Christian Planning Launches, Redefining Christian Financial Planning Around Fiduciary Advice and Biblical Stewardship
Founded by brothers Jacob and Aaron Puckett, CFP®, the Maryland-based firm argues that when advisor and client share a worldview from the outset, the planning conversation can begin where it usually takes years to arrive.
WESTMINSTER, Md., Aug. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Christian Planning, a fee-based Christian financial services firm serving clients nationally, has launched around a straightforward idea: that a client whose financial advisor already shares his convictions never has to spend the relationship explaining them.
The firm was founded by brothers Jacob Puckett, CFP®, CKA®, and Aaron Puckett, CFP®. Both are CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professionals who act in a fiduciary capacity when providing investment advisory services. Jacob served for years as a pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America before entering financial planning and holds an M.A. from Westminster Theological Seminary. Aaron brings more than two decades of comprehensive financial planning experience. Christian Planning is a division of Puckett Financial Group, an independent firm headquartered in Westminster, Maryland, with securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial.
Nothing to translate
The founders' central observation is that Christians with substantial assets often spend years translating their convictions into terms their advisor can process.
"If you have commitments about money that don't match the industry's defaults, you learn to explain yourself," Jacob Puckett said. "You give away a significant share of your income and it shows up as a line item that needs defending. You don't want to maximize what transfers to your children because you think too much money might harm them. You have no interest in retiring as early as possible because you think work is a good thing and not a sentence to be served. Every one of those becomes a variance you argue for. Most people have had that conversation so many times they've stopped noticing they're having it."
Christian Planning's premise is that the conversation should start on the other side of that.
"When the framework is shared from the first meeting, none of it needs a preamble," Puckett said. "A client can say, 'I'm worried about what this money is going to do to my kids,' or 'we're thinking about giving away a third of this,' and it isn't an eccentricity to be accommodated. It's a normal thing to say in that room. That freedom is worth more than people expect."
Financial decisions carry moral weight
Underneath the firm's approach is a claim about what money is and where it came from.
"The four sentences we work from are simple," Puckett said. "God owns. We steward. Christ redeems. And the Spirit forms. We live inside a story God authored and governs. Everything we hold arrived as a gift. If that's true, then nothing a person does with money is morally weightless. It's all answerable."
He argues that the professional obligation and the theological one point the same direction.
"A fiduciary obligation is a legal way of saying something Scripture said first: when you are handling what belongs to someone else, you are accountable for it," Puckett said. "That is the definition of stewardship. The fiduciary standard governs how we handle a client's assets. The stewardship framework governs how we think about whose they were to begin with. Those two things are not in tension. One is the professional expression of the other."
That conviction, the founders argue, changes what a client should expect from an advisor.
"Think about the decisions people actually face," Puckett said. "How much to give, and to whom. Whether to take the role that pays more and costs your evenings. What to leave your children, and whether more is better for them. When to stop working — or whether to. Whether the risk you're carrying is prudence or presumption. Those aren't arithmetic problems. They're stewardship questions with real financial mechanics attached, and they deserve to be treated as both."
Christian Planning's aim is to be the place where both dimensions are addressed at once.
"For most Christians the money and the conscience live in separate rooms," Puckett said. "The advisor handles the mechanics. The pastor handles the moral weight. Neither one is in the room at the moment the decision actually gets made. What we're offering is counsel that holds both — rigorous planning from someone who takes the stewardship question as seriously as the tax question."
The real conversation is available in the first meeting
The founders say the most immediate effect of shared conviction is how quickly a client is willing to say what is actually on his mind.
"When someone already knows his advisor holds what he holds, he doesn't spend the first year deciding how much to reveal," Puckett said. "He can open with the real thing — the business he's thinking about leaving, the child he's worried about, the amount he's been considering giving away and hasn't told anyone. That's available in the first meeting. And everything after it builds on ground that's already shared, which is why these relationships tend to go somewhere rather than simply continue."
Aaron Puckett, who has practiced financial planning for more than twenty years, said the pace is what stands out to him.
"After two decades you develop a feel for when someone is telling you the whole picture," he said. "What has struck me here is how early it happens. People come in already knowing the ground is shared, so they lead with what matters instead of working up to it."
The framework
Christian Planning's work rests on four convictions the founders state plainly: God owns. We steward. Christ redeems. And the Spirit forms.
That framework is developed at length in Entrusted: A Christian Vision for Money, Work, and the Life God Gives, a twelve-chapter biblical-theological treatment of stewardship by Jacob Puckett, forthcoming.
The firm is deliberate about what it does not claim. Shared conviction between advisor and client does not produce superior investment results, and Christian Planning makes no such claim. What it offers is planning anchored to what the client actually believes, and a relationship in which the questions underneath the financial questions are inside the scope of the work rather than outside it.
Christian Planning serves clients nationally and begins every new relationship with an introductory conversation at no cost. More information is available at christianplanning.com.
About Christian Planning
Christian Planning is a Christian financial services and wealth management firm serving Christian individuals, families, and business owners nationally from offices at 20 Liberty Street, Westminster, Maryland. The firm provides comprehensive, fee-based financial planning — retirement planning, investment management, tax-aware planning, charitable giving strategy, and estate planning coordination — shaped by a historic Christian understanding of biblical stewardship. Its advisors act in a fiduciary capacity when providing investment advisory services. Christian Planning is a division of Puckett Financial Group.
Jacob Puckett, CFP®, CKA® — Founder. Former pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America. B.A., Moody Bible Institute (summa cum laude); M.A., Westminster Theological Seminary (summa cum laude), with completed coursework toward the Th.M. Counseling training through the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation, where he served as a recitation instructor. Author of Entrusted: A Christian Vision for Money, Work, and the Life God Gives (forthcoming).
Aaron Puckett, CFP® — Co-founder. More than twenty years of comprehensive financial planning experience.
Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor. Member FINRA/SIPC.
Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. owns the certification marks CFP® and CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ in the U.S.
No strategy assures success or protects against loss. This release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation or an offer of any specific service.
Puckett Financial Group, Jacob Puckett
CONTACT:
Puckett Financial Group
Westminster, Maryland
SOURCE Puckett Financial Group
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