James R. McKay, CFP®, AIF®

For the business owners I work with, tax strategy and financial planning are the same conversation. Decades of focusing on that intersection have shaped everything about how I approach a client relationship. The question I find myself working through most often is how to structure things so the people you've been working for all your life, yourself included, keep as much as possible of what you've built.

I graduated from Seattle Pacific University in 1981 with an Economics degree, started at New York Life that same October after being recruited by my oldest brother, and spent the next several years learning the business from the inside. I earned my CFP designation in 1986, founded Pacific Rim Financial Group in 1992, and established what eventually became McKay Retirement Consultants. I built our business succession and retirement plan practices from the ground up, and both have defined my approach ever since.

What keeps me engaged, decades in, is the complexity. I focus specifically on reducing taxes for business owners and helping them plan for the transition of ownership, whether that means succession within a family, a sale, or something in between. The client story I come back to most: a business owner sold a $7M company, and we were able to build $1M in tax deductions in the first year and $250,000 annually for the following ten years, sheltering taxes on $3.5M of the total sale. That's the kind of outcome I'm always looking for. Clients sometimes tell me I'm the only one they've found who approaches financial planning from this angle. I take that as both a compliment and a responsibility.

My wife Marilyn and I have been married for decades, we have three adult children, and over those years we've shared our home with twenty cats. Not all at once. I've ridden motorcycles across two continents, four countries, and ten states, and fished in six countries across two continents. We live in Federal Way, where I grew up, and my kids ended up with some of the same teachers I had in junior high and high school. I spent years coaching youth soccer, which probably makes sense given that I was once a third-round draft pick for the NASL Seattle Sounders. I currently support the Boys and Girls Clubs and have served time with the Rotary Club and the SPU Alumni Association.

• Investment Advisor Representative, Cetera Wealth Services LLC and Cetera Investment Advisers LLC
• CA Insurance License #0C45798
• Cetera's Circle of Excellence, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025*
• McKay Retirement Consultants: NAPA Top DC Advisor Teams, 2024**
• B.S., Seattle Pacific University
• Graduate, College for Financial Planning

*The Cetera Financial Group’s Circle of Excellence recognition is not a guarantee of future investment success and should not be construed as an endorsement of Jim McKay Investment Advisor Representative by any client.

**The NAPA Top DC Advisor Teams list highlights the nation’s leading retirement plan advisor firms. This list focuses on teams, broadly defined as being in a single physical location, and having at least $100 million in DC assets under advisement. It is based on self-reported assets under advisement. The accolade is based on the previous calendar year's numbers but was too unwieldy and confusing to tag it as such. We have updated the title to reflect the year in which it is released even though it is still based on last year's numbers. Listing in this publication and/or award is not a guarantee of future investment success. This recognition should not be construed as an endorsement of the advisor by any client. No compensation was provided directly or indirectly by the recipient for participation or in connection with obtaining or using the third-party rating or award.