About

Financial North Partners

A boutique wealth management and financial planning firm in Stevenson Ranch, serving client families nationwide from the Santa Clarita Valley. Most are Californians or former Californians approaching retirement or recently through it.

I started this firm because I kept watching the same thing happen. Someone would arrive with a portfolio that had been managed competently for years, and a set of tax decisions that nobody had looked at. Not because their previous advisor was careless, but because those decisions sit between the investment work and the tax return, and it is nobody's job by default. It became mine.

What that looks like in practice is less exciting than it sounds. I spend a lot of time reading tax returns. I build income projections that run fifteen years out and revise them every year because something always changes. I talk to CPAs and estate attorneys more than I talk about markets. Most of the value I add happens in September and October, when there is still time to do something about the year.

I keep the firm to about forty families. That is a deliberate number, not a stage on the way to something larger. It is enough to run a real firm and few enough that I know what is going on in each household without looking it up. If that sounds like a limitation, it is. It is also the reason I can do the kind of work described on this site.

Team

The people you will work with

Carl Ermelbauer

Investment Advisor and Managing Partner

Carl Ermelbauer is the founder and Managing Partner of Financial North Partners. He is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional and an Accredited Investment Fiduciary®, and he leads the firm's planning work, with particular focus on California tax treatment, Roth conversion strategy, and the planning that surrounds a move out of state.

Carl began his career at Ameriprise, where he prepared financial plans for an advisor's clients and earned his CFP® certification. In 2018 he joined American Financial Network Advisory Services, where he led the financial planning team, and stayed on as a Wealth Advisor when WealthSource Partners acquired the firm in 2019. He earned the AIF® designation that same year and founded Financial North Partners in October 2023.

Originally from the Rocky Mountains, Carl is a graduate of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and now lives in the Santa Clarita Valley with his wife, Jeana. Outside the firm he spends most of his time on financial literacy and children's education in the community, which he came to through JCI and has stayed with since.

CFP®, AIF®

Community involvement

President, Santa Clarita LEAP Children's Museum
JCI Santa Clarita, chair of Get Real: Adulting 101

Steven Levin

Registered Support Manager

Steven Levin handles operations and client service at Financial North Partners, and has worked in the industry since 1999.

Steven began his career as an Assistant Specialist for Pershing on the floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange. He has since held roles as a Chief Compliance Officer, Portfolio Analyst, and Client Relationship Manager, and was most recently a Registered Associate at WealthSource Partners before joining Financial North Partners in October 2023. He holds an MBA from Pepperdine University and a bachelor's degree in sociology from Tulane University.

Outside the office, Steven spends his time hiking the mountains around Los Angeles, swimming, surfing, and biking.

MBA

NewEdge Advisors

Independent judgment, institutional support

Financial North Partners operates much like a private practice within a larger hospital system. We make decisions independently for our clients, while NewEdge Advisors provides the institutional infrastructure behind the practice.

The practical effect is that the decisions stay here. We choose the investments, we build the plans, and we decide how we work with you. What sits behind us is the part nobody wants their advisor building from scratch: compliance oversight, trading infrastructure, research, and a legal and operations team larger than most independent firms could support on their own.

Credentials

Professional designations

CFP®AIF®

Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Center for Financial Planning, Inc. owns and licenses the certification marks CFP®, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER®, and CFP® (with plaque design) in the United States to Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc., which authorizes individuals who successfully complete the organization’s initial and ongoing certification requirements to use the certification marks.

Fi360, a Broadridge company, owns the certification mark AIF® and authorizes its use by individuals who successfully complete initial and ongoing designation requirements. The AIF® certification is voluntary. No federal or state law or regulation requires a person serving as an investment fiduciary to hold it.

Talk to us directly

There are two of us, so whoever you speak with is the person who will do the work. The first meeting is scheduled for twenty minutes and there is nothing to prepare.

Schedule an Intro Meeting