Our names are Larry and Gail. We are a husband-and-wife team. We love working together. We both like to learn, to research, and to teach. We love being of service to others in meaningful ways. Whatever we learn, we usually turn around and share it. Over the course of our lives we have had many careers and many jobs, many activities. But in each one, no matter what it was, we ended up teaching somehow.

We found this work when we realized that the primary Breadwinner usually passes away first. While there are lots of exceptions, according to statistics, that's a highly likely possibility. That wouldn't go well financially for Gail if that happened in our household.

Since we’re both researchers, we started looking for answers. We searched and searched until we found something that worked. We found a series of traditional answers that have been used for generations but is largely ignored or misunderstood in today's world. When we implemented these life-changing solutions in our own lives we realized we could help others with the same knowledge.

Larry plays piano and cello. So when he was young, and even recently, he had cello and piano students. To this day, Larry still plays some piano and cello. When he was younger he used to sing and play guitar. At one time, his favorite hobby was singing in a barbershop quartet. His group would sing at the hospital and for the holidays. Imagine singing “America the Beautiful” in male unaccompanied four part harmony in front of 3,000 people. That was a lot of fun.

Larry and Gail met in college (at the University of Chicago) where they both learned to meditate. They ended up teaching meditation for many years together. To this day they continue to meditate twice a day every day. And they’re happy to talk about it with people who are interested. Gail’s father died of cancer when she was very young, so she’s been very conscious of diet and life-style choices. She and Larry have informally studied nutrition and food choices, and have been vegetarians for many years. Many of their family and friends make other food choices, and that’s fine. They don’t mind. But they’re happy to share when people are interested to learn.

At one point in Larry’s career he was a Total Quality Facilitator. That meant that he taught individuals and teams how to implement “Continuous Improvement” in the work place. One of the teams he facilitated won a companywide contest for best team results. And he was chosen to be a “Master” Facilitator, which means he taught other employees to be facilitators for their area of the company. Gail studied anthropology in college, and then became a lawyer. She didn’t like to litigate, but as the great researcher that she is, she would search for the unknown to little-known laws and cases that might help the clients of the legal teams that she worked with. Her job was then to share (teach) what she found with the lead attorneys in the cases.

ail is now retired from legal practice. However she naturally brings that legal background to the work that she and Larry do together for their clients. One of Gail’s hobbies is studying Vedic Astrology. She says when she retired from as a lawyer she stopped practicing National Law and started learning and teaching Natural Law. Until recently, Larry and Gail ushered for the local symphony and the local theatre. One of the things they like to do in the evening is read to each other. They have been doing that for years. Often it will be scripture, but it could be any of a number of topics in which they’re interested.

For the past 14 years, in addition to the work that Larry and Gail do together, Larry has been a part-time, seasonal tax preparer for H&R Block where he has the designation “Master Tax Advisor.” He also earned the EA (Enrolled Agent) designation from the IRS. As a tax preparer, Larry is able to bring a significant wealth of valuable tax knowledge to his financial clients to help them in their planning. It allows him to show them many little known but legal ways to earn tax free income later in life – whether one is retired or not. Larry’s Family: Larry comes from a family of music teachers. His grandmother played flute and started and conducted a woman's Madrigal group in New Jersey. His mother was a trumpet major at Juilliard School of Music. She taught musical kindergarten to the children in the neighborhood where he was growing up. Larry's parents were both veterans and met each other after World War II when his father was going to Harvard for a degree in Engineering and his mother was going to Radcliffe. Their experience in the military helped Larry grow up with a deep love for America. His parents met at a dance at the International House on one of the college campuses. No surprise that throughout Larry’s growing up life there used to be people from other countries coming to the house as guests for dinner and visiting. Larry’s father pursued math and engineering early in his career, and his Mother was a music teacher. So Larry developed both the right and left side of his brain. When Larry was in high school, there would be discussions about the stock market and the news of the day with his parents and two brothers and sister at the dinner table. And then Larry and his mother would take off for a rehearsal of the local symphony orchestra. Over time, Larry’s father had to participate in the music side of the family. He took voice lessons and became Cantor for the local synagogue. Gail’s family: Gail grew up in an immigrant culture in New York. Her grandfather came from Poland as a young man and started his own small publishing business. He married her grandmother, who had immigrated from Romania as a young child with her parents and six siblings. Her father owned his own pest control business. When Gail was very young her family would sit around at night listening to classical recordings on 33 and 78 LP records, and read together. Her father passed away when Gail was 13, and her mother took over the family business. She was able to both manage that business and raise Gail and her older brother. Gail’s brother went into the Peace Corp in Africa and ended up being a college professor of International Relations and African Studies. From her family background Gail automatically absorbed both business knowledge, and an interest in academic studies. We moved a lot earlier in our marriage; we’ve lived all over the country. Our various career endeavors have enabled us to live all over the country – west coast, east coast, and mid-west. This paragraph may not be necessary? (Before coming to Western North Carolina, some of the places we’ve lived in include, we lived in Brooklyn, Chicago Suburbs and Chicago, Green Bay, Albuquerque, Port Townsend, and Ames, Washington DC area, and San Diego.) At some of these locations Larry taught business, finance, and economics at the college level. He worked at the Naval Research Laboratory participating in building and launching a Delta rocket ship with several science projects on board. He worked with NASA helping them restructure processes and procedures for some of their systems. He became the training manager for a manufacturing facility in Rocky Mount, NC. Larry has also provided consulting to small and start-up businesses. We automatically provide tax planning for all our clients. Larry says that it’s not enough just to lower our taxes this year. We have to plan for tax minimization strategies for a lifetime. In addition to living in all of these places – and others – we also traveled to many places in the US and Europe to participate in seminars of various kinds. We came to Asheville and the great Appalachia mountains of Western NC in 2001. We settled into a rented house in Hendersonville. We love it here. So we don’t travel as much as we used to. Most recently, we bought a house in the next door community of Flat Rock, and moved in. Gail’s favorite colors remind her of Nature on an early spring day, with lots of yellow sunshine and light green leaves. It’s not surprising that those are the colors she chose to paint the interior of her new house! This is Appalachia country. It contains a very mixed community. A lot of people here are not wealthy, but are very grounded in earthy common sense. The arts have flourished here for many, many years: Writers, painters, sculptors, musicians. While we are not quite living in the country, many of the houses in our neighborhood raise chickens. Many of them run free. We hear the roosters crowing all day long and sometimes at night as well. Over the last 20 years, the Asheville area has been attracting retirees from many parts of the country. These people are seeking a diverse community that incorporates both cultural richness and grassroots community. Appalachia offers this in abundance. But these people are also seeking economic stability for themselves during this stage of life. Larry and Gail are pleased to be able to offer financial solutions, and the knowledge for how to use them properly that will help people be economically stable throughout the turbulence of these times. We don’t have any cookie cutter solutions. There is not one plan that fits all. We develop with you a customized plan – sometimes two or more – that meets your goals, your wants and needs. Our plans are always very flexible. They are adaptable so they can change with life’s changing circumstances. We always look to see if we can incorporate tax-free income into a retirement plan. But it’s not always possible. It usually takes advanced planning and some time to implement. Our Ideal clients are couples who love each other and their children, and want to ensure that life is comfortable in retirement, (whether they ever formally retire or want to keep working at some level.) They want to make sure their spouse is taken care of financially when they pass on. That means someone who is financially disciplined, or willing to become so. And who understands that building a comfortable retirement requires a combination of skills, smart choices, discipline, and persistence. For people who have already accumulated some money, we show them how it can become a source of steady uninterrupted income that can last as long as both of them do. We can lay out on one page what your guaranteed income will be, year by year for the rest of your lives. And we can show you what that income looks like if one of you passes away first in 5,10,15, or 20 years. That knowledge will help you know what we need to accomplish in the planning process. We also have single clients interested wealth accumulation and life time guaranteed income at some point down the road. And we have an occasional younger person who realizes early in life that it’s much easier to accumulate significant wealth when you get an early start. We find it deeply satisfying and gratifying to share what we’ve found with others. These answers and solutions are tools that can be customized to tailor-make solutions that respond to each individual and couple’s needs and desires.