I am a twenty year-old straight male with another birthday in a couple of months. Depending on the book, I’m a textbook March 16^th Pisces.

I’ve lived in Long Beach, California my entire life. I love this city, but I also love to travel. I took a number of road trips while I was younger and have had the opportunity to travel quite a bit with People to People, both as a student and an independent contractor.

I’m Judeo-Christian, which doesn’t mean much until one gets into the specifics of what defines the term; this is something I expect to examine in the coming years.

I’m Danish, Mexican, Scottish, and Spanish; for all intents and purposes, I’m just a white guy.

I obviously speak English, but my first language was Spanish. I spoke both languages as a little child until my pediatrician told my mother that she really ought to speak to me in a single language as to avoid the circumstance where I’d combine both languages. I ended up needing to go through speech therapy in first grade because my language skills were… lacking.

I didn’t live with both of my parents while growing up; I lived alone with my mother until an old friend came back into her life, eventually taking a new role as my step-father. Thankfully, I still have a good relationship with my father.

I started playing the violin when I was eight; I played throughout middle and high school, even teaching privately for a while. I have also worked as a lifeguard and swim instructor at a local YMCA.

When I was 14 I was curious about how web pages worked; “View Source” was an amazing little menu item that hooked me (and I’m sure many others) into the disastrous world that is HTML. I’ve been a web developer ever since.

Like most people, I went to college after graduating from high school. Unlike most people, I decided to take a two-semester educational leave after 2.5 years; this is where I stand right now, as my leave is just beginning with this upcoming semester.

In December of 2007 I started working with my parents, and have been working with them since then. In March 2008 I decided to start working on a personal finance project, which would later be called Iron Money.

There are probably more things that define who I am and my perspective on life, but I like to think that I’ve covered the ones that are useful in understanding the biases in my writing.

I have blogged before, but my immaturity has prevented me from writing about things of consequence with a clear vision and logical thought process. My intent is to write about things that I am most passionate about so that I can produce content that I would want to read.