What qualifies me to help you?

It’s simple… I’ve struggled just like you, learned how to dig myself out & DID IT!

Here’s my story:

Hard working from an early age

From a young age I’ve always had a strong work ethic. I started competing in weight lifting competitions in middle school and continued throughout high school. I joined other sports like football, wrestling and track. Diving deep into sports and exercising, I found joy and success in my hard work. I found competitive sports therapeutic as it was an escape from stresses at home, but my most favorite memories were the times I’d spent with friends… Challenging one another, finding ways to make the struggle fun and celebrating our victories.

Life came at me fast. I moved out the day I turned 18. Wanting to earn my own lifestyle, I’d already been working for 2 years at that point. I’d held a few jobs in the first few years of adulthood including construction, sales and management. I challenged myself to do always my best. This made sales especially rewarding and management opportunities were made. Working hard was natural for me… and I liked it.

Working so much means I’d earn so much. In those day though, I spent money just as fast as I was making it. Sometimes I’d find myself short on cash, over drafting in my bank and still wanting more. It didn’t take long before I started diving into debt because that was “normal.”

Life started to get harder

At 19 years old, I was working a sales job selling meats door to door. I was making 100% commission… there was days I’d make a lot of money, but also bad days I made no money. I was challenged with that job as I was selling expensive meat many people couldn’t afford and I was having a hard time with it as most people I’d worked would lie to make sales. I was morally in shambles and one day I came across a terrible traffic accident. The driver’s both passed and I felt a calling to work in emergency medicine. I took a job at UPS while I was working toward EMS and at 20, Jacqueline and I had our first baby girl. I eventually got the job on an ambulance and not too long after that we had a baby boy. I felt an overwhelming call to support my family and began strategizing how I could work as much as possible. We started eyeing real estate as I dove deeper into long work hours. 80+ hour weeks were common and even though I was making a lot, we were still spending a lot. We’d managed to save up just enough to get our first house at 23 years old. We had invited auto loans, personal loans, debt consolidation, multiple credit cards and and a 401k loan into our life. We financed jewelry, furniture, vacations… I even financed basic bills and groceries. Debt was too easy for me and I wasn’t yet aware of how my it was going to affect us.

Becoming overwhelmed

I continued working a lot on the ambulance and was slowly starting to grow tired of the work more to spend more plan. I started dreaming of what life might look like if I strategized better… but I still wasn’t aware of the crippling debt I was taking. I decided to flip a house by using the equity in my home. I fixed up a little mobile home and we decided that rather than selling right away we wanted to rent one of the properties and decided to move into the little mobile home. Being a landlord and collecting rent was great… until the tenant stopped paying rent. To put our situation in perspective, we had about $165k in total debt and we were only making around $60k at the time. Life got scary real quick. I managed to talk the tenants into moving out by explaining that if they didn’t move, we would both lose the houses we were living in. Our marriage was struggling. I was stressed and money problems were starting to weigh me down. Now with 5 kids and still living in a small mobile home, we didn’t have many options. It was pretty much 2 options… let the debt consume us and slowly lose everything, or put the pedal to the metal and start fighting our way out of financial chaos.

WE... WORKED... OUR… TAILS OFF

My wife took on a 2nd job as I was scrambling to make more money myself. I landed a decent warehouse job and took up an offer to attend Financial Peace University. It was September 2019. My wife and I immediately bought in. In the first week, we had pull together our starter emergency savings and cut up every single credit card we could find. We sold everything we didn’t need, worked as many hours as we could, and both of us even took up 2nd jobs. We went full gazelle intensity paying off $65k in debt in 18 months. We then built up a real emergency savings, started investing, started saving for our kids’ college and began chunking away at our mortgage. In May 2021, about 2.5 years after taking Financial Peace, we were 100% debt free. We are continuing our financial wealth journey but enjoying the road a little more. We starting teaching other what we did and this is where I land today. I’ll never forget the hardship we experienced. I’m grateful we didn’t experience any catastrophic events or difficulties with our health. We learned so much and now we’ve decided to find ways we can give back. I know what it’s like to feel hopeless, and it doesn’t have to be like that. I know what hard work and sacrifices mean. I know mistakes are hard to swallow and how humble life can make you. You don’t have to feel hopeless and alone… but you have to be intentional with everything you do. It starts now. Stop letting life consume you and take control of your future. You’re in the driver seat, financial peace is just ahead… now let’s go!

  • It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world.

  • It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world.

  • It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world.

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