Author Archives: The Escape Artist
First things first : get out of debt
“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 me (on a low salary) its quite a bit. Initially my thoughts were to either: – […]
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, relationships, happy children and community. The best things in life are […]
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 Minimalism is simple. Its where you stop buying, worshipping and hording ever more stuff – physical possessions. What I love about minimalism is that it’s 100% positive and the benefits are immediate. And where […]
How to Get Rich (without getting lucky)
Today we have some solid gold from Naval Ravikant’s twitter feed. For those of you that have not come across Naval, he’s a remarkable individual. He started off as a penniless Indian immigrant and ended up a wealthy American tech entrepreneur / investor in San Francisco. He’s the founder of AngelList and invested at an […]
Power is the ability to control your own life
This is the story of Ralph, taken from the book Why Men Are The Way They Are by Warren Farrell. Ralph’s story may not be normal – he was an unusually high earning lawyer – but it is representative. You can think of this as a parable about the trap of becoming overly focussed on status and […]
The 3 numbers that can make you a millionaire
Last week I gave a talk to a room of people about 3 numbers that can change your life. I’d been invited to speak to a London team of an American multinational company by a reader who is a good guy and an unusually enlightened manager. He’d been struck by the lack of unbiased financial […]
Baby steps for future millionaires
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a first step. For those that are new to the concept of financial independence, here are 10 baby steps on The Path to becoming a millionaire. Re-programming our habits eventually creates incredible results. The magic is in the aggregation of marginal gains. 1. Go one day without spending […]
Is your financial adviser screwing you?
I’m going to turn down a new job tomorrow. People keep telling me that I’ll need to get another job…for mental stimulation even if not for the money. They may be right about that, but this particular job is not for me. Its not because I can’t do the job. Its a wealth management role that […]
Mortgages…and the Banker’s Jar
Imagine you are a young guy and you want to buy a house. You go to the Bank to borrow £250,000. After all, everyone else is doing it…how hard can it be? You are 25 and have the rest of your life to pay it back. The bank manager looks at you, checks that you have a job (wearing a […]
The Escape Artist 