Starkville's Lynn Phillips-Gaines, a certified financial planner at Phillips Financial, was recently named among some of the most influential peers in her field by two notable publications.
Phillips-Gaines found her way onto both Forbes 2017 list of America's Top 200 Women Wealth Advisers and Barron's 2017 list of the Top 1,200 Advisers.
Phillips Financial is an independent firm in Starkville and is a financial adviser with Raymond James, a financial services firm that supports independent financial advisers.
Being a financial planner, Phillips-Gaines proposes detailed financial planning, wealth management and investment management to her clients. She also specializes in retirement income, education planning, long-term care insurance, PERS, and business planning and exit strategies.
This year marks the third consecutive year for Phillips-Gaines to be on Barron's list of The Top 1,200 Advisers in the country. Published by Dow Jones & Co., Barron's is a weekly financial newspaper and its Top 1,200 Advisers list is the largest detailed annual adviser list it circulates.
Phillips-Gaines told the SDN how shocked she was to discover she had made Barron's list for the third year in a row and after 35 years she made it on Forbes list.
"I was pretty shocked to make them both in the same week," Phillips-Gaines said. "It only took me 35 years."
Phillips-Gaines pointed out both lists didn't fully focus on the volume of business she does. Rather, they acknowledge the quality of her work.
"What (Forbes and Barron's) were looking at was the quality of your work and how well you actually deliver financial planning and all the other things that you do which to me just meant the world," Phillips-Gaines said.
For Forbes 2017 list, Phillips-Gaines is among the Top 200 Women Wealth Advisers who controlled a combined $200 billion on behalf of their clients. She was selected out of 4,000 that were researched to receive the honor.
A partnering research company, SHOOK Research set thresholds for those having the opportunity to qualify because of the overwhelming amount of nominations for the list.
Phillips-Gaines was invited to attend Barron's Top Independent Women Advisers Summit this week.