From the Bottom, Now I'm Here
The book I wish someone had handed me — my whole story, and the head start I want to give you.
From the Bottom, Now I'm Here is available on Amazon — grab your copy here.
At thirty-one, I woke up in a jail cell with a decade of my life already gone — lost to alcohol, buried in about $20,000 of debt, with nothing built and almost no one left to call. Multiple DUIs between twenty-one and thirty-one. A future I'd quietly set on fire, one "harmless" choice at a time. That night was rock bottom.
Then, one small choice at a time, I climbed out. Eight-plus years sober now. Married to the woman who refused to give up on me. A home. A career I'm proud of. The kind of life I honestly didn't think was possible for someone like me. And here's what nobody told me back then: that life wasn't built on a lucky break — it was built on small, ordinary choices, made early and stacked on top of each other. That's the whole secret.
So I wrote down the playbook I wish someone had handed me. From the Bottom, Now I'm Here is my full story — the wreck and the climb back out — but it's really for the people who still have time to take the easier road. It's written for teenagers and twenty-somethings, and for the parents, grandparents, and mentors who love them and want to put the right book in their hands at the right moment. Faith was part of my comeback, and it's in these pages too — but this is a story, not a sermon.
It's not a get-rich-quick pitch, a dense recovery memoir, or your parents lecturing you in book form. It's a head start. By the end you'll know how to treat your future self like a real person, build skills and a reputation people trust, understand how money actually works (and dodge the credit-card and buy-now-pay-later traps), start investing young — yes, even $20 a month can grow to around $45,000 — and spot the few expensive mistakes that quietly wreck a young life. Every chapter ends with one small step you can take today.
Every choice has a price, and the whole point of this book is simple: pay a little now instead of a lot later. If you've ever felt behind, hear me on this — you're not behind, you're early. Whether it's for you or a young person you love, it just might be the most important book you put in their hands this year.
And if you want to keep going after the last page, the weekly lessons here on Simple Money Playbook are the practical playbook built from this same story — the step-by-step version of how the climb actually happened.
Nothing here is financial advice — it's education and one person's experience, and any numbers are illustrations, not promises. For decisions about your own money, talk to a qualified professional.