came from. one of them — 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
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The 4am List

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

ii. — a short film
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The Retirement Cliff

iii. — a short film
the rest of them, here
Begin the audit