About Dean Barber

Dean Bar­ber, founder and pres­i­dent of Bar­ber Finan­cial Group, began his career in the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try on one of the bleak­est days in recent his­tory, Octo­ber 19, 1987, Black Mon­day. It didn’t take him long to real­ize that the answer doesn’t lay in how much money a per­son makes; it’s in how much they keep. He has built one of Kansas City’s pre­mier finan­cial man­age­ment firms, spe­cial­iz­ing in assist­ing retirees, pre-retirees and busi­ness own­ers in build­ing and pre­serv­ing their wealth through the con­cepts of asset man­age­ment, tax strate­gies and estate planning.

Dean Bar­ber with Ed Slott

“I believe the num­ber one erod­ing fac­tor in a person’s estate is tax­a­tion,” said Bar­ber. “In my opin­ion prop­erly con­trolled tax strate­gies and income dis­tri­b­u­tions are more impor­tant than asset allo­ca­tion. It’s about preser­va­tion first and growth second.”

Dean has become a nation­ally known author­ity on finan­cial plan­ning and advice. Since 2003, he has hosted a nation­ally syn­di­cated radio pro­gram, America’s Wealth Man­age­ment Show. He has been a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor for many pub­li­ca­tions and broad­casts for news pro­grams, such as the Wall Street Jour­nal, Fox Busi­ness News, CNBC, Bankrate.com, Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Times, U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, Small Busi­ness CEO Mag­a­zine, New York Times.com, Invest­ment News.com, Busi­ness­Week, Portfolio.com, Kansas City Busi­ness Jour­nal, KMBC-9TV and  KSHB-41TV. His weekly radio pro­gram fea­tures guests like econ­o­mist Harry Dent and Ed Slott, the CPA often quoted by the Wall Street Jour­nal. He has also lec­tured and pre­sented to key employ­ees for sev­eral For­tune 500 corporations.

Dean and his fam­ily have called Kansas City home for more than 20 years. He con­sid­ers his Mid­west upbring­ing an asset in work­ing with his clients. “Liv­ing in America’s heart­land means I can cre­ate a bond with each client as I help them with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the advan­tages I might find in a larger city. It’s impor­tant to build solid rela­tion­ships because it isn’t about sell­ing a cus­tomer a prod­uct. It’s about help­ing them find solu­tions for achiev­ing their dreams. I had a vision for a far bet­ter model for retire­ment plan­ning, where our ser­vice con­tin­ues to our pri­mary clients’ heirs. We’re already serv­ing many sec­ond gen­er­a­tion clients.”