Uncommon Sense: Fred Dunbar Retires from His Financial Planning Company at 68…Just as He Planned

Fred Dunbar celebrated the sale of his company with a round of golf and a hole-in-one.

Readers recognize Fred Dunbar as the lively voice behind this publication’s “Financially Speaking” column since the early 1990s. His clients know him as the knowledgeable force behind the financial planning company Common Cents Planning in Glen Mills, Pa.

The part-time Sea Isle City resident will continue to write his Seven Mile Times and Sea Isle Times columns, though from a slightly different perspective. After 38-plus years operating his company, Dunbar retired from the thriving business that he first built as Dunbar & Associates, Inc. in 1985 and cleverly renamed Common Cents Planning in 1997.

Five years ago, Dunbar decided that he would retire on June 20, 2023 at age 68. And, he let his clients know that plan even though many thought that their energetic adviser would not retire.

“Nobody has a guarantee how long he’ll be around!” the retiree says.

“My new office is The Shore Club,” Dunbar quips cheerfully as he sits at an empty desk surrounded by bare, diploma-less walls in his old office within Common Cents Planning’s headquarters in mid-July. Meanwhile, the business of serving and educating Common Cents’ clients continues to buzz in the reception area and the other offices within the building.

All of Fred’s staffers remain working at Common Cents Planning. Two of them, William Muller and Matthew Ellis, are now the company’s owners. Their former boss has full faith in their capabilities and commitment to company standards. Both are longtime employees. “Bill has been with us for 18 years and Matt for nine years,” Dunbar says. “Both came from Vanguard.”

That ideal outcome for the company might have gone differently. From 2020 to 2023, Fred had 12 offers from larger companies hoping to purchase Common Cents Planning, which manages $400 million.

“I chose not to sell to them,” Dunbar says. “Every one of my clients, I either like or love. I worried about my staff. I wanted to be sure that they would all be OK.”

When his clients became anxious about how their financial lives would be affected by Dunbar’s retirement, he assured them by saying, “If I die tomorrow, Bill and Matt will be managing my wife’s money.” On another occasion, when Fred explained some personal finance matters to Dee, his wife of 41 years, “Dee said, ‘I will just go to Bill and Matt,’” he adds.

Dunbar’s family

Fred Dunbar celebrating with five of his eight brothers.

“You hire really smart people, they make you look better!” Dunbar says with a smile.

So how will he fill his days after working 60-hour weeks for so many years?

“I will get up and read The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times as I did every morning” before retirement, he says. “And, I will keep my license with Commonwealth Financial Network in order to represent [the financial interests of] my family members.”

In addition to time spent with their children, grandchildren and their siblings and their families, he and Dee will have more time for shared and separate interests, Dunbar says.

Since they each played the piano as children, the couple recently purchased a keyboard to add live music to their retirement years. He will have more golf time in South Jersey and Naples, Fla., where the Dunbars have a home. Come football season, he will continue to cheer for his beloved Penn State Nittany Lions. Dee, a retired special education teacher, comforts the dying and their loved ones as a volunteer with a hospice program, he says. His spouse also volunteers and serves as an eco-tour guide for the Sea Isle City Beachcombers.

“If you’ve been fortunate in life, you have to give back,” he says.

The accomplished businessman further notes his gratitude to successful business owners who gave back by giving him good advice when he was on his way up in business.

One businessman in particular, the late Paul Gallagher, who founded Gallagher Real Estate that eventually became Century 21 Gallagher in Havertown, Pa., came to mind. “I can still see him, cigarette in mouth and feet up on the desk,” Dunbar says of the man he also knew and respected as a former teacher and basketball coach at Monsignor Bonner High School in Upper Darby, Pa. On the subject of the risk involved in opening one’s own business, “Paul said, ‘If it fails, you just go back to working for somebody else,’” he recalls.

Dunbar spread that type of encouragement around in more official ways by writing the curriculum and teaching four-week courses on financial planning for the small-business owner at Penn State Brandywine, Penn State Abington, and Delaware County Community College, all in conjunction with the Small Business Administration. He also served as a member of the Penn State Brandywine Advisory Board.

When people tell Dunbar that he’s lucky in regard to his financial success, “I say, ‘The harder I worked, the luckier I became,’” says the personification of a powerful work ethic.

Current and previous staff of Common Cents

The retiree reminisces about his first job selling 50/50 tickets and Christmas cards as a student at St. Andrew School in Drexel Hill, Pa. The greeting card company representative contacted him to let him know that he could also sell birthday cards, which he did.

Working 24 to 32 hours a week at State College’s A&P supermarket while he was a student at Penn State was another of Dunbar’s memorable jobs, he says. Most importantly, it kept him out of trouble, he notes mischievously. “If not there, I would have been partying, not studying,” says the man who, thereafter as a businessperson, did not imbibe during the days when plenty of business was conducted over liquid lunches under clouds of cigarette smoke.

Taking care of business today is different in other ways, too.

Dunbar laments an overabundance of help-wanted signs that he notices at times and that able-bodied young people are not filling those jobs, he says.Not only that, it often surprised the business owner when he returned a client’s phone call and the client sincerely said, “Thank you for returning my call,” he adds, mystified. “We’re in the service business!” he declares.

“I’m starting to sound like my dad!” Dunbar jokes. His beloved father, Phil, worked at Common Cents for 18 years after retiring from working 40 years at Prudential Financial.

All of that being said, “I feel blessed to come up in the era that we did,” Dunbar asserts.

He also remains optimistic about the future of the American Dream as he talks about meeting a kindred spirit in Florida. The young man was an immigrant and a U.S. citizen of seven years who owned a small landscaping business and employed 10 people.

When he asked the fellow what he loved most about being an American, the small-business owner replied, “The ability to work as much as I want,” Dunbar says with delight.