When I was younger my friends and I would drink a lot. We would find any and every excuse to drink every single night. I delivered pizza during those days, but we didn't always have money, but we would always find a way to make money for the day. It usually consisted of collecting bottles and cans and bringing them to the bottle depot in exchange for cash. One day my friend had a totally different idea on how to make money for the day. He told me that pawn shops usually pay $2 a piece for video cassettes, then he told me that the video store across the street from my place throws movies away every so often and they just throw it into there big red garbage bin when they do. It was braod daylight yet we decided to go and take a look at their bin. We saw a couple of big black garbage bags full of something and we took a glance to see what's inside of them. Well what do you know, they are full of video cassettes! There were hundreds of them! We grabbed four of these big bags and started running across the street as fast as we could toward my house. We made it into the door and brought the bags upstairs. We went through all the video cassettes to see which ones were good and which ones were bad. The ones that looked in rough shape we fixed the best we could. We ended up throwing about half away, but we nicely organized the ones we kept in a box. Then we brought the box to a pawn shop in Saskatoon. They actually bought these video cassettes off of us. I think we made close to $100.00 bucks from this. We had money to drink for the night.

Growing up a little bit more we would end up making more money from actually working and we ended up going to the clubs a lot. We would burn our money almost right away because we were obsessed with drinking. We had a lot of fun at the bars, and we would get into all kinds of trouble and get into fights and meet girls. We would dance, and we would also sit and visit. I wonder, what if the music stopped and people were still dancing on the dance floor like the music was still on, would it simply look like a bunch of wacky people losing their minds? Anyhow we didn't care how we were going to get home, some nights we would just end up hanging out with some friends and stay at their place for the night. At the end of the day the only thing a person has left when he/she gets older and this is the only lifestyle they have ever lived and don't have the money to live a life like this is an empty bank account, and you're really not prepared as you should be for the next phase of your life. I am however a firm believer in the phrase "it's never too late". I don't regret that part of my life, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't do things different with the knowledge that I have now if I could go back and do things differently.

I use to have 2 to 3 jobs at a time in my mid 20's, but I didn't have a single clue on how to manage money. I'm not playing the blame game on the fact that no one has ever tought me how to manage money cause many people don't get taught many things, but yet they take their own innitiative to learn the important things in life. My poor choices are a byproduct of the lack of love in my life, but that doesn't give me right not to blame myself for my decisions. I didn't know the importance of paying bills, and much of the reason why I haven't been able to get a house is because of unpaid bills from my past. Two of which were favours for two friends where I wanted to help them get cell phones, but they screwed that up. I could blame them and get mad at them, or I could say that I made a stupid decision to help a friend out when that certain responsibility should have never been on my shoulders in the first place during that time in my life. I'm married now, and my family is going through a harder time then need be because of my decisions in my past. We are close to buying a house finally, I hope and pray that God not only gives us a house, but I pray to God that He gives us the house of our dreams with a beautiful back yard, I also pray to God to let me be a successful entraprenuere.

I'm not going to let my past be a burden on my future. In a way my past might be somewhat of a guide to my future. Kind of how a boat turns. The fin in the back turns one way, but it makes the whole boat ahead of it turn the opposite way.