Learning About Money The Hard Way
Going back to my paper route days, it seems that I've always been good at earning money. As for managing money, well, I didn't develop much of an interest in that until I turned a $60,000 inheritance into $20,000 of credit card debt!
I received the inheritance from an uncle when I was 25 years old, and used it to create a business centered on my passions for golf and travel: Links Review, a newsletter about golf courses at great golf vacation destinations. While the publication enabled me to play amazing courses from northern California to southern Spain, it suffered from one fairly important problem: very few subscribers. Blind to my financial situation, I kept pouring money into the venture. The turning point came two years after receiving the inheritance when I woke up to the hard reality that I had dug myself deeply into debt.
That experience, including six humbling months of living in my parents' basement and over four years of paying off my debts, forced me to face the fact that I had a lot to learn about managing money. So I began to study, and haven't stopped.
For many years now I have done volunteer work, helping people learn how to get out of debt, build savings, use a budget, and chart a path toward the accomplishment of their most important financial goals. In 2005, I left a lucrative corporate job to pursue a long-held dream of writing and teaching about wise money management full-time. Doing so is one of my greatest joys.
“Matt provides a vision for using money in a way that brings freedom and joy, along with the practical steps for getting there..”