Meet Amit Chopra! A Ramsey resident and business owner. He is married to Christina and they have 2 kids 6 and 5 years old.
Q: What Do you do for a living?
A: I’m a managing partner at Forefront Wealth Planning and Asset Management.
Q: What inspired you or led you to your current career?
A: Both of my parents are immigrants, so being a 1st generation Indian American, I watched them put down roots in this country and I watched them struggle financially. It wasn’t that they didn’t have enough money, it was that they were not on the same page with money. And coming from India in a patriarchal society where men control the money and it’s a different world here. So I kind of saw that struggle and realized that I could be of help. I’ve been a financial adviser now for 14 years. I got my first job on my 21st birthday. Originally I started with a small independent broker/dealer registered financial adviser in Suffern, Gary Goldberg Financial Services. They were subsequently sold and then I left and I created my own firm to help people, that generally don’t get help.
Q: What is your favorite restaurant in Mahwah or Ramsey, and what do you love there?
A: This is pretty easy! Our favorite restaurant in Ramsey is Giovanna’s. We love a lot about it. Karina is one of the reasons! My children love Karina; she is one of the waitresses there, they also love Giovanna! And the food is great! I think the big part is, the relationship built there from going often and I like that. It’s like Cheers, you want to go where everybody knows your name!
Q:How long have you lived or worked in Ramsey?
A: We’ve been in Ramsey for 6 years now, and my office is also in Ramsey. I grew up in Suffern and I’ve known Ramsey all my life!
Q: Who is the most interesting person you’ve met here in Mahwah or Ramsey?
A: Rob and Liz Owens, they are a great Ramsay family. Liz volunteers in the library, she’s a really big part of the Tisdale PTO. Another general great Ramsey human being, Karin Larson, it seems that anyone I ever to talk to about her, knows her! She is wonderful!! She is hands down the best human being I’ve ever met!!
Q: If you could travel anywhere in the world right now, where would it be? And why?
A: If it’s with my kids, the obvious one would be Disney World and I’ve been trying to put it off but I think I will have to do that sooner or later. If without the kids, it’s probably a mix of Maldive Islands or Bora Bora. I think at this point, vacation for my wife and I would be a beach and nothing around us, and a good book! Sightseeing is great but I want to do as little work as possible on vacation!
Q: What is your favorite movie OR what is the first movie you remember seeing in a theatre?
A: That’s so hard, because it depends on my mood. I think I’m going to have to say “The Big Lebowski”. I’m pretty fun in nature and I think it is dry, and funny and there are little parts of it that I think are good. Like, every bar he goes to the has exact ingredients for a white russian, whereas no bar in America, I feel like has the ingredients for the white russian!
Q: What advice would you give a crowd of people?
A: As much as I’d like to think I know everything, I have a limited skill set, and my knowledge is in a limited area. I would to tell everybody to invest your money early and often. Time is your friend in the stock market, timing does not matter, time is your friend! I think that is probably where I could have the greatest impact on a group of people, by providing advice.
Q: What is something on your bucket list?
A: So personally, I would like to climb Machu Picchu in Peru. I used to be extremely overweight and I found CrossFit in Mahwah and got in shape. At this point I’m just trying to see what my body can do. I do Jiu Jitsu at Bill Stevens Karate in Ramsay, I’ve done a bunch of Spartan races and I did some power lifting for a while at 24 Hour Fitness. So anything that is physically demanding! So professionally, I don’t know if it’s a bucket list, but more of a goal – I would like to actually help my peer group. Perhaps not globally but at least locally! So I created something where I could help everybody no matter where they are financially. So it is somewhat self serving, because this is my career, but if my generation isn’t conscious of their finances, we as a whole and as a county are in a lot of trouble. I would like to help as many people for as long as I can.
Q: What is your favorite music/ 3 bands you would like to see (dead or alive)?
A: My favorite band is Dispatch, they were big when I was in college. Their song “Out Loud” was our wedding song. I would like to see the Beatles, Michael Jackson and Notorious B.I.G.!
Q: What current / former local business makes you the most nostalgic about Mahwah or Ramsey?
A: It’s not here anymore but what would forever make me think about Ramsey or Mahwah was the Interstate Bowling Alley! I think that’s where Ulta is now located. When I was a kid, they used to do these things called “Shut In’s”. What they would do is, at midnight they will lock the door from 12am to 6am. You bowl and they have food just for teenagers. It sounds like “leave it to beaver” now when you talk about it but at the time, I think that was the coolest thing in the world! We were away from our parents overnight and I always think about it!
Q: Choosing anyone alive and a non-relative: with whom would you love to have lunch? Why? Where in Mahwah or Ramsey would you have lunch?
A: I’m torn between Muhammad Ali, I will want to ask him historical questions, what it felt like at the time and what it was like standing up to the nation and saying you’re not going to Vietnam. And the other one would be Derek Jeter because I’m a Yankee fan. I would just be a fanboy and I would want to shake his hand and I would keep asking him the same question because I would just be in awe! I would take Muhammad Ali to Giovanna’s because they have vegetarian options and that is important and Derek Jeter, it might have to be Varka because its Derek Jeter, and he probably doesn’t want to come and eat pancakes with me!
Q: What is your favorite thing or something unique about Mahwah and Ramsey?
A: I like Ramsey because it’s small, which allows for a walkable downtown. I like the holistic idea of kids walking to school, so even on my street, we all know which kids walk home alone and what time they should be walking home, so if anything is wrong we are all somewhat in tune with it. I think that’s really unique, and it promotes a very neighborhood feel here. We all are looking out for each other’s children! Mahwah from a unique point of view, I like Mahwah the way it is split up. Mahwah is a big “C”. I like that there’s such different parts of it. Cragmere has so much history of where Mahwah’s original settlement was and then having it spread all the way to the Fardale section and having seen that spread is very cool and unique. I think our towns are also very intertwined because as Mahwah is a “C”, Ramsay is jammed right into that “C”, so I like that we’re so intertwined! I think that matters, I think it matters a lot when our towns are separate but the same. And I don’t know if you have that across other towns in Bergen County!
Q: Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years?
A: I’ve slowly been building an infrastructure underneath me from a professional level, where I can see the business growing to $150m to $200m over all assets that I manage. On a personal level, my children are 6 and 5. I’m excited for them to be 11 and 10 in five years. I’m excited to be on a baseball field with them or a soccer field or whatever it is. And in 10 years, I’m excited to see them in high school, I’m excited to see them grow to be good human beings! I figure academics and that stuff will come, we have a good school system in Ramsey, so I’m banking on that, but I’m excited to see them grow and be good human beings! In 5-10 years from now I see myself hopefully having good children and good human beings. Professionally, I hope to be able to accomplish my goals primarily from the people in this area. I have clients across the county but I realize that when I lay awake at night, and I think about how am I going to pay for summer camp, and there are lots of other families who are thinking the same thing, and I want to be able to help those people because I’m going through it myself!
Q: (Even for friends or family), what is something interesting that most people don’t know about you?
A: I consistently relate it back to my career because that’s what I know. I hate roller coasters! When I was a kid, I faked it until I became an adult I realized you don’t have to fake it, you can just be honest. I say that because, I send a morning email to all of my clients, addressed to my Forefront Family, given the way the world has been and the market has been lately, my emails have been very much about roller coasters and I say how I hate roller coasters and I hate that feeling of your stomach in your chest! But that is what a lot of us feel, and I can relate that back to why I’m an advisor. Most people get that anxiety feeling from finances and I hate that feeling, so my job is to push that feeling down for people, to make it as easy as possible!
Q: What 3 words or phrases come to mind when you think of the word HOME?
A: I used to listen to this song called “Home”, by the band OAR! I would listen to it coming from college, I would put on the song in the same part of my drive, so I would enter into my parents house, the song would be playing. And I do that now, as I drive to my home in Ramsey! The other thing I think about when I think of home is my dogs – Murphy & Cody because they are going to bark when I get home, so I think about training my dogs and then I also think of my wife Christina! I’ve lived in a lot of places through college and after college, I lived in a bunch of apartments and I moved every year for whatever reason. And it wasn’t until Christina and I moved in together, that for the first time, I felt like I did when I was sixteen and I lived at my parents’ home and I actually felt like I was at home!
Q: What 3 adjective would your boss or peers used to describe you?
A: Long winded for one, I’m also pretty Enthusiastic and very Passionate about whatever I do. Whatever I do, I do 110% and I go hard in whatever I do!
Q: If you had a full time staff member that was fully paid for, who would you choose?
Chef, Housekeeper, Driver, Coach, Physical Fitness Trainer, or Nanny?
A: A chef, mainly because it would take a lot of guesswork out of eating healthy, although eating healthy foods isn’t difficult, it would make healthy foods taste better versus me eating a bland chicken breast!
Q: Do you have a favorite book or a book you are reading now that you think it could add value to someone else’s life?
A: My favorite book is “The Devil in the White City” by Eric Larson, and it’s about the building of Chicago’s World’s Fair in 1893. Its completely factual, which is the coolest part. So the book reads like a thriller, you read it and think its like a made-up story and its 100% real which is the coolest part! A book that will benefit people now – – most of what I read is generally boring because its all finance based. I just finished a book called “Educated” by Tara Westover. It’s about her life growing up, she never went to school until she went to get her GED to go to college. It was eye opening to realize how lucky I truly was, with what my parents gave to me and what we give to our kids. Because there are some children who live with parents, when they break their leg, they are told that god will heal or that we don’t go to hospitals because hospitals are some sort of government agency!
Q: What can Mahwah or Ramsey do to make it a better community?
A: It’s easy for all of us to complain about stuff right? And we live in the northeast so most of would say, lowering our property taxes would make it a better place to live, but part of that is unrealistic, it’s where we are. Mahwah & Ramsey do everything so well, I’m thinking of kids programs, and really it is all well done. I think more transparency from the government – we all want that but none of us show up on a town hall meetings. It’s easy to say it but in practice it requires certain work on our end it’s not that easy.
