Thrivent Financial

I am a financial advisor with 15 years’ experience working with Christians to navigate their wealth journeys and bring clarity to their finances. In the last two years, I’ve been partnering with my wife to better assist those developing a budget while I focus on investments, retirement, and charitable planning.

In my 15 years, I’ve seen what it’s like to be a product salesman and I’ve seen what it’s like to be a life insurance agent. My wife and I have decided to build a practice that meets the financial needs of Christians through financial planning inclusive of generosity strategies. We create personalized strategies for each family we are blessed to meet.

We have partnered with Thrivent Financial – a Fortune 400 Financial Services Company – that allows us to live out our faith while having the strength of an A++ Rated, 120 year old fraternal to support us and our clients. Besides investments and insurance, we also do dedicated planning – where clients can hire our practice for an ongoing fee.

What first inspired you to get into your line of work? And what motivates you to do the work you do still today?
My dad was able to retire at age 50 by working a full-time job coupled with investing in stocks and applying common sense financial wisdom. Though he wasn’t a Christian at the time, I saw the value of his path especially for providing for his family and our future.

I desired to help people on their financial journey and in 2011, I joined a small financial office where I was a junior advisor. After helping them expand, I decided to start my own practice in 2016 where I could more intentionally live out my faith while helping families through holistic planning. This led me to Thrivent Financial which was expanding their presence in Cincinnati.

Over the last ten years, Thrivent has shifted from product solutions to seeing the value of holistic advice. Needless to say, God had me in the right place at the right time for the right reasons. Fast forward to today, as my kids know, every day I get to “go and help people” as opposed to go to work.

How did you come to faith in Christ?
Though I attended church as early as sixth grade, I didn’t become a Christian until senior year of high school. I wanted to do additional research to make sure “I made the right choice.” I started to look at additional religions before realizing that at the end of the day, there’s a lot of evidence that points to Jesus, the Resurrection, and Christianity being the only path. As such, I dedicated my life to building up the Kingdom and I haven’t looked back. That said, the older I get, I realize God calls us to be stewards of all that we have. Part of that, is giving back to help advance the Kingdom.

How does your faith impact the way you do business?
We have “bedrocked” our practice on Deuteronomy 8:18 where God informs the Israelites before going into the Promised Land to remember that it is God who gives the ability to generate wealth. Through this lens, we don’t believe that wealth is a bad thing. Rather, God provides the ability to generate wealth so that we can positively impact our faith, our future, and our families.

We’ve coupled this with how God desires us to prioritize generosity. We’ve made it a mission to amplify the generosity of Christians.

Finally, we incorporate biblical principles into our financial planning. It’s biblical to develop a budget (Proverbs 27), it’s biblical to give an inheritance to your grandkids (Proverbs 13), and yes, it’s even biblical to pay your taxes (Romans 13).

Overall though, it’s a blessing to the Creator when we are intentional with what He provides and follow His wisdom. To that end, we are simply blessed to come alongside Christians; amplifying their generosity and helping them have a more Kingdom intentionality with their wealth.

What ministry/cause do you champion and why?
We are big supporters of pregnancy care centers as we want to protect the most vulnerable. However, my wife and I are humbled by single parents that bring new life into a world marked by higher inflation, higher housing prices, and a lot of financial stress. We gladly support centers that not only protect unborn life, but also come alongside the parent(s) to create a more stable foundation. We have a barbell approach to our practice. We are blessed to work with wealthier retirees which helps provide the revenue so that we can directly invest our time and resources into pregnancy care centers (through budget courses and grant matching).

We look forward to doing more in the years ahead as this is one of the greatest investments we can ever make.

Our other cause is helping Christians be more strategically generous. The U.S. Tax Code contains huge benefits for charitably inclined individuals and yet most Christians are ignorant of these opportunities. It’s always a joy to be able to speak to churches and non-profits to help their donors be more intentional and impactful with their resources.