Smith has a flair for demystifying insurance and retirement plans
Tracey Smith, 39, watched her hometown of Austin, Texas grow from a city with small-town vibes to one of America’s fastest-growing metropolises.
“I remember when you could go to the gas station (in Austin) and maybe see somebody you knew,” Smith recalls. “Chattanooga reminds me of Austin 20 years ago.”
Smith, a retirement plan specialist who moved to Chattanooga eight years ago, says she hopes Chattanooga maintains its charm and avoids some of Austin’s growing pains.
She and her banker husband, Scott Smith, have chosen to rear their two-year-old son, Lincoln, here. After years of moving place to place, she says it feels good to be in one spot long enough to become known and to establish a reputation.
“We moved around a lot for my husband’s job,” she says. “It was hard to build your brand, your name, (as we) kept starting over.”
Smith, a relationship manager now at the Trust Company of Tennessee, sells and helps manage retirement plans. Her clients are mostly based in East Tennessee, which is by design.
For years, working for a national financial services company, she was on the road a lot. Then, two years ago, Smith and her husband Scott, adopted their son Lincoln, and her priorities began to change. After a period of traveling with her infant son, she took the job with the Trust Company to cut down on time spent away from home.
A graduate of Texas A&M University with a degree in economics, Smith began her career in with Northwest Mutual, a financial planning and life insurance company. That’s where she learned the basics, and became fluent in the language of Roth IRAs, traditional IRAs, life and disability insurance, and 401Ks.
Later she moved on to Mutual of America, where she stayed for over a decade working in several states, including Texas, California and Tennessee. Her first job title was “participant account representative.”
“My primary job was to visit our group clients and spend time with their employees to understand anything they wanted to know about retirement planning,” she says.
It was the nature of her job to be an advisor to everyone in a plan, from janitors to the C-suite occupants. As such, she learned to simplify her advice (and vocabulary) so all could understand.
“If I was in a group, and talked so CEOs could understand, maybe 5% of the room could get what I was saying,” she explains. “If I can talk where a janitor can understand, then 95% of the room is going to understand.”
For example, Smith developed a cooking metaphor that helped her explained risk tolerance and investment choices. She would ask employees if they liked to cook from scratch or eat prepared meals, as a way of determining if they preferred an active or passive investment style.
“In investing, it’s not right or wrong if you use pre-built portfolios versus building your own,” she says.
Smith’s deep knowledge of strategies comes in handy as she manages and troubleshoots for about 20 retirement plans for companies within a day’s drive of Chattanooga.
Besides her day job, Smith is active in Chattanooga as a volunteer. She is on the board of the Chattanooga Food Bank and Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Chattanooga.
“I grew up with a deep understanding that we need to give back to the community,” she says.
Tracey Smith
* Job: Relationship manager, The Trust Company of Tennessee
* Age: 39
* Hometown: Austin, Texas
* College: Texas A&M University, majored in economics
* Family: Husband, Scott; son, Lincoln