Anastasia Gray
Wealth Management Advisor|CFP®
Personal
The first business I started was at the age of 11. I asked my mom to homeschool me because I was always hungry at school and wanted more readily available snacks. This freedom allowed me to start a thriving business. My sister was on the local swim team, and at her home meets, I would bring a snow cone machine and sell snow cones to swimmers and their siblings. After a few profitable events, the pool started charging me rent for my booth as I was affecting their snack bar sales.
After the swim meets, my mom, a financial planner, taught me to split my money into tithing, savings, and spending. Once I had my savings envelope, she took me to Wachovia to deposit my money. I still remember looking up at the teller, excited to watch them run the bills through the counter and give me a receipt for the new balance. I loved the bank—not because of the lollipop, but because of the feeling that I worked hard and was building toward something.
At 12, I started a babysitting business. The autonomy over my schedule freed me to be available when a neighbor's children were dropped off by the bus. My services included managing the home security, prepping dinner, helping with homework, and housekeeping.
I had several other childhood ventures: car washing, lemonade stands, garage sales, rolling coins for a fee, dog walking, etc.
As an adult, I see how my top five values were evident even in my youth:
- Service: Helping others has always been fulfilling.
- Faith: It’s important to feel that what I do—personally, professionally, and financially—contributes to something bigger.
- Family: Inspired by my parents' ability to balance family and work, I don’t want to choose between being there for my family and helping clients.
- Variety/Knowledge: I love the pursuit of knowledge and the variety in the people I interact with and the unique situations I face.
- Generosity: “Live Life Generously” is my motto. I believe I am blessed to be a blessing to others through my time, resources, and talents.
Professional
Prior to being a Wealth Management Advisor, Anastasia was pursuing a career as a professional golfer. From the age of 3, she grew up on golf courses and played golf (although mostly in sand traps at the age of 3). After two years playing on a couple of mini tours, realizing that professional golf did not have her heart.
Her dad, a very high-level golfer himself, spent the majority of his career in the golf business, working his way up from cart boy to general manager in a short time. His time as a general manager was mostly spent being brought into country clubs that were struggling either financially or operationally and turning them around into sustainable and profitable organizations.
A mixture of both Anastasia's mom's financial planning brain and her dad's problem-solving brain created someone who not only loves the numbers but loves to look at each client's situation individually and create the best way to help people enjoy their money in a sustainable and profitable way.
Throughout her college career, she was an NCAA All-American Athlete in both athletics and academics, always striving for excellence. She was also the first and only golfer in her university's history to qualify for the NCAA championship, placing 26th in the country.
Education:
- University of Southern Indiana - Finance (Bachelor of Arts) - with Honors
- University of Southern Indiana - Spanish (Bachelor of Arts) - with Honors
Lending a hand in my community.
As part of Northwestern Mutual, I'm proud to help accelerate the search for better childhood cancer treatments while supporting families undergoing treatment, and survivors from late effects. Here are some of the organizations we partner with:
Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer (ALSF)
ALSF funds cancer research, raises awareness, and supports the families of children with cancer. Since 2012, Northwestern Mutual, its employees, and financial professionals like me have donated more than $20 million to support ALSF and fund over 400,000 research hours.
Church on the Rock
I'm very involved in my home church, Church on the Rock. This is where I met my husband and we both currently serve on the worship team as well as the prayer team. We exist to reach people with the life-giving message of Jesus, that they may become fully devoted followers of Christ.
Resources for Philippines Rural Communities
Our Vision: To come alongside the rural communities and uncover the full potential of the people and their land. The last trip I took was in January 2020 to teach the rural people in the Philippines how to grow their own food and animals. We believe in giving a "hand up" instead of a "hand out".
Here are my areas of expertise
Financial Planning
Insurance Protection Strategies
Life Insurance Strategies
Retirement Planning & Income Strategies
Education Planning & Funding
Disability Planning
Multigenerational Planning
Estate Planning
How Northwestern Mutual helps you live the life you want.
When people feel better about their money, good things happen—they become more confident and feel more secure. For more than 160 years, Northwestern Mutual has helped people achieve the financial flexibility they need to live more and worry less.
Being a mutual company means Northwestern Mutual reports to its clients, not Wall Street. They don't believe in chasing fads or taking undue risk for short-term gains. Instead, they take a long-term approach—both in the way we help people plan to reach their goals, and in the way they do business. This has served their clients (and mine) well through all kinds of economic ups and downs, including wars, recessions, even the recent pandemic.
It's why I'm happy to be part of a company that's in it for the long-haul and prioritizes clients over profit.
