It started at the kitchen table

My first lessons about money didn’t come from a textbook. They came from watching my father at the kitchen table.

Dad was an entrepreneur, accountant, business consultant, and business broker. He taught me bookkeeping when I was thirteen. I also grew up listening to conversations about businesses, financial statements, difficult decisions, successes, and mistakes that I wouldn’t fully understand until years later.

But that kitchen table taught me something else, too.

My father was often better at helping other people solve financial problems than he was at giving our personal finances that same attention. I watched bills pile up. I felt the difference between good months and thin ones. And I learned early that money is never only about money. It changes the atmosphere of a home.

Years later, Dad and I would spend long breakfasts and cups of coffee talking about those years. We talked about what he had learned, mistakes he had seen and made, and what he would do differently if he could do it all again.

What began at the kitchen table became more than 20 years of hands-on work in finance and accounting. Over the course of my career, I’ve held Controller and CFO roles and worked directly with the numbers, decisions, systems, risks, and day-to-day realities that keep businesses financially healthy.

But professional experience wasn’t the only teacher.

It wasn’t built on the belief that everyone should already know how to manage money. It wasn’t built on the assumption that we’re all starting from the same place.

It came from something much simpler:

Start where you are. Understand what’s in front of you. Figure out the next wise step. Then keep building.

That’s what I want Break the Cycle Finance to feel like: a place where we can talk honestly about money, learn from what previous generations got right and wrong, and build financial knowledge worth passing forward.

Because generational wealth begins long before there’s a fortune to inherit.

It begins when financial wisdom starts passing from one generation to the next.

And this time, I want it to stay in the family — mine, yours, and the generations that come after us.

The goal isn’t simply to know more about money. It’s to become more capable with money.

Financial capability is not knowing financial terminology. It is learning how to understand your situation, evaluate your options, make a decision, put that decision into practice, and adjust when circumstances change.

Break the Cycle Finance was created for people who may not have inherited a financial playbook — and for people and families who want to intentionally create one for themselves and the generations that follow.