Star Profile
Cheryl Holland of Abacus Planning Group
By John Temple Ligon
Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Cheryl Holland and her firm, Abacus, manage about $340,000,000 in assets primarily for individuals. A Certified Financial Planner, Holland began on a different footing in a different place.

Born in La Jolla, Calif., while her father was in the Navy, Holland and her family moved to Irmo when she was 10. Her father moved out of the Navy and into the Westinghouse Nuclear Division, where he retired about three years ago. Her mother retired recently as the school librarian at BC Grammar 1.

Holland was editor of the Irmo High School Yellow Jacket . She graduated as one of the class intellectuals, a recognized status that led her to gain acceptance at Bryn Mawr College, one of the Seven Sisters. Unlike some of the Seven, Bryn Mawr is still all-female. Holland is on the college's board of trustees, and she serves as chair of its investment committee for the endowment.

Having majored in economics, Holland put her studies in the dismal science to work at Merrill Lynch for two years in Mobile, Ala. She also worked as a paralegal with a Florida law firm.

She returned to Columbia in 1990 to join J. E. Wilson Advisors, a fee-only financial planning firm somewhat similar to Holland's own Abacus. She started Abacus in 1998 with her client services manager, Barbara Griffin.

Holland has put her 11 people at Abacus into three teams: investment, client service, and financial planning. For every client there is a customized plan, which is continuously monitored and reviewed. Plan-building services include goal setting, financial independence planning, education funding, investment management, income tax review and planning, estate planning , and cash flow management. The customized plan can take up to a year to put together, but it is a year in a decision-free zone for the client. Very little happens until both the client and the client's plan are ready.

Holland's fee structure is two-fold: a flat fee and a figure following assets under management. If an Abacus client leaves $3 million in

their hands, the firm's fee is likely to come to about $25,000 per year of management, or a little less than 1% of the $3 million. With descriptive terms like "holistic" and "consultative" combined with her fee-only services, Holland's operation is the only one of its kind in the Midlands.

Holland and her architect husband, Doug Quackenbush, have one daughter, Hannah, who is 11 and a student at Hand. They share with Hannah two dogs and two Siberian hamsters. The two also share teaching duties at the fourth and fifth grades in Sunday school at Shandon Presbyterian. But during the workday, it's Holland's job to preserve capital and generate new wealth for her clients, every day.

The way to get rich, according to Holland, is to make investment decisions and to wait, all the while selling personal talent and time for the highest price.

Cheryl Holland Photo by John Temple Ligon