Hello, and welcome to yet another personal finance and investing-related blog. There are many out there, such as Mr. Money Mustache, Get Rich Slowly, ChooseFI, or the myriad of others.
So, why one more?
Knowing who I am might help. First and foremost, I am an investor. I have spent hundreds of hours studying focused, value investing, and running a mini-fund for friends and family since early 2020. I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars just in studying alone and met many of my heroes: from Charlie Munger & Warren Buffett to Mohnish Pabrai and Li Lu, to Guy Spier and Phil Towne. I’ve done moderately well as an investor, and I truly love the game and the research that comes with it.
My 9 to 5 is working as a software engineer for a FAANG company. I’ve been coding for 25+ years at this point and played the startup game in Silicon Valley, where I managed to co-found a startup to a $40mm valuation, and I also witnessed it crumble apart. It has introduced me to the venture capital aspect of investing.
Recently, and I mean less than a year, I’ve started to make good returns in real estate as well, though I certainly wouldn’t call myself an expert.
I have also taken my Series 65 course, qualifying me to be an investment advisor (though I have never acted in that professional capacity), and also taught Investment 101 classes.
Yet, in all this time, I have completely and utterly shied away from the personal finance side.
Sure, I’ve read Rich Dad Poor Dad, Think & Grow Rich, and a few other classics, but I haven’t noticed those make a much difference in my life, nor in many other people’s lives.
But I had never really gone deep into finance. I had the (stupendously incorrect) idea that investing would mean I wouldn’t need to worry about retirement accounts, taxes, maximizing rewards, wills, or any number of other topics under the finance umbrella. I used to show this slide in my Investment 101 class:
I claimed that investors could do a better job at retirement planning and savings advice. I’ll leave my opinion of financial planners to another post, but in general, I still believe this. What I’ve now separated (and it’s important to do so), is that Personal Finance should be considered completely separate from a Financial Planner and both should be considered separate from Investing.
Investing is how to increase some money into more money.
Personal finance is the way you manage, organize, use, save, and protect your money.
Most personal finance communities assume using an 8% average rate of return for your investing returns. In other words, they expect your invested money to increase by 8% each year. Investors are aiming to achieve a higher rate of return. I think it’s very possible to achieve a 12%-15% rate of return.
So, why did I decide to dive into personal finance now? Why am I starting this blog? Two reasons.
First: maybe I know something useful?
While talking to many of my friends about investing, I started to notice patterns of presumptions and behaviors that weren’t leading them to their goals and dreams. When I shared some of my ideas, many told me what I shared was valuable for them, and that finance and money in general “wasn’t their thing.”
My friends shared they didn’t even know where to begin. I started to get the idea that perhaps I had some useful information to share. I received a lot of encouragement when I shared I was considering writing a blog on some of my learnings.
I was still on the fence, and as I’m prone to do, I decided to deep dive the topic. I’ve read seven of the top finance books in the last couple of months (and have more to go). I discovered there are some great, and some not-so-great books out there. Many of the topics I thought I would cover were already covered in many of the books. But not all of them.
Second: a friend retired
I met and lived with a friend of mine throughout the pandemic. We shared a lot of the same hobbies, and worked at the same company, and while I certainly had more extravagant spending, for the most part, I don’t think anything between our lives felt drastically different. We both frequently went dancing, ate out, partied, and lived our lives.
Fast forward a couple of years, and he announced he was retiring. Never has to work again, but might if he felt inclined. What?! He’s 33; I’m 35. It blew me away. I had no idea how far away from retirement I was, but I certainly didn’t feel close. I believed my finances were healthy, but not that healthy.
How did he do it? FIRE, AKA Financial Independence Retire Early.
At this point, I still hadn’t committed to the blog, though I was now fairly deep in my dive into personal finance.
All of this information I had been reading about…actually worked? There’s something different about reading about a potential and your friend inviting you to hang out midday.
I sat down, did my own calculations, and realized that if I saved heavily, I could retire in 8 years… using the standard personal financial expected return of 8%. But my investment return over the last 4 years has been nearly double that, at 15%. That means I could retire, optimistically, in 5-6 years.
2-3 years of my life back because I know how to invest feels incredible.
And so I committed to starting this blog, with this very lengthy first post.
If you made it this far, here’s what you can expect. I’m going to share three things:
1) My personal journey towards retirement.
2) The best of the personal finance knowledge that I’ve learned and continue to learn.
3) The investment knowledge that can be used in conjunction to enhance your own personal finance journey.
