Thomas Posey has swiftly emerged as one of the most reputable and enlightened financial advisors in the greater Houston region. That's a remarkable distinction, given that financial advising is Posey's second career. Yet his background - as an accountant, chief financial officer, corporate attorney and teacher of aspiring financial planners - confers on Posey a skill-set, perspective and credibility that exceeds those of most lifelong financial advisors.

With an exacting nature, but a youthful, professorial enthusiasm for his work, Posey views the investment process with a veteran's discipline; indeed, his firm's global allocation of market-index investments isn't the strategy of a neophyte. Further, he's a fee-only advisor who shuns sales-speak, as much a passionate educator as a trusted fiduciary. "First and foremost, I give my clients the ability to make informed decisions," says Posey, who was born and raised in Houston. After college, Posey and his brother Bob joined their father in the manufacturing firm Gearench Inc., which produces oil field tools, and which the elder Posey founded. Tom Posey worked his way up, from the shop floor to CFO - "That's the way we did it in our family." Ultimately Posey ran a division of Gearench based in the panhandle town of Pampa. After nearly a decade he negotiated the unit's sale; that deal was the first in a series of business transactions that would hone Posey's business-analysis skills.

While still in his early 30s, Tom Posey chose to get his law degree; he was promptly recruited by a Newport Beach, Calif., firm to do corporate mergers-and-acquisitions and tax work.

In all he spent more than eight years as a practicing lawyer, and though he excelled at it, the law didn't always inspire him. "Law is one of the great professions. But the investment business has allowed me to focus on my clients' futures, in a way I never could as a lawyer." Long an investor of personal and family assets, Posey earned a Certified Financial Planner designation in 2002; later he trained prospective CFP certificants at Rice University's School of Continuing Studies.

Today Posey Capital's main office, in a smartly converted Houston bungalow, is a short distance from the Rice campus. His clients are largely people like himself: successful, intelligent, and who regard retirement as no abstract notion. To help them plan for it, Posey has created virtually all of his firm's educational, informative and clearly organized presentations - an undertaking many financial advisors would never consider.

Posey is a reader of serious histories, such as: Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He and his wife Sarka (a native of the Slovak Republic;) have a young son. In fall 2009, Posey participated in the U.S. Navy's Leaders to Sea program, spending 24 hours aboard the USS Harry S. Truman. To honor the Navy and network about his experiences, he launched a dedicated "Go Navy" website, http://gonavy.poseycapital.com/home.asp