Financial Advice from a Y Professional
Ed's Story
In the 1990s, I was working as a substitute teacher considering a career in secondary education (my wife, Jennifer, was a high-school Spanish teacher). During that same time, a 16-year-old teenager in foster care joined our family for about a year. That experience changed my personal and professional outlook.
I took a position as a counselor at a group home for incarcerated youth transitioning back into the community and reintegrating into family life, and I never looked back. With positions at other non-profit organizations, I grew professionally. Of course, non-profit work does not always pay the best, but by living below our means in our late twenties and early thirties, we learned how to save, invest, and strategize.
While studying for my MBA and starting our family, I made the decision to stay in non-profit work. However, both my wife and I were tired of my moving from organization to organization for career and financial growth. So in 2004, I identified the YMCA as an organization in which I could grow my career and made the move.
In August 2004, we moved with our three daughters under the age of 5 to Winston-Salem, NC, where I began my Y career as a branch executive director for the YMCA of Northwest North Carolina. Later, we moved back to western Massachusetts when I became CEO of the Greater Holyoke YMCA. From there, I joined YMCA of the USA as a Resource Director for Connecticut and Rhode Island YMCAs (and I didn’t have to move this time!).
Always interested in financial wellness, I had the privilege of joining the YMCA Retirement Fund in 2015. While traveling across the U.S. to educate staff and board members about the retirement benefit, I took advantage of every educational opportunity. I became a Certified Retirement Counselor® in 2017 and then I obtained my CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® certification in 2019. Even with these designations, my fiduciary responsibilities to Y Retirement did not allow me to provide advice to Participants (and rightly so).
Toole Financial is the natural next step in my journey: the ability to provide unbiased financial advice and education on a range of financial topics to Y professionals and Y retirees.
Values and Philosophy
Toole Financial values Education, Partnership and Trust.
We believe that...
The most important person
in the financial planning process is you.
You set the direction; we
listen and educate you on
your options.
Clear, simple strategies give you the confidence to implement recommendations.
More About Ed
What am I doing in a typical week when not helping Y staff?
You can find me golfing, reading, practicing Tai Chi, walking the dogs with my wife, and watching soccer highlights. (Playing is on hiatus due to nagging injuries.) Any week is even better if we have time with one or all three of our adult daughters.
What else am I passionate about?
Outside of financial wellness, I enjoy planning a travel experience as much as the experience itself. We have visited over a dozen countries on four continents, and I have been to 48 states (Alaska and Montana are still to come!).
Anything interesting about me?
I am the only person I know who is both the child of an identical twin and the parent of identical twins. There must be others, but I haven’t met them!