The Story

My name is Adam Goodman and I spent the first 26 years of my life spending every dollar I ever made.  From DVDs to Starbucks coffee and owning multiple cars, if I earned money, I spent it.  The result of my spendthrift behavior was that I was broke and living in my mom’s basement slowly approaching the age of thirty.

The irony of how my sad financial state evolved, as you will soon find out, is that I grew up with parents who worked in finance – People who live and breathe numbers.  To my dismay, their know-how was never transferred to me.  When I grew up, I assumed I would know what to do with the money I earned and that I would acquire all the knowledge I needed by some sort of magical financial osmosis process.   It seemed, at 26, all I knew how to do was spend.

It wasn’t until I met a friend in business school who had managed to save over $50,000 by the time she was 24 that I realized I had to seriously re-evaluate my understanding of financial management.  Up until this point, I assumed other people would teach me what to do instead of being proactive and figuring out what to do on my own.  From that point on, I  decided to take control of my financial life and change my situation.  I read books, I introduced myself to my financial professionals, I started dialogues with people about the best way to manage my finances and most importantly, I asked questions, lots of questions.

This is a story to help build your financial self esteem, develop a foundation of basic financial knowledge and empower you to continue learning set in the backdrop of my trials and tribulations with money.