By As spring 2025 unfolds across southeastern Pennsylvania, Joseph Ritter is marking a significant milestone. This April commemorates his 20th year in the insurance and financial services industry—two decades defined by a steadfast commitment to exceptional client service. Rather than simply celebrating past achievements, Ritter has chosen to usher in this anniversary by opening Valley Forge Medicare, a new office space in Phoenixville’s The Commons at Valley Forge that represents his vision for the future of high-level client care.
The Evolution of a Client-Care Philosophy
Ritter’s journey to Valley Forge began long before he ever considered opening an office there. In 2005, as a recent college graduate, he stumbled into the insurance industry almost by accident.
“It’s the only real job I’ve ever had,” Ritter explains. After putting his resume on CareerBuilder, he was invited to a career briefing with Banker’s Life. “I actually thought it was a bank,” he recalls with characteristic candor. “So I went into the career briefing and they’re like, ‘Well, this is insurance sales to seniors.’”
What followed was seven formative years at Banker’s Life, where Ritter absorbed everything he could about insurance principles, systems, and client service. By 2014, armed with extensive training and a clear vision of how he wanted to serve clients, he took the leap to independence by founding Insurance You Keep.
This transition from company agent to independent broker marked a fundamental shift in Ritter’s professional approach. “The agent that works for the company, their responsibility lies with the company that they work for, whereas my responsibility lies with my client or my future client exclusively,” he explains. “I don’t care about the insurance company; I just want to match them up with what’s right for them.”
Why Valley Forge?
After serving over 2,500 clients across multiple states and building a reputation for making Medicare and retirement planning accessible, Ritter faced a pivotal question: how to scale a business built on personal relationships while maintaining the quality of service that distinguished his practice?
The answer, at least in part, lay in Valley Forge.
“Valley Forge is a pretty incredible area. There’s a lot of history there with the Revolutionary War and George Washington, and it’s a very affluent area,” Ritter notes. “It’s called Mainline, Pennsylvania, and I thought it would be nice for people to have a really nice office to come to where they feel safe, and we can do things there that you can’t do over the phone.”
The strategic location allows Ritter to cater to a demographic seeking sophisticated financial solutions while providing an environment conducive to deeper planning conversations. The office isn’t merely a place to meet—it’s a physical manifestation of Ritter’s professional ethos.
“Your financial advisor, do they own their office or are they renting?” Ritter asks rhetorically. “Do you want to take advice from somebody that has less money than you do? That’s like taking marriage advice from somebody that’s been divorced twice.”
He adds with characteristic directness: “90% of financial advisors, people that are giving people advice about their retirement, have no money saved for their own retirement.”
Beyond Medicare: A Vision for Comprehensive Planning
While Medicare remains the foundation of Ritter’s services, the Valley Forge office creates opportunities for more comprehensive financial planning—particularly for clients with complex retirement needs.
“We can do more meaningful planning, we can do more advanced things like retirement planning, and we can do the financial stuff, and we can do estate planning versus just a Medicare plan. And that’s it,” Ritter explains. “These are the types of people that they have some pretty complex retirement problems and they’re looking for unique solutions.”
This expansion of services reflects a strategic recalibration of Ritter’s business model. “Maybe instead of selling a hundred Medicare plans, I sell 50 Medicare plans and I do annuities and retirement planning and life insurance, some of the more high-ticket type offers,” he says. “That way I can optimize my work-life schedule. And now instead of having a hundred people to service, I only have 50, and those 50 people are buying other [products].”
The Ritter Difference: Simplifying the Complex
What has distinguished Ritter throughout his career—and what will continue to define his practice at Valley Forge Medicare—is his ability to simplify complex financial concepts.
“I’ve always been a creative problem solver, and I get a lot of enjoyment out of helping people untangle the complexities of Medicare and retirement,” Ritter says. “It really makes me feel good when people say, ‘Thank you, Joe, for making everything simple and easy to understand.’”
This talent for translation comes from decades of experience. “I know the game and all the players. I’ve been doing it for 20 years and I have a very specific skillset at this point,” he notes.
For clients navigating the often-confusing landscape of Medicare and retirement planning, this clarity is invaluable. Rather than overwhelming clients with technical jargon and complicated charts, Ritter focuses on understanding their specific needs through targeted questions.
“I use my decades of experience to ask them questions and do what they call needs-based selling,” Ritter explains. “I’m finding out as much as I can about this individual so that I can make sure they find the right coverage.”
The efficiency of his approach strikes many clients. “At the end, people always say the same thing. They’re like, ‘That’s it? What else do I need to do? It can’t possibly be that easy.’”
Transparent Relationships in a “World Built on Lies”
Central to Ritter’s vision for Valley Forge Medicare is an unwavering commitment to transparency—something he sees as increasingly rare in the financial services industry.
“We live in a world that’s built on lies. Everywhere we look, people aren’t who they say they are,” Ritter observes. “People are doing things that are really in their best interest, not yours. And then you find that out later—false advertising, bait and switch, go with this plan, the best plan. And then it turns out not. It creates a lot of distrust.”
This distrust, he believes, ultimately harms consumers’ ability to recognize legitimate opportunities. “One of the reasons why people continue to not be successful is now they can’t recognize an opportunity when they see one because they’ve gotten burned so many times in the past, so now they think everything’s a scam,” he says. “And that’s actually worse than getting scammed.”
Ritter counters this dynamic with radical transparency, beginning with his compensation model. “People always ask, ‘But how do you get paid?’” he notes. “So we get paid by the insurance company. We don’t care what insurance company you’re with, but if you’re not happy, you’re going to leave. We get paid when we do a really good job and you tell other people about what we do.”
Building a Community, Not Just a Client Base
Perhaps most distinctive about Ritter’s vision for Valley Forge Medicare is his conceptualization of clients as part of a broader community rather than merely names in a database.
“When you become a client, you’re part of a very exclusive group of people—doctors, lawyers, business owners—and we’re all here to help one another,” Ritter explains. “Think of it like a giant mastermind group where we can all learn from one another. I learn more from them than they learn from me.”
This community-centered approach extends to how Ritter views client relationships. “These are people that I consider like family,” he says. “I could call them if I had a question about something, and I knew they were the expert in [it]. Why can’t we help one another?”
He offers a telling example: “I’m in Arizona with a friend that I met five years ago. He’s turning 65, he’s going on Medicare. He knows what I do. I flew out to the West coast just to spend time with him. That was my primary objective, but also help him find the right plan based on what I know about him. I mean, isn’t that great? And that’s pretty much like how I run my business.”
A Legacy of Relationships
As Ritter looks ahead to this new chapter at Valley Forge Medicare, he maintains a grounded perspective on what constitutes meaningful success and legacy.
“Nobody’s going to remember me or the money I made or any of that because there is no success beyond myself,” he reflects. “I think my legacy is going to be my children, my son Shane, my daughter Madison. And everything that I do is for them.”
Beyond family, Ritter hopes to be remembered for the quality of his connections with clients and colleagues. “I think it’s going to be the relationships that I have with people,” he says. “They’re going to be like, ‘That Joe Ritter guy, he’s interesting. And I really enjoy the time that we spent together.’ That’s what I want my legacy to be.”
As he begins his third decade in the insurance industry, Ritter’s Valley Forge Medicare office represents not just a physical expansion but an evolution in how he delivers value to clients. It embodies his belief that in an industry often characterized by complexity and confusion, clarity, transparency, and genuine care aren’t just ethical imperatives—they’re the foundation of a sustainable business model.
“People always ask me, ‘What’s the best investment?’” Ritter says. “I think the best investment is building relationships with the right people or buying a book or learning a new skill, or spending your time with people that make you happy.”
Twenty years after unexpectedly entering the insurance field, that investment in relationships continues to yield remarkable returns for Joe Ritter and the thousands of clients whose financial futures he’s helped secure. With Valley Forge Medicare, he’s writing the next chapter of that story.
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