Our team
Bentley Makkar, MD, ChFC®, EA, Board Certified in Internal Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine and the National Board of Physicians and Surgeons
Principal, Get Rich Slowly LLC, Bellevue, WA
Principal, The Makkar Group of Companies, British Columbia, Canada
Internal Medicine Hospitalist, Washington Permanente Medical Group, Seattle, WA
Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Washington Department of Family Medicine, Seattle, WA
Clinical Faculty, Kaiser Permanente Washington Family Medicine Residency, Seattle, WA
Investing is simple: there are far fewer “dos” than “don’ts”.
I aim to transform the financial and investment services industries by delivering the same exacting standards, objectivity, rationality, professionalism, and uncompromising fiduciary duty to portfolio management, investment advising, financial planning, and tax planning as expected within the scope of medical practice. I offer exceptional knowledge, honesty, transparency, simplicity, value, cost-efficiency, and evidence-based recommendations to my clients to maximize financial well-being and peace of mind.
I am averse to the sales games, conflicts of interest, lack of transparency, excessive marketing, unrealistic expectations, unnecessary complexity, and sleight of hand prevalent within the financial and investment services industries and possess a healthy skepticism of most financial products and advice. I hypothesize that a profound and unserviced market exists for honest financial and investment services, focused exclusively on benefiting clients at fair prices: “Offer a superior service and they will come!” This was my inspiration to found Get Rich Slowly LLC, an independent portfolio management, investment advising, financial planning, and tax planning professional practice. Expect a higher standard from us, a professional standard worthy of your hard earned dollars.
I was encouraged early in my professional medical career by a physician colleague to educate myself about investing and managing my personal finances. The publications of John C. (Jack) Bogle and the “Bogleheads” influenced my understanding of investing and personal finance and advanced my interests in portfolio management, investment advising, financial planning, and tax planning. My personal objective of achieving financial independence progressed to a hobby, to an academic interest and pursuit, to advising others, then to a second professional career in financial and investment services.
In addition to my professional practice in financial and investment services, I am an Internal Medicine physician, certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and the National Board of Physicians and Surgeons (NBPAS). I have been actively practicing hospital medicine since 2014 and continue to care for patients in my full time hospital based medical practice in Seattle, WA. I am also a medical educator and clinical faculty member, overseeing and instructing resident physicians and medical students in the inpatient medical wards. Additionally, I own and operate a group of real estate investment and development corporations, focused on the acquisition and development of raw land.
Outside of my professional interests, I enjoy spending time with my family and friends, reading, physical fitness, listening to Tool (and the many endeavors of Maynard James Keenan), studying and discussing Austrian economics, and exploring nature.
If you believe I can offer value to your circumstances, please contact me to discuss how I may be able to assist you in achieving your personal and financial objectives.
The Chartered Financial Consultant® (ChFC®) professional designation has been conferred since 1982 by The American College of Financial Services (“The College”), founded in 1927, upon individuals meeting the following minimum requirements: a minimum of 6000 hours of financial planning or related professional experience accrued within the preceding 5 years, successful completion of The College’s ChFC® education curriculum (8 required undergraduate-level courses totaling 25 credit hours with an estimated aggregate study time between 560 to 960 hours, assessment by seven proctored closed-book exams totaling 15 hours, submission of a written comprehensive case study, and oral defense before The College’s faculty), compliance at all times with The College’s Code of Ethics and Procedures, and continued participation in The College’s annual Professional Recertification Program (including payment of an annual recertification fee to The College, completion of a minimum of 30 hours of biennial continuing education and 1 hour of ethics continuing education, and annual recommitment to The College’s Code of Ethics). Disciplines of knowledge encompassed within the ChFC® professional designation include: comprehensive personal financial planning and the personal financial planning process, insurance planning and risk management, retirement planning, income tax planning, investments, estate planning and transfer tax planning, education planning, employee benefits planning, and planning for contemporary financial challenges.
Enrolled Agents (EAs) are admitted to practice before the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). EA status is the highest professional designation awarded by the IRS. To attain professional designation as an EA, a practitioner must pass the comprehensive Special Enrollment Examination (SEE), consisting of three proctored closed-book exams administered by the Internal Revenue Service and totaling 10.5 hours. As an alternative to the SEE, certain former employees of the IRS may be granted professional designation as EAs by virtue of their past service to the IRS and technical experience. In addition, a practitioner must obtain a Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN), pay a fee to the IRS, and pass a tax compliance and suitability check. A practitioner must renew status as an EA every third year, necessitating annual renewal of the practitioner’s PTIN, payment of a fee to the IRS, and completion of a minimum of 72 hours of triennial continuing education, including a minimum of 16 hours of annual continuing education (2 hours annually must be ethics continuing education). Disciplines of knowledge encompassed within the EA professional designation include: taxation of individuals, taxation of businesses, representation before the IRS, and IRS practices and procedures.
Our business model
How does Get Rich Slowly LLC generate profits and operate as a business?
Get Rich Slowly LLC operates as a fee-only registered investment adviser (RIA), compensated exclusively from fees billed directly and transparently to our clients. We have no hidden or outside sources of revenues such as sales commissions, payments for order flows, referral compensations, or other product or service sales incentives. This minimizes or eliminates our conflicts of interest and allows us to work exclusively in the best interests of our clients.
We operate as a lean business with minimum costs and overheads. We pass on these savings to our clients in the form of lower fees. Our lower fee structure is intended to improve net investment returns for our clients (you get what you don’t pay for) and increase client satisfaction, client retention, and new referrals.
By utilizing validated and evidence-based passive management strategies, we operate efficiently and profit from client volumes rather than maximizing per-client billing as is generally the practice of other advisory firms. Our business model relies on minimizing the impacts of costs, fees, and taxes on our clients’ hard earned dollars.
We operate an honest, transparent, and ethical advisory business where exceptional knowledge is the only product offered. Our intention is to earn long term client retention and new referral business from free word of mouth advertising by our satisfied clients.
Our privacy practices, security practices, and technology platform
We are fully committed to preserving privacy and confidentiality of client information. This commitment is core to our business model. We do not sell, market, share, or otherwise disclose client information to third parties. Client information may be disclosed to third parties exclusively upon written or verbal authorization from clients for the purposes of coordinating with other professionals (e.g., attorneys, accountants, tax specialists, insurance brokers or agents, or other professionals), to facilitate our efforts in rendering services to our clients, or as otherwise requested by clients (e.g., disclosure to family members assisting clients, as authorized by our clients). We may disclose client information when compelled by law.
We utilize robust security practices to ensure the safety and confidentiality of client information. This includes use of multi-factor authentication with unique high entropy passwords and hardware or software-based security tokens, secure encryption for all telecommunications, HTTPS for all web-based communications, secure encryption for all electronic storage media and devices, physical and electronic security safeguards for all computerized devices (including biometric or password-based authentication for access to locked computerized devices), physical and electronic security safeguards for all computerized networks (including network and device firewalling, network segmentation, authentication and encryption of all wireless network interconnections, and transmission of all data via encrypted tunnels such as WireGuard and MASQUE-based VPNs when utilizing remote networks), physical security safeguards for local physical records, use of hardened and regularly updated Unix and Linux-based local computer systems, and physical shredding for secure document disposal. Additionally, we utilize two way challenge-response authentication using unique high entropy PIN codes transmitted via an established second factor (e.g., email or text message) upon initiation of all unverified telecommunications with our clients.
Our technology platform is designed to minimize local data storage and processing to minimize exposures to physical and electronic security vulnerabilities and threats. Our technology platform is built using secure cloud computing services offered by recognized industry vendors, including:
- The Microsoft Cloud for secure and encrypted telecommunications (including secure virtual meetings via encrypted Microsoft Teams sessions and secure email encryption via Microsoft Purview Message Encryption), electronic data storage, electronic data processing, and appointment scheduling.
- Intuit Inc. for secure cloud-based tax analysis. In certain instances, Intuit Inc. may also be used for secure cloud-based invoicing and payment processing.
- Stripe, Inc. for secure cloud-based payment processing.
- SuiteDash, Inc. for our secure cloud-based client relationship management platform and Client Portal. Our Client Portal facilitates secure cloud-based messaging, file sharing, document sharing, invoicing, electronic data storage, appointment scheduling, and questionnaires.
- Interactive Brokers LLC as our secure custodian broker-dealer platform (please reference Portfolio Management Services).
- PortfolioAnalyst by Interactive Brokers LLC for secure and convenient external financial account aggregation, tracking, reporting, and analysis.
- Microsoft Teams, Signal Messenger, Apple iMessage, and Apple FaceTime for secure and encrypted real time telecommunications.
- BoldSign by Syncfusion for secure cloud-based electronic document signatures (e-signatures).
- Amazon Web Services, Inc. and Google Cloud Platform for multiple secure cloud computing services.