I wanted to reintroduce myself. I’m Jason, an author, founder of phroogal, and creator of the Road to Financial Wellness.

I started blogging to share a journey of self-discovery and a mission to empower others with a focus on financial wellness.

I define financial wellness as the active pursuit of healthy living through financial planning and goal setting to live our best lives. Financial wellness is about your health and wealth. It’s about the overall quality of the life you’re living.

I believe money isn’t everything, but it impacts most things. For a long time, I chased money and made good money, but I had difficulty holding on to it. I knew how to make it, however, was never taught how to properly use it or grow it. So I struggled.

I found myself in an endless cycle of working more hours, climbing the corporate ladder, buying more stuff to feel better, getting into an extreme amount of debt, and having a near breakdown. Something had to change.

So I made a drastic decision. I left it all behind to figure out my next step.

There are articles written (and one day a memoir) on how I resigned from an executive job, sold all my stuff, and backpacked around the world for 12 months.

I had an epiphany during that yearlong sabbatical.

I asked myself, “how did a son in a working-class immigrant family of 7 that once lived in a 2 bedroom attic apartment get to decide and choose to forge his own path?”

I realized the power of financial knowledge, access, and community. It shaped my ability to achieve my goals and create my dream life.

Now, I’ve realized the years I spent working in banking and the financial services industry, the countless conversations with customers, and access to financial experts were all educating me. Unfortunately, it took me years to fully grasp the message and more years of financial stress before figuring out my way.

One thing I’ve learned is this: Mastering money takes more than just knowing the basics of personal finance. It requires understanding how the financial system works, your consumer rights, legal protections, banking regulations, and seeing that you have way more options than what is “sold, told and marketed” to you.

So…

We need to better understand how money works and how the financial system works. We need better access to financial products and services. Most often the lack of or the perceived lack of access prohibits our ability to manage money, pay off debt, and create wealth. We also need to acknowledge that success doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It requires a network of people that open doors and a community that challenges us, uplifts us, and shares with each other.

I’ve often said that “knowledge is power and financial knowledge is life-changing” in my many talks. It absolutely is life-changing. But, I do want to emphasize that knowledge is power. Knowledge about resources, rights, and ACCESS to those resources and rights is needed.

It’s been an interesting journey with phroogal. From a blog to a resource and community. It’s been challenging but also very rewarding.

I want to continue doing what I can to ignite the curiosity around personal finance and empower others to buck the trend and forge their own path to a purposeful life.

You can read more about phroogal and my journey by going phroogal.com/about and watch my TEDX talk and by reading my first book, You Only Live Once: The Roadmap to Financial Wellness and a Purposeful Life.