God had His Hand on this before I even knew His name.

I grew up in poverty. No one in my house could teach me how money works, so I learned it the long way around: getting it wrong, going without, and counting every dollar because there were never enough of them.

I put myself through college with the help of the Education Opportunity Fund, a program built for students like me who have the drive but not the resources. From sophomore year through senior year, I worked three jobs every semester. Just work, school, and the quiet belief that it would all mean something eventually.

Spring semester of my senior year, a woman of God I did not know well invited me to a Bloomberg event. She had already interned there and had a job waiting for her. Her path was set, yet she still invited me. I brought my resume just in case, and when she introduced me to a recruiter and we started talking, partway through I handed it over.

Over the next few days the recruiter followed up, we spoke again, and she brought me in for three separate interviews. After that, they offered me the job.

I graduated with no loans and a career already waiting. She was already renting a place near the office, and when a room opened up she let me know. I did not have a car, so she would drive us in and I would cover gas. That is how we ended up in the same house, riding to the same job every morning. She started as someone I barely knew. Now she is my sister. When I look back at the whole picture, I cannot see it any other way. God placed her in my path on purpose.

What I cannot explain is that through all of it I was not worried once. The job, the move, the commute, living in the same house. Something in me just knew. I was not even following Jesus at the time. Looking back, I know exactly whose Hand that was.

Bloomberg, circa 2019. Before everything changed.

Years later, after I came to faith, I started asking God what He had placed in me that I was supposed to be giving away. Every time I prayed, personal finance kept rising to the surface. I had spent years inside some of the most sophisticated financial data in the world, and what struck me most was not the complexity. It was how little of it was built for people who were just trying to be faithful with what they had.

The more I prayed, the clearer it got. Tithe first, not last. Prayer for the money struggles people keep to themselves. Scripture next to the budget. And the essentials stay free, because nobody trying to honor God should get locked out by what is in their account.

That is Kingdom Cents. The fruit I was always supposed to bear.