About

Thanks for visiting my blog. Here’s a little bit about me. I created Meaningful Consumerism after a decade of work, helping people through educational programming, seminars, workshops and classes learn how to make changes in order to lead healthier lives.  About 4 years ago, I began to notice that many people spend their time, money and energy on things that they don’t even really believe are important in their life.  Meaningful Consumerism is my dedication to helping people recognize that it is possible to survive in our consumer driven culture and still have meaning and intention in their lives.  In fact, not only is it possible to have meaning and intention, but that we can actually find a deeper, perhaps even spiritual, understanding of ourselves by looking at our thoughts and actions as we exist inside of our consumer driven culture.

Prior to starting on Meaningful Consumerism, I had recognized the strong relationship among money, stress and health and decided to create the Financial Health Institute, which bears a similar mission to Meaningful Consumerism. In 2009, I created the Bootstraps Education program, which is at the heart of what we provide through FHI.  Teaching this program to thousands of people was really what opened my eyes to the problems I want to address through Meaningful Consumerism.

In my earlier efforts to help people make changes to their financial and health behaviors, I started a non-profit organization called Frontier Asset Building (2007), and also created the Colorado Asset Building Coalition (2008).

Over the last 10 years, my organizations, programs and efforts have helped over 40,000 people across the United States. I have been a featured presenter for the AARP Colorado, the National Head Start Association and the Colorado Conference on Poverty.  And, I have also been featured on two occasions at Forbes.com

I have been contracted or funded to create numerous curricula on topics like, Financial Literacy for Public Schools (State of Colorado), Finances and Health (Kaiser Permanente), Finance, Stress and Relapse Prevention (Salvation Army).  I sit on several Boards for organizations focusing on personal economic development and serve as a consultant to many organizations working on life skills/financial education development.

I have been recognized on multiple occasions for innovation, service and dedication by organizations such as the National Disability Institute and the Internal Revenue Service.

And finally, I hold Master’s Degrees from the University of Arkansas and Michigan State University.  I currently live with my wife and three children in Louisville, Colorado.