Systems-First Financial Publications
Rigorous, fluff-free guides designed for engineers, founders, and analytical thinkers. Complete with equations, spreadsheets, and verifiable historical models.
The Money Loop
How compounding makes returns generate returns.
Deconstructs how investment returns become part of the base that generates future returns, why time sits in the exponent, and why Maya outperforms Leo.
Buy the Average
Dollar-cost averaging, turned into a simple investing system.
Dollar-cost averaging deconstructed as an algorithmic system. Fixed cash flow into variable prices, the harmonic mean, and the compounding crossover.
Fault Tolerant
How diversification protects your portfolio from a single point of failure.
How diversification protects your portfolio from a single point of failure. The Zero Test, position-size scaling, idiosyncratic vs. systematic risk, and damage containment.
Low Overhead
Why investment costs quietly eat your returns.
Why investment costs quietly eat your returns. How expense ratios, trading friction, and management overhead quietly drain long-term compounding over multi-decade horizons.
The Debt Loop
How borrowing turns the same math against you.
How borrowing turns the same math against you. Principal and interest, the minimum-payment trap, amortization, and how to systematically break the loop.
The Silent Leak
How inflation quietly erodes the money you're not investing.
Why cash in a drawer guarantees purchasing power loss. The inflation formula, nominal vs. real returns, the $100 basket experiment, and why 'safe' cash carries hidden risk.
The Buffer
Why cash reserves aren't wasted money — they're insurance.
How to calculate your emergency runway in months, where to park risk-free reserves (HYSA, Treasury bills, MMFs), and why cash buffers prevent catastrophic forced selling.
The Allocation Problem
A simple system for deciding where every dollar goes.
How to allocate monthly take-home income across essential bills, debt elimination, cash reserves, long-term investments, and current lifestyle.
Risk, Configured
Matching your portfolio settings to your actual timeline.
Book 9 of Money Under the Hood. Learn how to configure portfolio risk, understand asymmetric recovery math, and match settings to timelines.
The Tax Shield
How tax-advantaged accounts let compounding run faster.
How tax-advantaged accounts minimize tax drag, the mathematical equivalence between Traditional and Roth accounts, 401(k) employer matches, HSAs, and asset location.