I’m Andy, a software engineer turned financial planner. I’ve long been interested in economics, finance, entrepreneurship, and technology. As a child, I witnessed the power of entrepreneurship and technology growing up in Silicon Valley, and I was fascinated by the dot-com boom and the explosion of 3-D graphics processing. My first investment was a Hank Aaron autographed baseball at the age of 7, but my grandfather got me interested in stocks when I was in middle school, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

After graduating from college with a degree in economics, I pursued further education in graduate philosophy with the intent of becoming a professor. However, after some soul-searching, I decided to pursue an M.S. in Computer Science in order to acquire skills that would allow me to live a geographically-flexible lifestyle. For nearly 10 years, I worked as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, where I helped turn a scrappy startup into an enterprise player.

I love technology and learning, but I derive my greatest satisfaction from helping people, which is what I missed most in tech. My own experience with burnout and not living the life I truly desired led me to plan my own time away from work, and I now work as a financial advisor, coach, and planner with the goal of helping others pursue what they are passionate about and enabling them to live their best lives.

I have a wide range of interests and love to nerd out on a wide variety of topics from the obscurest corners of ancient history to the modern cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs happening every day. I am a huge fan of South Park and had created a searchable South Park episode database site and an associated Chrome extension before getting hit with DMCA takedown requests from Viacom. I’m also probably the only financial advisor that uses vim and emacs daily.

The past few years I’ve been traveling part-time in my Toyota Sienna minivan camper, primarily around the Southwest and the West Coast more broadly, though I also have familial roots in the Midwest and have lived many places throughout the country. I visit the SF Bay and the San Fernando Valley fairly regularly to visit family, and I love visiting the PNW in the summer.