My Story

The first movie I ever saw on my own was Disney’s Cinderella and it changed my life.  

It all became crystal clear to me at the age of six, in the darkness of the Riviera Theatre in Hastings, Minnesota: Be kind, be thoughtful, be caring, be selfless, and work hard. Basically, just be as awesome as you can manage and the universe will sort out the rest. And I believed it so hard that you could almost see my blue raspberry Ring Pop® sparkle with it in the darkness.

A decade or so later, as it sometimes does, "romance" swept me right off my feet, out to sea, and straight up onto the rocks. Divorced, lost, and broke, I exploded out of the closet and began the biggest task of my life at age 20. I began reinventing my life from the ground up by trial and (lots of) error.  

It turned out that thinking the universe would “sort out the rest” didn't really encourage me to figure out what I actually wanted from my life or to begin systematically working toward it in small, manageable steps. That took experience, time, and mistakes. 

Now, on the plus side, believing as I did helped me get through a lot. Living through things like fear that my parents' factory jobs would evaporate, a “what-on-earth-was-I-thinking” perm, intense homophobic bullying, and the Zubaz trend were all a bit easier if you believed in a self-righting universe.  

More importantly, this belief kept my Generation X realism and skepticism from developing into cynicism, for which I am grateful. In short, it helped me become the person I am so proud to be today.

I'm 20+ years into transforming my life now, and, while it's always a work in progress, things are going pretty well.  

I live as an out and proud, gay, cisgender man in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which, despite its flaws, is still a city that I love deeply. I’m a small landlord, a good friend, and a terrible bowler. I love mid-century antiques, movies, old luxury cars, and singing in the local gay men’s chorus.

I help women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and the people who love them manage the financial side of getting what they want from life.  

I stumbled into the financial services industry in 1997 and fell in love with transforming lives instead of equations. I’ve been a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Professional since 2006, a member of the Financial Planning Association (FPA) since 2008, an Accredited Domestic Partnership Advisor (ADPA®) since 2011, and a National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA)-Registered Financial Advisor since 2014—and I've been working toward being as awesome as I can manage since I was six.