What started in the family nearly three decades ago, Beth L. Blecker has grown into a thriving, well-established business that helps countless other families secure their financial futures. As chief executive officer of Eastern Planning, Inc., in Nanuet, New York, Ms. Blecker, alongside her son and chief investment officer, Matthew Blecker, oversees the comprehensive financial planning firm that specializes in financial services, wealth management, and tax and estate planning. She also shares her expertise as the author of the critically acclaimed book “It’s Not Just Money, It’s Life,” in which Ms. Blecker advises that “your money should serve you and your goals, not the other way around.”
Ms. Blecker first worked as a corporate accountant with her former husband in their own accounting firm that also offered financial planning services. The couple eventually decided to focus exclusively on financial planning and founded Eastern Planning, Inc., in 1995. After five years, they parted ways personally and professionally, leaving the company to Ms. Blecker to rebuild solo. She counts her most notable achievements as making this transition and redeveloping the firm on her own terms as a woman to make it highly successful and rising to become becoming a top adviser in terms of the number of assets the company manages.
Later, Ms. Blecker’s son joined the company as her business partner after earning his industry credentials and sharing her business philosophy. Together, they take pride in helping people reach their financial goals. Day to day, the duo works with clients and their children by ensuring they can enjoy retirement and pass along their net worth to their heirs as a legacy. While helping clients look to the future is key, a prevailing attitude Ms. Blecker encourages at the firm is to stand with and help clients to navigate and enjoy their lives now. She relishes being able to tell her clients that they can spend money on something that they initially thought they could not afford and will still be financially okay.
Ms. Blecker believes the key to her success is hard work and dedication. She was motivated early in life by her father, who served as her first role model when he was employed in a union print shop and had to fight to stay there. She watched his battles and commitment as he simultaneously served as her cheerleader. In more recent years, her daughter Jacklyn Osborne, a top bank executive, also has been supportive of her mother’s business acumen. Ms. Blecker advises anyone seeking to work in the financial services profession to not let anyone deter them if they think they can do well, move forward, get positive forces behind them, and walk away from the negatives. In the coming years, she foresees continuing to run and grow her and her son’s business while mentoring someone to follow in their footsteps.
Ms. Blecker is certified as an Ed Slott master elite adviser and is a registered financial consultant. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in education from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1975. Today, giving back to her community close to home in Rockland County, New York, she is a member of the Business Council of Westchester, the Rockland Business Women’s Network, and the local chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. Ms. Blecker also sits on the local boards of directors for and volunteers at the Holocaust Museum Center for Tolerance and Education, the food pantry run by People to People, and the Center for Safety & Change. Away from her professional and civic duties, she enjoys spending quality time with her granddaughter Reid and grandsons, Denver, Harrison and Daniel.
