Hello friend! I am happy you dropped by my blog to learn about my personal journey toward financial freedom, investing, and intentional life design. I remember the first time I made money from a “real job”.  Growing up in Northern Maine most kids worked on the farms to pick potatoes for the community.  In fact, our local school district would close the schools for three weeks so the kids in the community could work the farms.  I was around 10 years old when I worked on Big Red’s farm (the guy looked like you imagine).  I would wake up at 5am and head down to the local corner store to catch a ride on the back of a pickup truck.  I have no idea why my parents allowed this to happen but it was a different time I guess!  In the fields I would wait for the tractor to dig up the soil for me to pick the potatoes by hand and place them into a basket.  Once the basket was full, I would dump the potatoes into a large barrel and place a tag on it so I could get paid for the hard work. After three weeks of back breaking hard labor I finally got paid my first pay check!  A whopping $14.

This taught me an important life lesson. Working for money is sometimes hard and the reward for hard work sometimes doesn’t match the effort.  Many years later I realized that I wanted to have my money work for me vs. me working for my money. I decided to become a pharmacist like my father before me and his father before him.  In fact, there are five pharmacists in my family! The profession has given me so many opportunities in a career that has spanned retail, hospitals, non-profits, publishing, teaching, and a software company. In each step in the journey I invested in retirement and – more importantly – I invested in my learning. 

The path to financial freedom is a marathon and we are all at different points in our journey. I recommend starting at the “Basic” level (below) for any newbies to financial literacy.  “Advanced” level is typically for professionals in the wealth accumulation phase of their career.  The “expert” level is the master level and is the last phase before retirement.  I hope you enjoy my blog and following me along this journey! 

– Christian Hartman, PharmD, MBA