Why Dovetail Financial Exists
Your life and financial resources affect one another. A shift in your circumstances can change the questions that need attention and the financial steps that follow.
Dovetail Financial provides ongoing retirement planning and investment management for people nearing retirement or already retired. Our mission is to help reduce financial worry and support the life each client wants to live.
Human-First Financial Guidance® begins with understanding you and the life you want your money to support. Your advisor connects that understanding with financial analysis, clear recommendations, and help carrying out your decisions. Guidance continues as life brings changes and new decisions.
How Does the Relationship Keep Life and Wealth Connected?
Your primary advisor gets to know you and leads the planning relationship. The broader Dovetail team supports your advisor and helps coordinate the financial steps.
Who Does Dovetail Serve?
Dovetail primarily serves people planning to retire within the next five years or already living in retirement. We often work with married couples and single women, including widows, who want retirement planning and investment management within one ongoing relationship. These are the people we most often serve; whether Dovetail is a good fit for you depends on your circumstances and the help you want.
Clients often want one advisor who knows their circumstances and can connect multiple areas of the financial work. Some are preparing for a transition. Others face new decisions or want to revisit earlier choices. We begin with what brought you to the conversation.
Dovetail is headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, serving Southeastern North Carolina, including New Hanover and Brunswick counties. We also have an office in Duluth, Georgia, and work virtually with clients across the country.
Who Founded and Leads Dovetail?
Ross Marino, CFP®, CeFT®, founded Dovetail Financial and serves as its CEO. He created Human-First Financial Guidance® through more than 30 years as a financial planner, educator, and author.
Ross taught Retirement Planning and Employee Benefits in the CFP® curriculum at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He also co-authored Shaping Change: How to Respond When Life Disrupts Your Retirement Plan.[1]
How Do Other Professionals Fit Into the Work?
Financial decisions may also involve tax filings, estate documents, or insurance coverage. Dovetail may coordinate with your other professionals while keeping each person’s role clear. Your accountant, attorney, insurance professional, and Dovetail advisor remain responsible for guidance within their own roles.
With your permission, Dovetail may share relevant financial facts with those professionals. We limit the information shared to what is needed for that work.
What Should You Expect From the Advisory Relationship?
Dovetail’s advisors are paid through advisory fees. Dovetail does not pay its advisors commissions for investment or insurance product sales. Dovetail Financial Group LLC is a registered investment adviser.[2]
Your advisor explains the recommendation, the reasons behind it, and the important tradeoffs and uncertainties. If a choice could put something important to you at risk, we say so. You have room to ask questions, correct our understanding, and disagree. Dovetail helps carry out the financial steps you select.
The relationship includes ongoing retirement planning and investment management. Your advisor monitors the plan, revisits affected recommendations, and helps with new decisions as circumstances change.
Dovetail Financial Recognition
Dovetail Financial was named a 2025 ThinkAdvisor LUMINARIES finalist for the Firm Award for Thought Leadership and Education among RIAs with less than $10 billion in AUM/AUA.[3]
Recognition Disclosure
ThinkAdvisor LUMINARIES. The annual program evaluates qualitative and quantitative evidence of accomplishments described in nomination materials. ThinkAdvisor’s editorial staff and Luminaries advisory board select finalists, and independent industry judges select winners. The program materials available for the 2021 through 2026 recognitions do not state a more specific calendar lookback. Nominations were free. Ross Marino and Dovetail Financial, including when the firm operated as Transitus Wealth Partners, paid no direct or indirect compensation to enter or obtain these recognitions.
Notes
1. “Ross Marino,” Simon & Schuster.
2. “Dovetail Financial Group LLC,” Investment Adviser Public Disclosure, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a particular level of skill or training.
3. “2025 Luminaries Finalists,” ThinkAdvisor.
Could Dovetail Be a Good Fit?
An introductory call is a chance to explain what prompted you to reach out and what you want help thinking through. Bryant Lester, CFP®, leads these conversations. If it makes sense to continue, Bryant will introduce you to Ross or another Dovetail advisor who may become your primary advisor.
