Poor Kid, Big Debt
From Debt to Deliberate Freedom: A Rural Kid’s Journey
I grew up milking cows in rural Arkansas, where our family of six lived on $10,000 a year in the 1980s. That Ozark dirt road taught me resilience—but not financial literacy.
After a series of costly decisions and dead-end jobs, I found myself in New York City, homeless and sleeping in my Ford Ranger pickup between shifts. A tech support job led to coding skills and my first startup. When it failed, I came home to an eviction notice.
By 2013, despite working 14-hour days, I was drowning in $110,000 of debt—equal to my entire annual salary. My credit score was so destroyed that even after landing a job at Microsoft, my family had to live in an apartment while I worked for one of the world’s richest companies.
That painful contradiction forced me to create a system. I built Money@—first as my personal salvation, tracking every dollar and methodically eliminating high-interest debt. I’ll never forget the euphoria when my first major card balance hit zero after years in the tens of thousands.
Today, I live with what I call “Deliberate Freedom”—the power to make choices driven by purpose, not desperation. I’ve come full circle, from that dirt road in the Ozarks to searching for rural acreage in New Hampshire, but this time on my own terms.
If you’re talented but trapped, earning but drowning, I built this system for you. Because financial freedom isn’t just about having money; it’s about having choices.
