As a verbal processor, I write both to share and to learn, and I enjoy both short- and long-form writing, as they serve different purposes.
I wrote my first book because I had the privilege of teaching The Fundamentals of Financial Planning to finance and accounting students at my alma mater, Towson University, and I didn’t love the textbook. I also found that to unmoor students whose goals were often more about the pragmatic pursuit of a grade than the transformative experience of learning, I needed to use narrative and illustration. So I wrote a book featuring those devices—and got it approved by the Certified Financial Planner Board and the University to be used as the new textbook for my class that I enjoyed teaching for seven years.
I had the most amazing guide for my first book, the international best-selling author, Jim Stovall. Jim has sold MILLIONS of copies of The Ultimate Gift, a powerful parable, and was so gracious to co-author a practical follow-up with me that became The Ultimate Financial Plan, published by John Wiley & Sons. Then, as I continued to learn and grow in the craft of financial life planning, I felt it was important to refine and distill my thinking in a second volume—Simple Money: A No-Nonsense Guide To Personal Finance, published by Baker Books.
If you enjoy The Financial LIFE Planning weekly, I think you’d likely love the book.
Lastly, I’m often asked where I come up with the material to write about every week on the Financial LIFE Planning weekly—and in my books—and the answer is simple:
I read.
A lot.
Reading is the fuel for (my) writing, and it’s simultaneously one of the foremost ways I grow—personally and professionally. If you’re interested to know what the top 30 Books That Changed My Life are, I’ve aggregated them here in this post:
