One of the things I’ve done over the years is pick up a ton of different side hustles – side hustles that are, to be frank, probably “beneath” someone with my level of pedigree and prestige. After all, I went to a top law school and worked at one of the largest law firms in […]
Financial Independence
You Can’t Vs. Why Can’t You
One of the interesting things I’ve noticed is that when you start telling people to do things differently, a lot of people start coming out of the woodwork to tell you why whatever it is you’re telling people to do can’t be done. The reasoning varies slightly, but the end result always seems to be the […]
You Don’t Need To Start Your Career In Your 20s
One of the things I wish I had done differently was to not be in such a hurry to rush into a career. For some reason, when I was 22-years old, I felt like I had to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life right away, and that if I didn’t […]
What Matters In A Downturn – It’s Not Your Investments, It’s Losing Your Job
When I graduated from college back in 2009, the country was in the midst of the biggest recession since the Great Depression. During that two or three year span, the market lost nearly 50% of its value, and it didn’t fully recover until well after 2009. Luckily for me, I was a broke college student […]
What Am I So Afraid Of? A Reaffirmation To Myself
When I look back at my life, I think there’s one thing that has guided a lot of my decision-making – fear. It’s a powerful emotion, one that I think pushes many of us onto the paths that we find ourselves on – whether we know it or not. Of course, a healthy dose of […]
The Privilege Of Biking To Work
I bike to work five days a week, and every once in a while, I like to reflect on how fortunate I am to be able to do that. It’s a wonderful situation that I find myself in. I live close enough to my office that biking to work isn’t a particularly difficult thing for […]
You Choose What You Can Afford
Sometime not too long ago, my wife and I had lunch with my brother and a friend of his. It was our first time meeting this friend, so we got into all of the usual pleasantries that come with meeting someone – what do you do, where do you live, and other things like that. […]
Fighting The Innate Urge To Chase Prestige
Part of the duties of my current day job involves going to a bunch of lawyer conferences. As a result, I’m often surrounded by really successful lawyers. These are lawyers who have done pretty much everything right in their legal careers – top grades, good law schools, big-name law firms. One thing they all definitely […]
Neighborhood Arbitrage – The Advantages Of Living In A College Neighborhood
I’m often met with what I can only say is “bemusement” when fellow attorneys see me biking to get from place to place. Even after 7 months at my new job, the executive director of my organization still asks me every time he sees me whether I biked into work that day. Admittedly, biking is […]
An Investing Tip – Learn To Be Happy With Enough
I recently read an article on Marketwatch about some kid that lost his life savings doing some fancy stock market thing that I didn’t really understand. According to the article, this dude lost his life savings trading something called a “contract for differences.” Whatever that is, it predictably ended up not working out and he […]
