Paul Guris Celebrates 20 Years with eMoney!

Paul Guris – Advisory Business Analyst in the Product organization – joined eMoney in the summer of 2003. He has proudly managed many of the same responsibilities over the years – despite several title changes – and his work has remained focused on serving as an interpreter and designer between our experts in financial planning and our development teams. Paul came to eMoney after a 25-year career as a software developer, which he began at age 17.

Fun Facts About Paul

• He worked for Frank Tropiano (Head of Client Services) for five years at Reality Online. Frank moved on, Reality shut down, and Frank hired him again at eMoney. Paul interviewed with four people and knew three of them, including Alana Harper who he sat next to for three years at Reality.
• Paul once set a spec (otherwise known as a product specification document) to a developer that he realized he had written when that developer was in kindergarten (which hurt a little).
• He is an avid birder who owned and operated his own side business for 18 years, which was dedicated to taking birders offshore to look for seabirds and other marine life, sometimes more than 100 miles from land and in as much as 8,000 feet of water. Paul is also into dragonflies and damselflies and loves saltwater fishing.

eMoney Projects

During his tenure, Paul has been involved in many projects. Here are a few highlights:

• Simulation: These are some of the most satisfying and important projects he’s worked on. According to Paul, the “fun” aspect came from working with bright people who were passionate about getting the features right.
• Social Security: Analysis and total overhaul of our handling of Social Security. (If anybody asks you to read the SSA POMS guide, Paul says, “Run like the wind.”)
• Trusts: Major upgrades to our trust handling capabilities for Northern Trust. Paul and team passed their final exam by properly handling an actual client and spouse who had a personal interest in 24 different trusts.
• Needs Analysis: Creation of a new tool for paper based advisors. While this tool is rather dated now, most people at eMoney don’t know that it was originally designed to digitally replace planning workflows that advisors were still doing from pre-printed forms.
• Annual Updates: Bringing form to our annual update processes.
• State Taxes: Design and research for implementing both state income and estate/inheritance taxes.
• HSAs: Adding a new asset type for HSAs, a major six-month project with a 218-page spec that impacted nearly every part of the system.
• Foundational Planning: Design of Simulation to handle Goal and LIGA modules.
• Tax Changes: Multiple tax changes required over the years.
• FINALLY getting SIMPLE IRAs added to the system! Paul wrote the original spec for this feature just over 10 years ago.

Favorite Things About eMoney

Paul’s favorite thing about eMoney is that he gets to work with people who are equally as nice as they are smart. Every company is bound to get stressful at some point, but, he believes that if you truly like your co-workers and respect their abilities, you can handle a lot. In the last 20 years, he’s found that every department he’s dealt with is brimming with these kinds of people.

Paul’s favorite memory at eMoney is back in the early days when eMoney’s founder’s assistant misread the heating directions on a frozen pizza. (In case you don’t know, a personal-sized frozen pizza placed in a microwave for 10 minutes does very, very bad things.) Kudos to Rob Ade (Senior Advisory Information Systems Architect) for sprinting into the kitchen, yanking the plug, and hurrying the microwave (flaming pizza and all) out onto the balcony.

Please join us in congratulating Paul on reaching an incredible milestone with eMoney. We’re happy to have you and grateful for your loyalty and commitment to making eMoney a great place to work!