Former principal moves into financial realm

A familiar face in the education community has re-emerged in the financial world.

Former Pahrump Valley High principal Max Buffi was recently announced as a financial advisor at Edward Jones’ Pahrump office.

“I was getting ready to retire, but I wasn’t ready to quit working, so I decided I wanted to do something different,” Buffi said. “So I got to looking around and decided to go to work at Edward Jones.”

The branch office of the Fortune 500 company, is located at 3250 S. Highway 160, Suite 9A, and offers financial services for individual investors, catered toward the community that they call home.

Taking over the position in December, Buffi said he is enjoying everything his new career move has to offer.

“I love the new job,” Buffi said. “It’s was a great career change for me, I’ve always been interested in investments. I like to meet new people and I really feel I can be a help to clients.”

Buffi knew he was ready to call it a career after spending 17 years in the education field, 16 of them in Nye County, but not ready to stop working altogether.

Buffi was born in Southeastern Idaho, and moved to the valley in 1997, where he began working as a teacher at Rosemary Clarke Middle School.

His career in education eventually led Buffi to Pahrump High School where he served as principal for six years before retiring at the end of the last school year.

Interested in going in a new direction career-wise, Buffi took up an opportunity to work in the financial industry. Although he’s out of the education realm, Buffi still finds his work in his former career coming into play in his new venture.

“A big part of my job is helping clients understand investments, and helping educate them on investments and what they’re doing and how they work,” he said.

That educating on investing is what Buffi deals with most on a daily basis, as most customers have a basic understanding of investing, but don’t know quite enough to feel comfortable with making that initial step.

“Just people curious about wanting to invest,” Buffi said. “You know, they’re starting to think about retiring, they say, ‘I want to retire in a certain number of years; I want to see where I am at and do I need to make more investments?’ It’s mostly people looking to retire.”

Aside from those near retirement, Buffi has also seen his share of people just starting out their investment plans.

“I have a lot of young people I am working with that are getting started investing and they want to know more,” he said. “They are already looking down the road at their future.”

With tax season in full force, Buffi doesn’t see anything along the lines of helping customers actually do their taxes, but he has been helping customers who want to make more of their tax returns.

“A lot of people getting their tax returns back are looking at investing that, looking toward retirement, or education goals, or just having some emergency cash put away that’s working for them,” Buffi said.

Aside from continuing the services that Edward Jones has been providing, Buffi said he is looking to be more involved in the community.

“I am looking at knocking on doors and introducing myself from people in neighborhoods and around town,” he said. “What I have found is a lot of people don’t even realize that there’s an Edward Jones office here in town.”

You can reach Buffi at Edward Jones with your financial questions at 775-537-6630.