Peter Wittman

Growing up as the youngest of 6, I learned alot from my siblings.

But one thing they didn't teach me was how hard it was going to be growing up. As a kid I was bullied. There were a couple of incidents growing up that didn't seem that significant at the time, but looking back really shaped what I do today. One occurred while waiting for the school bus, where the neighborhood bully decided it was my turn. Just about the time it was going to get physical, my much bigger & stronger brother stepped in and the bullying stopped. It taught me that sometimes you just need someone to stand in for you against the bullies. The 2nd actually was a chain of events that began on my 2nd birthday when my grandfather passed away suddenly. My grandparents owned a farm on the other side of the river from the Philadelphia International Airport. Back than, there was no spousal exemption, so my grandmother was forced to gift some property and sell mosy of it just meet the bill from the IRS on the estate tax. She kept her home for a little while, but then cancer struck and she had to sell the remainder to pay the medical bills. Unfortunately, shortly after I graduated from college, she passed away broken-hearted. She and my grandfather worked so hard their entire lives to save and leave a legacy, but instead she died broke. It set me on a path to learn as much as could so that I could said in the gap between the financial bullies and those I worked with and cared about. That is why I do what I do. It is why I speak and write.