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 […]
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 […]
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… …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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
I think of The News as like the announcements made over The Tannoy System in The Prison Camp. It’s a loud stream of misinformation, propaganda and general bullshit. I started avoiding The News as a deliberate part of my approach to investing. The aim was to reduce market noise, predictions and prophets of doom. Avoiding The News […]
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 […]
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 Escape Artist 