About Me

Hey there, thanks for checking out the site - my name’s Jake and I’ve got a nerdly passion for finance and how money works. I started this newsletter in an attempt to help people without much experience in various finance aspects such as budgeting, planning for retirement, credit, and anything else our money can get involved in.

Tl;Dr - A < 1,000 word newsletter on basic finance, budgeting, and retirement planning that I think we probably should have been taught in school, but weren’t.

My goal isn’t to tell anyone what to do, but to educate as many people as possible in how some of this stuff actually works in a way that’s easy to digest without getting too dragged down into the mud of complicated financial terms. Nothing here is going to be rocket science, but I have found after helping a couple dozen friends and family in my life that the vast majority of them have huge knowledge gaps in everything from how a credit card works to ‘what stocks do I pick to be a millionaire in like.. 6 months?’ (spoiler: no one knows, and if they say they do - run).

I also don’t know everything, but I am an avid reader and I am passionate about finance and started my journey to understanding how this stuff works about 10 years ago when I was (at the time) a college dropout and bartending and/or waiting tables. My wife and I have been cup ramen and food stamps broke, we’ve been in 6 figure debt and, more importantly, were absolutely, unequivocally, stupid about money in our early 20’s.

Like so many of my peers (I’m 35 now), I was told ‘Go to college, take on debt to pay for it, and when you’re done you’ll be set for life!’. What I wasn’t told about was ‘interest’. Of course I had a vague idea of what interest was, but do you think I wrote out an attack plan for how I was going to pay off $30,000 of school debt at varying interest rates in the 5-10% range? Absolutely not, I bought a sweet gaming PC and promptly dropped out of college after my first two years. Then I tried the whole college thing again a couple years later, and dropped out again with another $25,000 of debt on top of the previous (that I hadn’t even BEGUN to think about paying off). I did eventually graduate, but all told it took me about 8 years to get my Bachelor’s degree, and I ended the ordeal with about $75,000 of debt (about the same amount for my wife). On top of that, we had credit card debt, not because we couldn’t afford to eat at this point, but because we wanted cool stuff, and all our friends were buying stuff with credit cards and FOMO is a hell of an influencer when you’re still figuring out what you want to do in life.

I wasn’t taught about 401k’s, I wasn’t taught about planning for retirement, I wasn’t taught about credit cards, not compound interest, not credit scores, nada. But I could absolutely put my name down on those loans at 18 years old, I could absolutely apply for those credit cards that came in the mail a week after my 18th birthday, and I could absolutely (and DID) royally screw up. To be clear, it was absolutely my own fault, but truly, even a basic understanding of how a credit card works would have been a step up from my initial ignorance.

So all that to say: I’ve been there, I’ve lived it, and, if possible, I’d like to make sure that no one has to repeat my mistakes because fixing them has taken years, tears, and more money than I like to think about. I’m currently sitting on ~830 credit score, the only debt I’ve got is my house and the family car (no regrets, I’ve got a gd minivan and I love it), and I’m much more confident in the financial decisions I’ve made for myself and my family. I’ve had a lot of success helping friends navigate through their own financial woes, I’m that guy in the friend group who ‘knows money stuff’, and I’m eager to do my best to help educate anyone who cares to listen and would like to also feel the comfort of being confident in making financial decisions for their future.

Again, thanks for reading and I genuinely hope that the information I share here is useful to you in helping you make your own financial decisions in a way that you understand and feel confident about.

Jake