Money, Wealth & Financial Freedom
Compound interest, freedom math, and asymmetric bets — personal finance for people optimizing the rest of their lives too.
The High Savings Rate Shortcut: Why 50% Saved Compounds Faster Than 50% More Earned
The path to financial independence that has almost nothing to do with your salary. Mr. Money Mustache's savings-rate math, and why cutting $5,000 in expenses beats a $5,000 raise every time.
Side Hustles And Skill Stacking: The Adams-Ravikant Asymmetric Career Move
Scott Adams's \"talent stack\" plus Naval Ravikant's \"permissionless leverage\" plus a side hustle equals the modern asymmetric career move. Why being top 25% at three things tends to beat being top 1% at one.
Salary Negotiation: The Most Asymmetric Bet In Personal Finance
About 30 minutes of conversation can add $10,000 or more to your salary, every year you hold the job. The downside is close to nothing. Why most people skip it anyway, and a framework that makes it easier.
Debt Snowball vs Avalanche: The Math, The Psychology, And The Winner For You
Two ways to pay off debt: smallest balance first (the snowball method) or highest interest rate first (the avalanche method, which is mathematically optimal). The math favors avalanche. The behavioral research favors snowball. Here's why both are right, depending on who you are.
The Value Of Time: When To Pay Someone Else And When To DIY
Most people never work out what their time is actually worth, so their spend-versus-DIY decisions stay muddled. Calculate your real hourly rate once and a lot of those calls start making themselves.
The 25× Rule: When You Can Actually Stop Working
25 times your annual expenses, invested in the market, lets you withdraw 4% a year for 30-plus years without much risk of running dry. Here's the Trinity Study math, updated for how people actually retire early today.
Lifestyle Creep: The Invisible Tax That Eats 100% Of Your Raises
Every raise you get quietly turns into new spending, until your savings rate ends up no higher than when you earned half as much. It's the hedonic treadmill applied to money, and there's a simple structural fix that actually works.
Emergency Fund: The Boring Buffer That Prevents Financial Disasters
3 to 6 months of expenses in a liquid account. It's the most under-loved move in personal finance, and the one intervention that keeps most disasters from compounding into multi-year setbacks.
Index Funds vs Active Management: Why The Market Beats Almost Every Fund Manager
Most active fund managers lose to a plain index fund, and it's not close: roughly eight out of ten underperform over a decade. Here's the math behind why, and why John Bogle spent his whole career telling people to stop trying to beat the market.
Compound Interest: The Math Everyone Praises And Almost Nobody Acts On
Einstein is often credited with calling compound interest the eighth wonder of the world. The math behind it is simple. The results, given a few decades, are almost absurd. Here's the part most people miss.
Hedonic Adaptation: Why Money Stops Buying Happiness
The famous \"$75K happiness plateau\" gets quoted constantly and misunderstood just as often. Here's what the research actually found, and why the real story is more useful than the one-liner.