Author Archives: The Escape Artist
Lessons from The Great Crypto Crash of May 2021
Last week I wrote about crypto and said it was in a bubble: Yes, this is a bubble. Yes, lots of punters will get rekt (as the lingo goes). Traders gonna trade and it’s not my job or your job to save them. The Escape Artist And then, just days later, crypto markets crashed. It […]
The Ten Commandments of Index Investing
Much of life is too complicated to be boiled down to just a few simple rules to follow. But it is possible to make investing clearer and simpler than the media and financial services industry have. So listen up heathens…here are the 10 commandments of simple low-cost equity investing. 1. Know thy purpose Money is […]
Not wanting something is as good as having it
I’ve said before that there are two ways to improve your happiness. You can either get more or you can want less. Either way works. I’m not sure it matters which way is “best”. What I’m sure about is that wanting less is a whole lot cheaper than getting more. Consider the boundary case of […]
It’s Good to Talk
It’s good to talk… …so why do people often steer clear of talking about money…even though it has such an important role in our lives? Well, personal finance is…personal. You can’t have a proper conversation about money without touching on values: people’s deeply held beliefs and priorities. Everyone is different and we all have different […]
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
There’s nothing like an early taste of poverty for instilling a lifelong appreciation of money and financial freedom. My parents stretched themselves with a big mortgage to get up the housing ladder in 1981, just before interest rates went to 17%. Ouch! As a result, holidays and newspapers got cancelled and belts had to be […]
First things first : get out of debt
Here’s a question I saw online in a financial discussion forum: “I would like to ask some advice from you. I have recently came into a small windfall of money to the sum of £3K and wondered what best to do with it. Not a lot I know, but for my salary its quite a […]
Get rich…in Monk Mode
Now is the perfect time to experience what I call Monk Mode. In Monk Mode you work, you think and you rest. Then you repeat. In Monk Mode you spend NO MONEY other than needed for food and utilities. Millions of people are currently discovering some version of Monk Mode for the first time. For […]
How To Build A Compounding Machine
Imagine a black box. Your job is to earn and save as much money as you can. You put the cash saved into the black box…into your compounding machine. Once you put the cash inside the box and close the lid, the magic starts to happen. Inside the black box the most powerful force in […]
The Inestimable Advantages of Living a More Natural Life
Our ancestors lived for millions of years without money. This explains why spending does not equal happiness. The things that make us happy are the natural “wins” that we would have experienced over the millennia: being in nature, overcoming obstacles, eating real food, conversation and laughter, good sex, happy children and community. The best things in life […]
The Beauty of Minimalism
We are buying things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t even know The Minimalists At last! I finally got round to watching the film “Minimalism” on Netflix which features Josh and Ryan aka The Minimalists. I loved the film and I’m fascinated by the overlap between minimalism and […]
The Escape Artist 