Financial Advisor for CRNAs in Greenville, SC
You’ve spent decades caring for patients. Now it’s time to build a plan that takes care of you. We help nurse practitioners lower their tax bill, invest smarter, and retire on their terms.
Financial Advisor, 2025
No commissions. Ever.
Brett Fellows, 20+ Years
You've Earned This
High Earnings Alone Don't Create Financial Clarity
CRNAs working in and around Greenville typically bring home $190,000 to $220,000 a year. By most measures, that puts you among the highest earners in healthcare. But income alone doesn’t solve the financial complexity that comes with your career, and that’s where most advisors come up short.
Your pre-tax retirement accounts keep growing, but so does the tax liability inside them. Your income sits at the top of the federal brackets. If you’re splitting time between an employed hospital position and independent locum work, you’re working through two completely different financial rulebooks at once. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you’ve likely been wondering how much runway you actually have before you can step away from the OR for good.
At Oak Capital Advisors, our entire practice is built around helping CRNAs reach financial independence. We’re a South Carolina firm, and we’ve designed our planning process around the exact challenges that come with a career in anesthesia, not a generic framework that gets adapted to fit.
“I’ve been maxing my retirement accounts for years. Is there anything I’m missing?””What happens to my 403(b) when I actually stop working?””I make good money, but I feel like I should be further along. What gives?””Is there a financial planner who actually understands what it means to be a CRNA?”
If you’ve asked yourself any version of those questions, this is the right starting point.
“I feel like I’ve saved a lot, but I honestly don’t know if it’s enough to retire when I want to.”
“My 403(b) is my biggest asset. I have no idea how to think about taxes once I start pulling from it.”
“I’ve been working for 25 years. I want to know there’s actually a finish line in sight.”
“Can someone build a plan around my situation specifically, not just tell me to max out my 401(k)?”
If those questions sound familiar, you’re in the right place.
What We See Every Day
The Financial Gaps Most CRNAs Don't Know They Have
We’ve worked with CRNAs long enough to see the same problems appear across different hospitals, different states, and different income levels. Left unaddressed, they can quietly cost you six figures or more.
Pre-Tax Accounts That Create a Retirement Tax Problem
Most CRNAs have built up large 403(b) or 457(b) balances. The problem is that every withdrawal from those accounts gets taxed as ordinary income. At scale, this can generate required minimum distributions that push retirees into high brackets well past the point where they expected taxes to ease up.
The “Am I Done?” Question
Nurse anesthetists work in a high-stakes, high-demand environment. Many reach their early 50s physically and emotionally drained, and unsure whether their savings are actually enough to support stopping. We specialize in helping CRNAs get a real, numbers-based answer to that question rather than a rough guess.
IRMAA: Medicare’s Surcharge for High Earners
If your income stays high through your working years, IRMAA can add a surcharge to your Medicare premiums in retirement. This isn’t well-known, and it surprises a lot of CRNAs. Early planning gives you meaningful options for reducing or avoiding it.
The W-2 and 1099 Coordination Problem
Running hospital employment alongside locum shifts creates real complexity around retirement contributions, self-employment taxes, and deductions. Most financial advisors are comfortable handling one or the other, not both together. Getting them coordinated correctly can make a real difference in your tax bill.
Retirement Without a Drawdown Plan
Building up assets over a career is hard enough. Knowing how to convert those assets into income, without pushing yourself into a higher tax bracket year after year, is a separate discipline entirely. Most CRNAs arrive at retirement without a plan for which accounts to use, and in what sequence.
Social Security: More at Stake for High Earners
The rules around Social Security timing interact differently with a CRNA’s benefit level compared to average earners. Getting the claiming decision right, especially when you’re married or planning to retire early, can be worth well over $100,000 across a retirement. It’s not a decision to make without running the numbers first.
What We Do Together
A Financial Plan That Fits the Life You've Actually Built
Every CRNA walks in with a different combination of accounts, income sources, goals, and timelines. We build from your specifics, not a template.
Roth Conversion Planning
We map out which years make sense for moving pre-tax money to Roth, reducing the total taxes you’ll pay over your lifetime and building a tax-free pool of assets you can draw on in retirement.
Retirement Income Strategy
We design an income strategy for retirement that sequences your withdrawals from different account types in an order that keeps taxes low and maximizes the life of your assets.
Tax Planning
Real tax planning happens year-round, not once a year in April. We stay inside your numbers throughout the year and look for opportunities that only show up if you’re paying attention in real time.
Investment Management
Your portfolio is built on evidence and aligned with your goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance. We don’t chase trends or sell products. We manage for outcomes.
Social Security Optimization
We model out Social Security scenarios specific to your situation so you can make this decision knowing the full picture, not just a general rule of thumb.
Estate and Legacy Planning
We partner with your estate attorney to ensure your assets move to the right beneficiaries in the most efficient way possible, with as little exposure to taxes and delays as possible.
How It Works
Getting Started Is Simpler Than You Think
We don’t believe in pressure. We believe in fit. Our process is designed to give you a clear picture of how we can help before you make any commitment
1
Schedule Your Introductory Call
Think of it like your Pre-Op Assessment. Share your plans and your current challenges. We’ll talk about our process and see if we’re a good fit for working together.
You’ll see, at a high level, how our firm can improve your finances and help you build, grow, and preserve your wealth. To learn more about what to expect, check out our full discovery process.
2
Take a Time-Out
We’re looking for a long-term relationship, not a quick transaction. After your call, take the time you need to decide if working together makes sense. If we aren’t the right fit, we’ll do our best to point you toward someone who is.
3
Induction of Ongoing Advice
Once you decide to move forward, we get to work. We gather a full picture of your finances, build your personalized plan, and become your ongoing financial partner. You delegate the complexity. We handle it.
Why Oak Capital Advisors
What Makes Us Different for CRNAs
Most financial advisors serve everyone. We’ve built our practice around the specific financial planning needs of nurses and advanced practice providers. That focus changes the quality of advice you receive.
Built Specifically for CRNA Financial Planning
We haven’t adapted a general practice to serve CRNAs. We built around CRNAs from the start. The tax scenarios, the account structures, the burnout timelines, we’ve seen them all and planned around them for years.
Fee-Only and Fiduciary
We charge clients directly and earn nothing from product sales or referrals. That structure puts our interests exactly where they belong: on your outcomes.
Wealthtender Voice of the Client™ Award
In 2025, Brett Fellows was named a Wealthtender Highly Rated Advisor, recognizing advisors who consistently earn superior client reviews with an average rating of 4.75 or higher.
South Carolina Roots. National Reach.
We’re based on Mt. Pleasant We know the local healthcare employers, the cost of living, and the retirement landscape here in the Lowcountry. That context matters when building your plan.
20+ Years of Experience
Brett Fellows has been a practicing financial planner since 2005. The range of situations he’s handled, market downturns, tax law changes, early retirements, late starts, maps closely to what CRNAs face.
CFP® Certified
The CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ credential requires thousands of hours of education, experience, and ongoing development. About 1 in 4 advisors holds it. Brett does.
Common Questions
What CRNAs in Greenville Ask Us Most
There’s no universal answer. It depends on your spending in retirement, your planned retirement date, your Social Security benefit, and your account mix. As a rough frame, CRNAs looking at a comfortable retirement without dramatically cutting lifestyle often need $1.5M to $2.5M in investable assets. The real answer comes from building a plan around your specific numbers.
A large 403(b) is a great asset and a future tax liability at the same time. Required minimum distributions starting in your early 70s can generate taxable income that pushes you back into the brackets you thought you’d left behind. Roth conversions in the years between retirement and Social Security are often the most effective way to manage this, but how much to convert each year depends on your full tax picture. We model this for each client.
More than most people realize. The 1099 income from locum work may open up a Solo 401(k) that lets you contribute beyond your hospital plan’s limits. But the two income streams also create interaction effects around taxes and contribution limits that need to be coordinated carefully. This is a common situation for CRNAs, and one we handle regularly.
A commission-based advisor gets paid when they recommend certain products, annuities, insurance policies, specific funds. That financial relationship creates an incentive structure that doesn’t necessarily align with your best interest. A fee-only fiduciary gets paid by you and only you, and is legally required to act in your best interest. That distinction matters when you’re making decisions with long-term consequences.
We answer this question for CRNAs regularly. The analysis we build covers your current assets, your projected expenses, your Social Security options, your account types, and your tax picture. Once we’ve worked through that, you’ll know where you actually stand, not just whether you ‘probably have enough.’
Yes. We work with CRNAs across the country by phone and Zoom. Clients in the Greenville area can also meet us in person at our Mt. Pleasant office.
Take the guess-work out of your financial future.
Start with a free 30-minute call. We’ll talk through your situation, answer your questions, and show you how we can help. No pressure. No obligation.
Oak Capital Advisors
126 Seven Farms Drive Suite 160,
Charleston, SC 29492 • (843) 284-0798
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