The Real Cost of Tariffs on Your Household
I’ve been watching the tariff coverage closely since early 2025 and noticed something that I think is causing more confusion than the tariffs themselves: the numbers being cited are wildly…
Build Once, Compound Forever: The Long-Term Investing Mindset That Actually Works
Part 10 of the Rational Compounding Framework Somewhere in the past decade, financial content stopped being about building wealth and became about maintaining engagement. The two goals are not compatible.…
Career Income vs Investment Returns: When Your Job Is Your Best Investment
Part 9 of the Rational Compounding Framework There’s a debate that runs through personal finance content that I think is mostly a waste of time: should you focus on earning…
The $5 Million Problem: What High Earners Get Wrong at Every Net Worth Milestone
Part 8 of the Rational Compounding Framework Here’s something that took me an embarrassingly long time to understand: getting from zero to $1 million and getting from $1 million to…
Designing Your Personal Wealth Management System
Part 7 of the Rational Compounding Framework Most people manage their money the way they manage their inbox — reactively. They open the investment app when markets drop 8% and…
The Illusion of “Tax Hacks”: Why Optimization Is Not a Strategy
Part 6 of the Rational Compounding Framework There’s a certain type of finance content that feels incredibly productive to read. It goes something like this: max your HSA, do the…
Buy the Dip—But Only If You Have a Deployment System
Part 5 of the Rational Compounding Framework March 2020. The S&P 500 drops 34% in 23 days. I watched three groups of people respond to the same event in completely…
The RSU Trap: When Employer Stock Becomes a Hidden Liability
Part 4 of the Rational Compounding Framework A friend at Google had a realization last year that I’ve watched play out more times than I can count. He’d been there…
Why High Earners Still Fail to Build Wealth
Part 3 of the Rational Compounding Framework There’s a specific kind of broke that doesn’t look broke. Last year I came across a thread on Blind where a $350K Meta…
The 3 Engines of Wealth: Income, Investment, and Optionality
Part 2 of the Rational Compounding Framework I know someone who made $400K last year and lives paycheck to paycheck. I know someone else who makes $120K and has $800K invested,…
