Zach Ungerott, CPWA^®, CFP^®

When Zach Ungerott was growing up, he wanted to be an architect. A family friend was successfully creating beautiful, soaring homes and Zach loved visiting and looking at the angles and the lines and the creation of nothing into something.

He headed to college to pursue that dream and realized fairly quickly his heart was there; his art was not. Drafting and design didn’t come naturally to him, so he needed a new plan.

One thing about Zach: he’s a planner. He loves plans. He plans trips — for his family, for his friends…in another life, he might have been a travel agent. He plans so much in fact sometimes his family reminds him to chill out. But it makes him a natural for the field he’s chosen as a financial planner — taking care of details and planning for contingencies. Here’s one: Zach was on a trip to Italy and Greece with his wife, and couldn’t get to Greece (Plan A), and thanks to some last-minute planning…managed to enjoy a week in Positano (Plan B). While not every contingency is as lovely as Positano, Zach is thrilled he made the move early in his career to move from the brokerage/research side of the business to focus on overall financial planning and helping clients with contingencies.

Zach’s love of the step-by-step nature of building a plan influences one of his favorite pastimes — duck hunting. Zach’s favorite part is the time he has spent training his dogs to help — Remy is a master and a such a good learner at being obedient, at listening, at holding she’s been able to bring her skills to Duo Dogs, an organization in St. Louis provides assistance and touch therapy dogs to those in need. Winnie, Remy’s new little sister, is still in “learning” mode but between his training and Remy’s patience, Zach is optimistic. One of his favorite things to do is to go out with Remy and just sit in a duck blind and patiently watch the process…

Zach’s bucket list includes trips to Southeast Asia, Greece, a photo safari…but for right now he and his wife Lauren are enjoying life with their children, Louise and Wes and their two black labs, Remy and Winnie.