the pioneer.

Huge idea guy, suffering from extreme entrepreneurism and severe ADD.

Here’s a fundamental truth of life for you: every person will deal with money and financial related stuff their entire life.

As my children progressed through school, I was extremely frustrated with the lack of any courses or material focused on money and how it works. If it weren’t for my intense interest in business and finance, I would have never received education on the subject myself.

Over my 24-year career of financial planning, I have experienced firsthand the far-reaching consequences of this lack of financial education. And one day, it finally clicked. I knew that I needed to focus less on pointing fingers at our education system for missing this obvious necessity of knowledge, and to instead focus on ways I could help students access quality information and learning platforms centered around all aspects of personal finance.

Now, here are a few tidbits about me, the pioneer of Your Financial Journey:

• Growing up I wanted to be Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties, had a briefcase and everything by age 15 (I know, you have no idea who that is)
• Born in Long Island, New York but my parents moved to San Antonio, Florida as a teenager (Yes it is real, and yes it is home to an annual rattlesnake festival – seriously, Google it)
• An extremely proud American-Italian who started tasting wine at age 10 (shh, don’t tell), and have been making homemade wine for years; it’s… ok tasting
• Wanted to be a commercial photographer, even registered at the Brooks Institute for Photography in California… chickened out last minute and ended up attending the Business School at the University of South Florida
• Started a company called Direct Satellite Technologies in 1993… it became one of the first dealers in the United States to distribute and install DIRECTV satellite television