About the end of 2019, my brother introduced me to this new app called Robinhood. Apparently, he was planning to use it to start investing more into the stock market. I was interested so I was going to download the app too, but I really didn’t know a lot about investing. So, I started to learn about the stock market and how to evaluate stocks. I downloaded the app and started to invest a little but I wanted to keep learning. Now the more I learned, the more I wondered about the rest of my financial situation. 

In the past, I hadn’t thought about it too much. I had some tough financial times during college, so I really started tracking my spending and savings earnestly once I started working after college. I had been told debt was bad when I was younger, so I worked to pay off the student loan debt I had as quickly as possible. I learned once that I should have an Emergency Fund so I opened a savings account and put a little money there each month. When I graduated, my dad told me I should get a Roth IRA, so I did and had been maxing that out for about 5 years at this point. From the little that I knew, I thought I was doing great and just left it at that.

Well, once I started to learn more, I realized there were so many more possibilities out there and that eventually led me to the F.I.R.E. Movement, where FIRE stands for Financially Independent Retire Early. This idea that I could save and invest enough money early on and I wouldn’t have to rely on a regular 9 to 5 felt like a dream. Especially in the military, where my 9 to 5 was often more like 5AM to 9PM. This idea made me want to learn more and more so I did. Then I started making some changes for myself, and they were really working! I was seeing huge growth in my net worth and started gaining passive income.

Well, the more I learned and the more it worked for me, the more I wanted to talk about it. Anyone who would listen, I wanted to share the personal finance strategies I had been learning. Everything from the 4% Rule to Credit Card Hacking to the highest yielding savings accounts. Whatever I learned, I liked to share and people seemed to want to listen.

Then in early 2021, I found out the military provides training to become what the Navy calls a Command Financial Specialist. Essentially, you learn how to be a Personal Finance Counselor for your unit and provide advice to financially troubled service members. So, I sought out and was lucky enough to attend this training. After completing the training and starting to provide my own, I really found out how much I enjoyed helping people become better with their money. This only made me want to push it farther and to help more people.

So here we are now. I’ve started this blog to share what I’ve learned and different strategies I’ve developed for myself and from coaching others on their personal finances. I hope to keep growing this site to provide videos, courses, and budgeting templates that can help anyone looking to learn more about personal finance and how they can improve themselves. So, I hope you enjoy what we can provide and remember, Financial Literacy is the Number 1 Key to Financial Success! Keep learning and so will I!