I had a very normal(ish) childhood growing up. Depending on the year, you could consider my family poor or middle class. From birth till 2nd grade, we moved 5 times, going between home ownership and renting apartments. We finally had what I considered a true "home" when I was 7 years old, and everything seemed good to the young kid in me. One year later I remember kneeling on the couch, looking out the front window, and seeing our 1 and only car being towed away from the driveway. That was the first time I actually realized we were poor. As a child, you don't truly know what that means until you experience something profound. 5 years later, in 6th grade, the house we called home was foreclosed on and we were forced to move again. 6th grade, 6th time moving...

College is typically 4 years...it took me 7, at 3 different schools! Sophomore year is where things started to get interesting. I started playing a lot of online poker and this became my first realization that there's more to life than your typical 9-5 job. I started with $4, and by the time summer was over, I turned it into about $800. It doesn't seem like much, but was enough to convince me to quit my glamorous job at Taco Bell. A month into my Junior year (at school #2), I won a trip to the Caribbean playing poker. While there, I met dozens of guys who were "professional" poker players, and I was determined to do the same. When I returned from my trip, I dropped all my classes but one, and finished out the semester. At 19 years old, I was a college dropout! I took the next 3 years off from school, trying to keep my poker "career" alive. Spoiler alert, it didn't work out so well! Once I realized my dream was over, I knew it was time to go back to school. I transferred schools yet again and went back for my Junior year redo. I spent the next 2 years mainly partying like a rock star while somehow managing to get decent grades. At 25 years old, I was finally a college graduate and ready for the real world! So I thought...

A year after college I landed a full time job making $10.50/hr but was still living with my parents. I was 27 at the time and still didn't have a clue what I was doing in life. I worked at a collection agency collecting on student loan debt, and even though I wasn't very good at my job, a lucky month netted me a $3,000 bonus. Because I was still stupid with money, I decided to spend every last cent (along with the small amount of savings I had) on a new (used) car. I'm sure some of you are wondering what I bought. To show you how stupid with money I actually was, I bought a Ford Expedition. Yes, that's right, a 7 passenger 10 mpg tank on wheels! Mind you, I was single with no kids, so I had no business giving up my perfectly reliable Saturn for this monstrosity! At this point, I had ZERO DOLLARS in my bank account, I was eating like garbage, and my mind, body, and soul were breaking down due to all the bad habits and stresses of life. It was during this time that I realized something needed to change....

My whole life I was never much of a reader. In fact, outside of the necessary books for school I had never actually read one on my own. One day out of the blue, my mom told me about a book she had just finished called The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. To this day, it's still one of my favorites. It was such a simple book with easy concepts, and even before I finished, I was hooked on the idea that maybe "getting ahead in life" wasn't so hard after all! I immediately got a library card (because paying for books isn't very financially savvy) and started reading every personal finance and self improvement book I could get my hands on. I started focusing on SAVINGS rather than spending. I made exercising a HABIT and not just an option. I started focusing on the QUALITY of the foods I ate. I cut out toxic people and relationships. Basically started putting my money, my body, and my mind FIRST above all else!

After several years of focusing on becoming wealthier, healthier, and happier, I decided I needed to spread my knowledge and help others achieve their goals as well. I figured the best way to do that was to start a blog! The only problem though, is I had absolutely ZERO knowledge of web design, writing, marketing, and the numerous other things needed to actually create and run a blog. I didn't let any of that stop me though. I decided I could either pay someone to create it for me, or I could learn ALL of it on my own, and that's exactly what I decided to do. YouTube and Google became my best friends and after about 3 months, I had, well not much of anything! Like most people "life" got in the way of my blogging dreams and it slowly got pushed away for other things. I always seemed to find an excuse to not work on getting it setup. It was always in the back of my mind, but I kept putting it off. Finally in 2022, I decided enough was enough and it was time to take it SERIOUS! I spent the next several months going back to YouTube and Google and creating every aspect that you see today. I know it would have been much faster and easier to pay someone to do it for me, but the learning experience of creating everything from scratch was priceless!