When I was 17 years old,

Like every day for the past three years I came home from school at 4pm. But this time my parents were home, both of them. This was odd, because both of my parents had jobs and usually didn’t get home until after 6pm.

Worse than odd was that they were both sitting at the kitchen table crying. My first thought was that something happened to one of my two sisters. One was a freshman in college and the other was a junior in college.

I’d never seen my parents cry before, not even at funerals. I asked what was wrong.

Are Tonya and Tara okay? Did something happen to them?

“Your sisters are okay,” said my mom. “We are all safe.” Dad said, “Mom and I just found out today that our life savings was embezzled by our financial advisor. All of it is gone.”

Wait…what? I couldn’t wrap my 17-year-old brain around what was being said. What? What happened?

How does that happen? How does someone steal everything from you? When someone burglarizes your house, you can see a broken lock or an open window. But to have your life savings stolen…I didn’t get it. How did they do it?

It turned out my parents’ financial advisor had stolen everyone’s money at the firm. Everyone’s future was stolen from them.

Years later, I figured out how it happened. My parents trusted and liked their advisor. Heck, I liked him. He came to all of our birthdays and parties. I even remember him giving me $100 bill for my 16^th birthday.

Here is where it got crazy.

You know what my dad told me that Friday? He said how lucky we were. “Lucky,” I said. “We just lost everything and you just turned 50. How are we possibly lucky? This doesn’t feel lucky.”

My dad said, and I will never forget this, he said, Ron (that is what they used to call me), “I’m only 50. I can still work for the next 20 years. There were clients of that advisory firm who were in their 70s and 80s. They can’t start over. They’ve lost everything, and they’re out of time.”

It took my 17-year-old brain years to figure out what happened. My dad had two daughters in college, and not cheap ones, and a son about ready to start college. Three kids in school at once, and they had maybe $850 in their checking account. One of my sisters was going to RISD (a very expensive school), and my other sister was going to American University in Washington, D.C. (again not cheap).

Till this very day, I remember the feeling I got when I saw my parents sitting like that in the kitchen. I was so furious and angry and scared to death. Even to this day, I have to watch myself when I talk about this in public because I usually break down with tears.

I didn’t know it at the time but soon after college, I knew what my life was going to be about. I was very clear what differences I would make to people.

I personally vowed to help people. To teach people. To guide people. To do everything in my power to make sure that what happened to me, my sisters, and my parents would never happen to one of my clients or anyone that would listen to me.

My ultimate mission in life: have people say their life is better because of knowing RC.

If you want to learn how money works, then you have to learn it from people who are objective, unbiased, and a third party to what you are doing with your money. It’s the only way I know to get true financial education.

And they actually have to understand how to grow and protect money and not just sell financial products.

When I came back from working in Asia in my mid-20’s, I had a bag load of money. I worked non-stop for years, was paid an expatriate salary, and saved 100% of everything I made. Basically I was on one long business trip for three years. So everything was covered by the company.

By the time I was 25 years old, I had 650,000 airline miles. And by the time I was 27, I had been to 46 countries on five continents. I knew the inside of every Mileage Plus lounge from Boston to Bombay.

So when I came back to the US after living in India, I was ready to talk to the ‘experts.’ After all, since the age of 15 I had been investing in stocks, but with very mixed results (read: I lost all my money that was invested).

So I visited the usual suspects: Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Edward Jones, AG Edwards, etc. I saw them all.

And you know what?

They all said the exact same thing: Give us your money and we will manage it for you. But what did that mean? “Manage it.” What does that mean? How does that work? I kept asking questions until they stopped answering my emails and phone calls.

And it dawned on me.

They didn’t know the answers to my questions. But they certainly had products to sell me. They either wanted to manage my money (called assets under management), sell me mutual funds, or sell me something called a variable annuity, which none of them could really explain that well.

So what did I do?

I jumped in with both feet and became a commodities trader. I figured I’d teach myself how money works.

And from there, I quickly learned that Wall Street wasn’t able to help me or others.

And that is where the idea of my company came from.

Build a company to truly educate people about money and investing and how their brain works around money.

As far as I know, when I started, Fearless Wealth was the only investment education company in the world that was not selling financial products - and it has had a great track record for protecting people’s money since that day in 1998 when I got my first paid client.

This is what I and my company are about. Fearless Wealth is a safe haven for people to learn what they really need to know about protecting and growing their wealth, protecting it from inflation, protecting it from Wall Street, protecting it from misinformation, and yes, protecting it from our own dangerous thoughts.

I’ve dedicated my life to helping people get through (and thrive under) any market condition, any economic condition, and any ‘life-showing-up’ condition.

If you’ve ever wondered about what it would be like to truly understand money, investing, and the psychology that wraps it up, you’re home.

Together, we are protecting and growing your money.