Quick Takes: Lessons From My Worst Financial Year
I lost money on stupid things. Here's what that taught me about the difference between thinking you understand finance and actually living it.
Hub · Money
Money for Irregular Income
Financial advice for people whose paycheck doesn't show up on the 1st.
Most personal-finance writing assumes a salary. Yours might not work that way. The posts on this shelf are about the financial machinery freelancers and irregular-income workers actually need: cash buffers, smoothing a lumpy income into a stable monthly draw, tax-quarter planning, what to do during a recovery quarter, when to raise rates, and how to think about the savings questions that mainstream advice silently miscalibrates.
Some of the posts push back on books in the genre. "Die With Zero" gets a careful audit. The FIRE movement gets a sideways look from someone who can't model lifetime earnings as a smooth curve. The buffer-as-waste argument gets a freelance-flavored counter-reading.
Nothing here is investment advice. The shelf is about cash-flow survival and the boring infrastructure that makes a long freelance career possible. The stuff the finance influencers skip because it doesn't make a clean reel.
34 posts in this hub · Money & Finance
Start here
A short shelf to begin with
If this is your first time on this hub, these are reasonable entry points.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Passive Income in 2026
Passive income exists. But not the way it's sold. Here's what the real numbers actually look like in 2026.
The 80/20 of Personal Finance Nobody Explains Well
Most personal finance advice is noise. Three moves generate 80% of the results. Here's what they are and why everything else is optional.
Books That Explain Why We Buy Things
Understanding the hidden psychology behind your purchases isn't guilt. It's clarity. Here are six books that explain exactly why we buy what we buy.
Starter Pack: Tax Season for Freelancers
Tax season doesn't have to feel like a financial emergency. Here's the stuff you actually need to know, and the tools that make it painless.
Books That Made Me Better With Money (Not Rich, Better)
Money books aren't about getting rich. They're about changing how you think, so your money works differently.
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Freelance Taxes: The Stuff Your Accountant Assumes You Know
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How to Raise Your Rates Without Losing Clients (A Script That Actually Works)
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The $250/Hour Freelancer Skills Nobody Talks About
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Books That Made Me Less Afraid of Money Conversations
Talking about money used to make me physically uncomfortable. These five books didn't fix that entirely, but they gave me a vocabulary, and the nerve, to stop avoiding it.
Starter Pack: Investing for People Who Think It's Too Late
You're not behind. You're not too old. You're just starting later than the conventional timeline says you should. Here's what actually matters about getting your money into the market.
Cheap Tools That Replaced Expensive Ones in My Workflow
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The Financial Habits That Actually Moved the Needle
Not theory, not inspirational nonsense. The specific things I did that changed my actual financial reality. Here's what worked.