About Us

Our Story

Southern Capital’s founder, Terry Nager, began his career in the securities brokerage and insurance industries. He wanted to help others solve their financial problems by providing the quality of service to others that he would want for himself. As he grew in his financial knowledge, Terry founded his comprehensive financial planning firm in 1982. The firm was involved in helping others with estate and tax planning, as well as investment planning. The advantage of this approach was one-stop shopping for the clients. The disadvantage was that it was hard to maintain expertise in each of the disciplines of financial planning.

By 1990, Terry realized that his clients primarily wanted help managing their investment portfolios. At that point, he gave up his brokerage license and started a fee-only advisory service (see below for the critical differences between an advisor and a broker). He took on David Lindsey as a business partner, who was also a Certified Financial Planner and at the time was teaching business courses at the University of South Alabama. Together they hired Dutch Coppejans and Sam Bugg to help with marketing efforts.

Most of the clients in those early days were those retiring from the workplace and rolling over their retirement plans into Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). Later in the decade, Terry realized that his investment approach for individuals also worked for businesses, so he developed the ability to manage 401(k) and other types of retirement plans.

By 2000, Sam had retired, and Dutch was about to, so Terry hired his brother, Eric Nager, who had been in the publishing industry. As the business grew, Southern Capital needed more space. They hired Michelle Hunt in 2007 to oversee the move to another office. She did such a great job that the decision was made to hire her full time. A few years later, David wanted to move to part-time work, and the company needed more advisor depth. In 2011, the firm hired Wendy Nelson Bailey. Wendy worked for 15 years at the Vanguard Group. She is also a Certified Financial Planner. She and Eric had gone to high school together. Finally, in 2013, the team was completed with the hiring of Charlotte Straight, who had worked with Wendy in the banking industry.