The (Back)Story

I thought I’d take a moment to spend this first post letting you get to know me a little bit. And what better way to do that than to share my financial story or financial journey with you. I won’t bore you with every detail, but I’ll give you the highlights of where Erica and I were. As well as where we are today and some of the things that we’ve done along the way. 

Growing Up Not Rich

I grew up in Southeast Pennsylvania. I essentially grew up not rich. We were not poor either, but I definitely was not wealthy growing up. My parents split when I was around two years old. They got divorced, and for the most of my life, I was raised by a single mom. I went to live with my dad my sophomore year of  high school, and by the time I actually graduated was living on my own with some friends. 

Erica kind of grew up the same way. Her family was closer knit than mine was, but they didn’t have a lot of money either. Her parents had eight or nine kids, and her dad was in the Navy, so they didn’t have a lot of money. We didn’t grow up with brand name of anything. We didn’t go out to eat a lot. We went out every once in a while, but we didn’t eat out a lot. Really, money was a topic that we never really talked much about. It was just something that you dealt with. But it was known that there wasn’t a lot of it for sure. Talking about money was kind of taboo, if you will.

When I graduated high school, my dad died my senior year of high school.  We (him and I) had a kind of had an unwritten agreement, which was basically I figured out how to get into college and he’d figured out how to pay for it. I often joke that he reneged on his side of the deal. When he died, I couldn’t afford to complete my schooling, my stepmom wasn’t going to pay for it, and my mom didn’t have the money to send me either.  So, I ended up joining the Marine Corps. Erica basically did the same thing. She wanted kind of a different life for herself and for her future.  She ended up joining the Navy. 

Starting with Nothing (but love)

So how does this girl from, Southeast Virginia, met this guy from Southeast Pennsylvania? We actually met in Japan. We were stationed over there at the time on an Air Force base. Ironically, she was in the Navy, I was in the Marine Corps and we met on Air Force Base. We got married in Hawaii. We started our lives together without really much. But we each did double our income when we said “I do”! We started having kids pretty early. We got married in 1999. Our first daughter was born in 2000. Our second daughter was born in 2001. Our son came in 2003. And our youngest daughter was born in 2005. We had four kids within five years. We made pretty “good” money in the military (or so we thought!)

During that time, we had this kind of unwritten rule that our mantra, that went something like this. It was “see, want, buy.” If we saw something and either of us wanted it, we’d buy it. And if we didn’t have the money to buy it, then we would borrow the money. That was just the way it was. If we wanted a car. We’d go buy one. When, we wanted a house, we went and bought it. When we wanted a camper, we’d go buy it.  And for the most part, when we would borrow for things and we’d pay them off relatively fast.  In my mind, debt was just a means to get stuff. By the time I was 30, I added if up one time, I had 30 different cars! I obviously liked cars, and that probably tells you a little bit of something about my insecurities, as a young man.

Professionally we did pretty well. Erica got out of the miliary after our third child, and she became a stay-at-home homeschooling mom. She joined the Navy Reserves a couple years later. But for the most part, she stayed home as a stay-at-home mom for many of the formative years of our kids.  I went to University of Maryland. I got my bachelor’s degree there. I worked in the intelligence community. I worked in signals intelligence, if you know what that is. Having earned my bachelor’s degree in information systems management and the eight years of experience that in the Marine Corps, I got out and I went to work for IBM as a business consultant. I really was not a consultant, but it was an opportunity to make a shift out to the civilian sector, and that was the job title!  Erica went on to complete her college degree as well in accounting.

Things go South!

Starting out, we did pretty well. From there we left the DC area, moved to Florida, and I started a business. It was, and still is, a dream of mine to work for myself.  But we borrowed a lot of money. I borrowed money to buy the business. I borrowed money to live. I borrowed money to grow the business. So, you can kind of see the theme of what’s going on here. The revenue didn’t come in like I thought it was. In 2006, I think I made $25,000 of net income taxable income. Most of that was late in the year after I went back to work for Lockheed Martin!

At that point we had hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt…. It was bad. We were not making a lot of money and we had a lot of payments.  As I’ve heard Dave Ramsey say many times, “we had more month than we had money!”  At this point we were borrowing money to service the payments.  We just continue to borrow money. I remember not knowing what to do. So, we kept doing what we are doing, hoping at some point we would turn the mythical “corner, if that makes sense!  But it got to the point where the money was drying up. There was a lot going out and very, very little coming in. 

So much so that our lights got shut off. We were starting to eat out of food pantries, going to places to get free food. At this point, our oldest daughter needed surgery. We thought she had a tumor that we didn’t have insurance for. We didn’t have money to pay for it.  I felt like such a failure for not providing for my wife, supporting for my children. I feel like, God left me. It was just really bad. 

Fast forwarding a little bit, we ended up kind of back up in Virginia. I took a job with Lockheed Martin up in Virginia, but we were supporting two households. We had a house in Florida, a house in Virginia. This was 2008-2009, at which point the great recession was upon us.

Sadly, we couldn’t sell the house in Florida. it was underwater like so many houses were at the time.  I decided that we were going give up the rental where we were. Erica and the kids were going to go back down to Florida. I was going stay in Virginia and basically live out of our camper that we had at the time. That was, you know borrowed, being pulled by a Suburban that was also leveraged with payments. 

We didn’t have any money to rent a moving truck. So I used the Suburban and a friend of mine’s enclosed trailer. I started moving us up and down the I-95, I-85 corridor from, from Virginia to Pensacola. I drove down with the Erica and the kids with a load, and I left them there. I would drive back to Virginia, get another load, and then drive back and unload it. I was just sleeping on the way, as I didn’t have a lot of vacation or time off from work. 

A Feeling of Total Despair

I remember driving through Atlanta one night, about two o’clock in the morning. I was trying to listen to the AM FM dial on the radio. And I came across, what, I didn’t know what that night was, but was the Dave Ramsey Show.  It must’ve been a Friday night, and on the Saturday morning that I was listening to the show. They were playing a replay. There was this guy who called up who was, a father of four kids, and had a stay-at-home wife.

Back then they had these debt free calls.  They still do, but they only did them on Fridays. Dave would interview them. Ask them what they did, and how much debt they had, what their income was, and so forth. At the end, they’d scream, “I’m debt free.” They cue the Braveheart’s, “freedom” , applaud and celebrate. 

When I heard that, I just broke down crying.  Here is this guy on the radio who I didn’t know, and I never have met, he was celebrating his victory, his freedom from debt. And debt had basically ruined every aspect of my life. It has ruined my business. It was ruining my family. It was ruining my marriage. My health was not good. My spiritual walk was miserable. I slept that night in a Flying J north of Atlanta exit 192 off of I-85 in the back of my suburban, and just had the worst feeling of hopelessness that probably anybody could feel. 

A Spark of Hope

 I got up and started driving the next day. And I knew it was a, it was a Saturday night, because the next day I was, I was listening to NASCAR race, and, and I happened to hit the dial again. I heard the same voice that I heard the night prior. And that’s when I realized that it was the Dave Ramsey show. When I got back to where I was staying, I went and bought a copy of the Total Money Makeover. I read the book and I realized that, I was 27 years old, maybe 28, I was a father of four, a spouse, a Christian, a college graduate, a Marine Corps veteran, an American who has grown up in the most economical wealthy country pretty much in the world. And I realized that I didn’t know anything about money!

Sadly, the reality is that money is not really taught anywhere in America. As, as a matter of fact, generally, if your parents don’t teach you or you don’t have a counselor or a mentor, that that teaches you about money, you don’t know anything about money. It’s not taught. So, I went on this quest to basically learn how money worked, and I read everything I could. I’ve read probably 50 different financial books. I read blogs. I listened to TV and radio. I was obsessed with learning because I didn’t want my kids to have to make those same mistakes. And I was tired of being where I was. And thus, we went about the business of cleaning up that mess. 

Again, I’ll make a long story, short, but Erica and I, basically, worked six jobs. We both felt like we were single parents. When we get home, we’d take care of our kids, while the other one’s working, then we’d flip. There was literally someone working about 24 hours a day in our house at the time. And after 37 months, to include selling a whole bunch of things, we paid off over $300,000 of debt. 

Financial Coaching

Along the way, I started coaching people and helping people, on how to do a budget, how to get on debt, how to save, and some things about insurance. And it kind of turned into a passion. I really enjoyed helping people. I was excited about it.  I was motivated about it, still am really to this day! That’s when I realized, hey, I could maybe do this for a living. I ended up going to Dave Ramsey’s coaching program.  I went down to Franklin, Tennessee, which is just south of Nashville, and went through their coaching program for a week and learned how to be a coach. 

I started doing that a little on the side. I also started speaking a little bit and, and writing a little bit, while at the same time, I was working on my master’s degree. I earned a master’s degree in business administration. We were out of debt by that point, working on the building wealth side of things.  I ended up getting a contract, with the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, with my own company, to provide financial counselor services to their employees. Obviously, they’re potentially susceptible to blackmail, and the agency doesn’t want them in financial hardship. Since I had my top-secret clearance to basically get in the door and I had the financial experience, background, knowledge, and academia to somewhat to support it.  I got a contract there.  I really enjoyed that, except for the commute. If any of you have lived in dc, you know, the commute!

I had almost a two hour commute each way. And that was really, really tough on us. So, we decided to move out to the heartland of America. We moved to Omaha, Nebraska. Some of you probably have to look that up – You don’t know where Nebraska is, let alone Omaha! But it’s a great place. We lived there for many years, and it was there that I started kind of branching out, getting into the other sides of finance.  

Up to this point, I had done coaching and counseling as well as speaking, but I could only really take people so far. And then I would hand them over to some other, professional services type of person – a financial advisor, if you will, which a lot of times are really just financial salesmen.

Becoming a Financial Advisor

I met a connection at church, a guy named Dennis King (great guy) who was a deacon at the church I was going to. We became friends, and he just kind of mentored me and took me under his wing, with really nothing to gain. it was very, very kind. He helped me get connected with this small boutique out firm out there, called Nelson and Murphy investments and investments. I’m still good friends with Mike Murphy there. So, if you need some insurance (I don’t sell insurance anymore), look up Nelson Murphy in Omaha. You can go to them, talk to Mike Murphy. He’ll help you for sure. But that’s where I started getting licensed.

I got my series 7 and 65, as well as life and health licenses. Now I could, not just do the counseling / coaching thing, but also really help people with insurance and help people with investments and stuff like that. But it turned out that I wasn’t good at sales. And to make money in the financial business, a lot of times you must sell products (which is fine). I’m not against that if a product is the answer, but sometimes people don’t need a product. They just need some help. They need some advice. And so it really just wasn’t a good fit. After a little while, I left there.  Meanwhile, Erica and I kept, continuing to work on our own finances, and that’s where we paid off the house.

100% Debt Free

I remember we paid off our first house in, in Nebraska, probably 2016, somewhere around there. So in 2007 we started, in 2010 we were out of consumer debt, then in 2016, I think it was around August, we paid off our house. I took the kids, all four of them, as well as Erica and me, and we went down to the Wells Fargo branch to pay it off.  We made the last payment on our mortgage, and we kind of had a little party in their lobby. It was, quite the scene. A lady was nice enough to take a picture of us.  We wanted to make a big deal out of it, so that the kids (and us) would cement that, milestone. About 40% of American’s own their homes outright.  So, we became, part of that 40%!  And yes, the grass does feel different!

Starting True Wealth 

Eventually we ended up moving to Florida. And when I got down there, I realized, “hey, I want to be in this business, but I want do it my own way.” Thus, I started my own, what’s called a RIA – a registered investment advisor, with the State of Florida. That’s when True Wealth Financial Group was essentially born. At that point, I could, help someone no matter where they were.  I’ve worked at this point with single moms that are struggling to, to make ends meet do a budget and, and pay their bills and stuff like that. And I have worked with clients that have, with five-plus million-dollar net worth, really the gamut of everything in between.

Now, I can help people with coaching and counseling, but also do financial advising, estate planning, insurance planning, taxes, tax planning, and all the whole gamut of things.  I just walk with people. And now, I’m not pressured to make a sale. The financial services industry does a horrible job of separating between people that sell products and those that give advice.  They all refer to themselves as financial advisors.  Again, nothing wrong with getting a product if that’s what is needed.  But just be mindful that there’s a difference of approaches in the industry between products and advise.

Learning, Growing and Expanding

 It was there that I went to Florida State University. They have a graduate program – a certified financial planning program. I completed that a couple of years ago, went through that, and just continued to grow the business and help people. I got hooked up with Ramsey again for a while, doing their SmartVestor and Coaching program.  It was a great time. It was a great blessing and opportunity to do that for a little while. We just continued to work, save, and help people, and do more giving along the way. 

And that is what I am still doing today – which is really focusing on helping people navigate financial decisions, intentionally build wealth, so that they can retire with dignity, and have the life that they want along the way. 

Meanwhile Erica and I continue to do our own financial journey. At this point have had a million-dollar net worth change. Net worth is basically what you own, minus what you owe. If what you owe is zero (i.e. you have no debt), then it’s basically the sum of what you own!

While technically, we are not millionaires yet.  We have moved over one million, as we started in the hole in the net worth.  We might be into that seven-figure mark, maybe next year. Our kids have all graduated high school at this point. The two oldest ones graduated from college debt free. The other two are, are still going to college and working on it. We’ve had some great opportunities along the way. We took all four of our kids, all six of us went back to Hawaii for our 20^th wedding anniversary, to show them where we got married. We’ve taken them to Europe a couple times.  It’s all turned out pretty good overall, thus far!

All of Us can Continue to Improve

No matter where you are on the financial journey you know, you can do better! it’s not a milestone, a one-time thing. I often say that money is like health. We can all eat a little bit better. We can all exercise a little bit more. I can drink more water than I can soda, eat more broccoli than I can Snickers bars! 

Money is the same way. I just want to encourage you, no matter where you are today, whether you’re just getting started, in that messy middle, or nearing the end – you can do better. I know what it’s like to have kids, have college on the horizon, trying to pay off your house, work in your career, and build wealth for your future. I’ve walked with clients on the backend and help them transition their retirement.  Helping them set up a retirement income strategy where they won’t run out of money, and they can live the life that they want.

Because that’s what it’s all about. 

Money is a tool that you have at your disposal to enable you to live the life that you truly want. That’s all. That’s all it is. It’s just a tool to help facilitate your life.

I hope this has been beneficial to you.  If I can be of any help to you, please feel free to reach out and connect. I’ll be available to answer any questions I can. In closing, I just want to encourage you, no matter where you are, to keep pushing, keep moving forward, and I hope you all the best on your financial journey. 

Until next time, I hope you have a great day.