A few weeks ago, I sat down to do something I'd been putting off: take a real look at where money was quietly leaking out of an ordinary week. I wasn't looking to make any dramatic changes or completely overhaul the way I live. I just wanted to be more intentional about where my money was going and whether I was getting the most out of it. I started looking at five parts of my life: what I eat, what I listen to, what grows in my yard, how I take care of myself, and how I hand

I became a stockbroker and financial advisor twenty-six years ago. At the time, I was looking to get rich and be successful like many other people. The dot-com boom was making people millionaires, and there were stories of people picking stocks with a dartboard and making money. It was a very different time in the financial industry. When I started as a financial advisor, we would give clients a questionnaire to determine their risk tolerance. After that, the computer would p

I drove a few hours to Miami Beach, waited an hour and a half just to get through the doors, and spent the next three days trying to absorb more information than my brain probably had room for. And I loved almost every minute of it. Consensus 2026 was my first cryptocurrency and digital asset conference. I had started investing in crypto at the beginning of 2025, but my interest went beyond buying and selling coins. I wanted to understand what was actually being built behind

When people hear the word "finance," they often think about numbers. Budgets. Investments. Retirement accounts. The stock market. While those things are certainly part of it, that's never been what finance has meant to me. To me, finance has always been about creating opportunities. Looking back, I became an entrepreneur before I even knew what the word meant. Growing up in a family of 13 children, I watched my dad constantly find new ways to support us. He didn't rely on a s