What we do is the difference. These words have brought value to clients for almost 50 years in insurance, banking, brokerage, retirement, and conservative financial planning in creating wealth during accumulation and tax-efficient distribution strategies. Mac, as his clients know him, strives to offer solutions to reduce income taxes while seeking to maintain a guaranteed income for life during retirement. He then looks to provide for succeeding generations and favored bequests as a legacy.

Mac attended the Citadel and the United States Naval Academy before marrying Anna Estelle Giaffis of Aiken. They had four children together before she passed away after close to 52 years of marriage. Mac was a scholarship football player and the smallest lineman in the ACC but played in every game in 1962 and 1963 at the University of South Carolina where he graduated with a degree in business management and returned to USC to obtain a master’s degree in Educational Administration. At the Naval Academy, Mac was the only first year midshipman out of 1,200 classmates to become a brigade boxing champion and awarded a Block N. His name is on the wall of boxing champions at the Naval Academy. Although he left the Academy at the end of plebe year to marry his hometown sweetheart, he is an Alumni of the Naval Academy Class of 1964. He was a teacher and a coach in Aiken County Schools where he became a National Board Certified Teacher in social studies.

Mac has a diverse business background where there was never a dull moment as an internal bank auditor, newspaper editor with The Augusta Chronicle, life insurance agent, stockbroker, and financial planner. He became a Fellow in the National Association of Life Underwriters, a Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU), a Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC), and recently became a Retirement Income Certified Professional (RICP). He is registered with the Securities Exchange Commission as an Investment Advisor Representative (IAR) with Redwood Private Wealth where no commissions are paid. His life experiences led him to Redwood Tax Specialists (RTS) where he serves as a National Director to help people with wealth and success to keep as much of that wealth as possible from the IRS and be squandered by our political system. In that capacity, Mac encourages people of financial means to consider RTS tax reduction accountants to help establish Charitable Remainder Trusts and develop tax reduction strategies using current tax law. Mac says, “Do not take my word about our back office, but look under the hood and see what they have done for others.”

A veteran and being active in his faith and community, he serves as Chaplain for American Legion Post 26, liaison for Cub Pack 26, member of the Aiken Chamber of Commerce, Washington, NC, and Beaufort County Chamber of Commerce, a supporter of Arts of the Pamlico and recently was Santa in Elf the Musical presentation for the Aiken Community Theatre. Mac attends St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church where he serves as a Lay Eucharistic Minister, Lay Reader, and Lay Visitor. For over a year, Mac has held a Sunday afternoon religious and devotional service for residents of Pruitt Health in Ridgeway, SC, 80 miles from Aiken, SC, where he has resided since 1955.

Mac declares that he is in a phase of life in which he wants to live and not just be alive. He finds joy in helping others make those retirement dreams a reality. And every day he wants to help clients to keep what is theirs and reduce taxes as much as is legally possible because what we do is the difference.