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As a boy, Tom worked in the elevator maintenance business started by his father. By the tender age of twelve, he had already saved enough money to pay for his own flying lessons. During his youth, Tom watched proudly as his father expanded the elevator company to a point where his dad sold it and retired young, never needing to work again. Sadly, however, Tom then watched in distress as his father invested his nest egg in one risky scheme after another, all of which failed. Even as a young teenager, Tom tried to counsel his father to invest more sensibly, suggesting a successful franchise. In the end, his father's hard-won security was squandered, and Tom's natural intuition about money was combined with a very sad personal lesson about human nature: For many people it is as hard, if not harder, to hold on to money than it is to make it. Foregoing college, Tom became a commercial pilot and then backpacked around Europe, eventually settling in Germany where he signed on with Lufthansa. On November 20, 1974, he learned another very important lesson. The Boeing 747 on which he was a crew member crashed on takeoff at the Nairobi, Kenya airport. Miraculously unhurt in the impact, Tom leapt from his crew seat; and in the next 60 or so seconds, he dragged, pushed or carried a dozen passengers out of and away from the fuel-soaked wreckage, only moments before it exploded into a deadly fireball. All of the surviving passengers had been securely strapped into their seats for take off.Thanks largely to Tom's efforts and heroism, the majority of the passengers survived. The crash was noted around the world because it was the first-ever fatal wreck of a jumbo jet. And, Tom learned another lesson: something which appears substantial and safe may not be. There are always hidden dangers, always unexpected difficulties for which we must plan. This is the same, he understood, with our investments and our financial plans. We can think we are flying high and safely one minute, only to discover that our investments can, indeed, crash and burn. Tom returned to Orange County, where his experiences with money and with survival became to coalesce. He became an investment adviser and then a certified financial planner. And for 25 years, Tom has been offering his protective advise to investors. When necessary, he is still determined to drag or push people out of the wreckage of their financial lives towards safety. Always, Tom's mission is to make sure people pay attention to his "pre-flight" safety instructions. In other words, he wants them to take that first all-important step: to fasten their financial seatbelts in case of disaster. After several senior positions with large banks and other financial services firms, Tom founded his own financial planning practice in 1991: Scott Wealth Management. On August 23, 2010, Scott Wealth Management Group joined Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Newport Beach, CA. Tom's professional credentials include:
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Born in New Jersey, Thomas C. "Tom" Scott grew up during the 1950s in southern California. He exhibited an intuitive understanding of money from an early age. In fact, his mother took young Tom to the bank weekly so that he could have his savings account passbook stamped with the updated balance. Even then, he was fascinated with the way money could make money.