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What if you didn't need to be ultra-wealthy for personal, top-to-bottom financial guidance and investment advice? Since 1986, we've helped millions of people get the ball rolling on their financial plans — with straightforward guidance built around their story and where they're headed next. Today, we're proud to be one of America's top independent investment advisory firms as ranked by Barron's (awarded September 2025, based on prior 12-month data through June 30), with nearly 1.25 million clients and more than $314 billion assets under management (as of March 31, 2026) — and prouder still of the trust clients place in us.

The Barron's Top 100 RIA Firms list, an annual ranking of independent advisory firms, is based on qualitative and quantitative criteria. Firms elect to participate but do not pay to be included in the ranking.

I live in Durham, North Carolina, in the heart of the Research Triangle. I have a wonderful wife of 37 years, Lynn, and a daughter and son. My favorite activities involve spending time with friends and family. I love to ski, play golf, camp, and I walk with my father most every day.

Service has always been a part of my family history. My parents were physicians, my grandparents missionaries in China and small business owners. My other relatives are college professors, business owners, estate attorneys, missionaries and foundation executives, and my two grown children are both educators. Most of my family went to Wake Forest University, though my loyalty lies with UNC and Duke.

I earned an undergraduate degree with focus on Economics, Business, and Psychology from UNC in Chapel Hill, NC. Not realizing that would be a perfect background for financial planning, I kept reinventing myself as an executive to create value in 14 high-growth startups. In my spare time while running the IT group for a highly profitable 24/7/365 manufacturing facility (part of a Fortune 20 company), I earned a Duke MBA. In 2005 I decided to start a financial planning practice, garnering my CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER^™ professional designation three years later. Since then I've accumulated another 7 planning designations, and I still attend upwards of 15 conferences and industry events a year: I believe it's my obligation to clients to keep on top of current research, changes in policy, and thought leadership so I can serve them better and get them to the best possible outcomes. I specialize in financial independence, life, and legacy planning for clients in or near retirement, as well as business owners and executives.

You have decisions in your financial picture, you're the CEO of your financial life. Your job is to take all these ideas and decisions and make sure there's no gaps or overlaps. You have an asset management, risk management, and tax management divisions in your business management. One question: when you think about your whole financial picture, when was the last time someone besides you saw the whole thing in one place?

Our team is going to do a deep dive on the whole picture and report back to you about what you're doing that's really well-aligned, and typically find a few areas to talk about. And more importantly, there are going to be some strategy things that you didn't know you didn't know.

At the end of the day, financial planning is not just about the numbers -- how much you have and how much you need -- but about why the things you want are important to you. We go into much, much deeper planning than the math alone would dictate because we want to help people live focused on the joy in their lives. It's about the finances supporting your life, not your life supporting the finances.