Meet the Rudder Financial Team

I grew up a typical suburban kid just outside of St. Paul, Minnesota. When I was just sixteen I decided I wanted to be a trader. The nightly news would always show the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the closing bell, and I knew that was where I wanted to be and where my focus would lie. I graduated college with degrees in both Finance and Economics. After college I took a minimum wage job as a pit reporter on the floor of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. It wasn’t New York, but it was a start. Before long I was head clerk for a trading firm there, and within a year I was a floor broker, executing trades in the open-outcry pits for our customers around the world. That was great, but I wanted to trade on my own. I scrounged together $5,000 and began trading commodities options. Within a few months my wife and I decided to make a real go of it and moved to Chicago where I stepped into the soybean options pit with about 100 others traders and began yelling, jumping, and waving my arms all day long. Making trades in the pits of Chicago was as physical as it was mental.

Those were amazing years. Life in Chicago was fantastic, but within about three years I found myself wanting more than to just pad a bank account, I wanted adventure. At twenty-nine, never having sailed a boat before, my wife and I sailed out of Florida aboard our new 35’ catamaran. Our destination from day one was Florida, but we intended to get there by sailing around the world. Four years later we were officially circumnavigators, and were setting our sites on the next adventures.

We drove a ‘58 VW bus from Alaska to Argentina, rode a cargo ship to Africa and Europe, camped all over Europe, had a baby in Mexico, sailed another boat from California to Mexico, had another baby in Mexico, sailed the Sea of Cortez, bought a vintage motorhome and spent years criss-crossing America and Mexico, switched to a ‘66 Airstream pulled by a ‘68 Travelall, bought a Grand Banks trawler and spent many years circling the Caribbean, bought a 40’ catamaran and sailed off to the South Pacific and on to SE Asia, bought a house in Mexico…

In the midst of all of that I raised children, wrote a couple of books, documented it all on a blog, traded options online, started a business, wrote a financial newsletter, and taught thousands of people everything I know about investing.

The years have flown by, and I’ve learned a few things along the way. One, not everyone wants to learn the ins and outs of the financial system. Not everyone wants to trade stocks and options and handle finances every day on top of whatever else they are going. Two, that nearly everyone has a big dream, but very few have the support of someone who can help them achieve it. Too often, with big dreams, people are there to tell us why we can’t do something, rather than tell us how to do something.

I believe my life’s experiences put me in a unique position. Rudder Financial can both help you determine the best path