An Advisor Who’d Rather You Understand Your Coverage Than Just Buy It

In 2013, right before I started my insurance career, I was newly married with a baby less than a year old. My employer unexpectedly gave me a day off that week. That night, lightning struck our house directly above the bedroom where my wife and I would have been sleeping on a normal week. The house burned for almost eight hours before firefighters put it out, and we lost nearly everything. The policy had never been updated after a full renovation, so most of the structure itself wasn’t covered.

I started training at Liberty Mutual that Monday with a soot-covered packet under my arm. As I learned how policies actually worked, I realized the fire itself couldn’t have been prevented, but nearly everything we lost financially could have been, with one simple coverage review and a few inexpensive policy changes. It’s still the best part of the job today: hearing someone tell me they’re glad we talked about it.

These days home is Little Elm, Texas, with my wife and our two daughters, usually somewhere between planning our next camping trip in the 4Runner and actually going on one. I finished my business degree, with a minor in economics, from Eastern Washington University not long after that fire, and spent several years in a leadership role at Liberty Mutual, managing a team of agents and sitting in enough rooms with claims adjusters, underwriters, and actuaries to understand how the pieces actually fit together.

Over the years I’ve represented carriers ranging from familiar names like Liberty Mutual, Progressive, and Safeco to ones most people have never heard of, like Gainsco, Stillwater, and Foresters, among many others. That range is part of why I can usually find something that actually fits, instead of pushing whatever one company happens to sell.

Every article, calculator, and guide on Gilded Oak, including everything on this page, has been personally written, designed, or built by me.