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Dan Reiter

Principal and director of financial planning, Prosperity Planning

Only about 12% of certified financial planners are CPAs. Among that select group, Dan Reiter, 31, may be the only one who is also a professional diesel mechanic. Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, Reiter assumed he eventually would join his father’s insurance business, which investigates insurance claims involving heavy equipment and trucks.

In preparation, he worked at a local truck dealer’s service center during high school and during his years as a student at local Park University, which he attended on scholarship. With an eye toward the future, he took management courses and minored in accounting. He soon discovered that while he liked working with numbers, he didn’t want to be an accountant nor, as he came to learn after a few years on the job, being an insurance adjuster.

Independent research led him to discover financial planning, which he realized would be his career, prompting him to earn a master’s degree in planning part-time at Kansas State University. He then joined Prosperity Planning, becoming a principal of the firm in 2018. A champion of the value of planning, Reiter currently serves as an adjunct instructor at his alma mater, where he developed and is teaching courses in retirement planning and tax planning.

Evan Cooper