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Stepping Stone Wealth

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West Hartford, CT
Stepping Stone Wealth

Stepping Stone Wealth, a Private Wealth Advisory Practice of Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC

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07/16/2026

Most women leave their financial advisor within a year of losing a spouse.
The reason is not performance. It is not fees. It is that the advisor spent years directing the conversation toward the husband, and when he was gone, she had no relationship to stay for.
I built my practice specifically to prevent that outcome. Every meeting at Stepping Stone Wealth is designed so that both spouses are fully heard, both understand the plan, and both can articulate the strategy without translating it through the other.
The woman in that room will likely outlive her husband by six years on average. She needs to understand her financial life before she is navigating it alone.
That is not a feature of how we work. It is the foundation.

07/09/2026

Someone called me in early 2025 to tell me I had been named a Forbes Best-in-State Wealth Advisor for the seventh consecutive year.
I thanked them and sat with it for a moment.
I am proud of the recognition. I also know exactly what it measures and what it does not. It measures consistency, client retention, years of experience, compliance record, and assets under management. Those are real things and they matter.
What it does not measure is whether I was present for the client who called at 9 PM because she had just found out her husband wanted a divorce. Whether I sat with the woman who needed to understand what her financial picture looked like if the worst happened. Whether I told the truth to the client who did not want to hear it.
Those moments do not appear in a ranking. They are the actual work, and the ranking exists because of them, not the other way around.
I put the Forbes recognition on my profile because it gives people a verifiable reason to take the first meeting. What happens in that meeting is what I actually care about.

steppingstonewealth.com

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07/07/2026

People ask me why I have stayed with Ameriprise for 29 years.
I have not stayed. I have chosen to stay, repeatedly, every year, with full knowledge of what the alternatives look like.
I could leave. Any affiliated advisor could. The question is whether what you give up is worth what you get. What I get from Ameriprise is a compliance infrastructure, a technology platform, and an institutional reputation that would take me decades to build on my own. What I give is a percentage of my revenue and the Ameriprise name on my door alongside my own.
That is a franchise relationship. Not a captive one.
The advisors I have watched struggle inside large firms are almost always the ones who think of themselves as employees. I have never thought of myself that way. I am a business owner who chose her platform deliberately and keeps choosing it, and that distinction matters more than most people realize.

07/03/2026

Happy July 4th from Stepping Stone Wealth and Wilson!

07/02/2026

Someone else named this practice.
I was in a room with peers throwing out ideas and nothing was landing. Then a friend turned and said two words: Stepping Stone.
I knew immediately it was right, not because it sounded good, but because it described exactly what I wanted to be. The leader who gets out ahead and lays the path. The person who forges the way through uncertain terrain so the person behind her knows where to step.
The building you see here is almost 100 years old. I bought it at the end of 2024 because I wanted a physical symbol of what we are building.
Stepping Stone Wealth is not built to last while I am here. It is built to outlast me, and that is the standard I hold myself to every day.

06/30/2026

Before I became a financial advisor, I was an actuarial consultant.
Six years at Aetna, pricing risk in property and casualty. Building reserve models. Calculating the probability of outcomes that most people never want to think about: fire, flood, liability, and the financial cost of a life going sideways.
I was good at it.
I was also lonely in it. The analytics were exact and the people were absent, and I spent years doing precise work about human situations I never got to sit inside.
When I left to become an advisor, I did not leave the actuarial thinking behind. Every plan I build is still a probability model. Every recommendation accounts for the range of outcomes, not just the one everyone is hoping for.
What changed is that now I sit across from the person the model is about. I can see her face when I explain what the numbers mean. I can watch her decide what kind of life she wants to build from them.
That is the part actuarial work never had.

06/25/2026

There is a conversation that needs to happen in thousands of families right now and almost nobody is having it.
The aging parent does not want to seem like they are losing control. The adult child does not want to seem like they are after the money. So everyone tips around the financial picture at holidays and in the car on the way home from the doctor, and nobody says the thing.
I have become the person who names it out loud.
When I put the actual numbers on the table — what exists, what the plan is, what happens when one parent is gone — the secrecy lifts. The worry does not disappear. But that is usually where the real planning can start.

06/23/2026

Women ask me about my life in a way male clients almost never do. My kids. My partner. How I am doing.
It used to surprise me.
It is not small talk. They are evaluating whether this is a real relationship or a transaction with professional packaging. They have been in enough of the second kind to know the difference immediately.
What they want is someone who coordinates with their other professionals, who knows their whole picture, who updates them without being managed. Not someone who manages money. Someone who shows up for their life.
That is the job I do.

06/18/2026

When my children were six and eight, I went through a divorce. Financial obligations running in every direction at once, and I could not see how it was all going to work.
I was overwhelmed and I was afraid. I knew one thing with certainty.
If I stopped moving, nothing would be okay. That was the guarantee. Not that it would work out if I kept going. Just that it would definitely not work out if I stopped.
I built this practice out of the other side of that. I work with women in transition because I know what it feels like to be sitting across from a future that looks nothing like the one you planned for. The starting point is the same every time: I did not stop, and neither do they.

06/17/2026

The hardest client situation I navigate is a contentious divorce with significant assets.
Not because of the financial complexity. Because I care about both of them, and I have worked with both of them for years. I know who calls when they are worried and who goes quiet when something is wrong. I know whose idea it was to retire early and whose idea it was to stay in the house.
When a marriage ends, I do not take sides. I make sure both people have access to the information they need. I offer both the opportunity to work with other professionals if that is a better fit. When the situation requires it, I bring in a divorce financial planning specialist to work alongside us.
I have had clients tell me they were surprised I did not simply protect the higher-net-worth spouse and move on. That is not how I think about it. My job is to make sure the people who trusted me are taken care of, both of them, even when the situation is painful. My responsibility is to help ensure both individuals continue to receive clear information and thoughtful guidance during a difficult transition.

www.ameripriseadvisors.com/team/stepping-stone-wealth/

Address

8 Lowell Road
West Hartford, CT
06119

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Website

http://www.steppingstonewealth.com/

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