Personal Finance

Personal finance, saving, investing, budgeting, and retirement planning.

Just my two cents:

• The stock market is one of the easiest way to build wealth, where the payoff can be decoupled from time
• Based on historical data, the stock market is a random walk with drift
• Therefore, invest early and regularly rather than timing the market
• I mostly invest in ETFs. I believe it is really hard to beat the market
• One might be able to get rich quickly (~10 years) but not get rich easily
• Bear manageable risk, sleep well, and invest in yourself

Related

• While you are thinking of how to earn more, preserve wealth, read the trap of money as well

Resources

• A beginner's guide to investing | GitHub @investindex
  • Understanding index fund, risk, building portfolio, tax (US focused), retirements planning
  • Two pages that are often skipped in other investing guides, but I think are important:
    • Your Psychology, e.g. common mistakes when investing, debunking fallacies
    • Guidelines for Personal Finance, e.g. buy v.s. rent house, pay debt v.s. invest
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street
  • This book teaches almost all the fundamental concepts related to investing
  • I think this is the best book to learn about investing

Sites

• Paisa.fyi (HN) — An open source personal finance tool based on ledger double entry accounting tool
• rich01.com (Chinese)
  • When I first started, this blog helped me a lot. It is written in Chinese
  • Debt, emergency fund, budgeting, risk and reward, diversification, tools, mindset etc.

Links

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad
  • Helped me get started on why I have to invest when I had no idea what is investing
  • Understand the concept of wealth, the time value of money, passive income and cash flow
  • Changes the way I look at money, asset and wealth
• Why It's So Hard To Beat The Market
  • High performers are not limited to a hot industry or sector
  • The stock market is skewed, the average is higher than the median
  • Resulting in a majority of underperformers and a minority of outperformers
  • Diversification like index fund is the key
• The Slings and Arrows of Passive Fortune (PDF)
  • It rebuts the critiques of passive investing in the market
  • Touches on how passive investment shifted and possibly improved the finance industry
• YouTube: Why financial literacy education in the US sucks | Vox
  • Shift in focus with the national defense education act in 1958
  • It's improving now
• YouTube: My honest advice to someone who wants financial freedom | Ali Abdaal (43:29)
  • The advice is still the good old starting your own business advance, but delivered with good stories and a persuasive monologue
  • Ask the why, what (how much) and how (how to get there)
  • Reading list: The Millionaire Fastlane, Million Dollar Weekend, $100M Offers, Dotcom secrets
• When is insurance worth it
  • Other than the probability of loss and the premium cost, it also depends on your wealth
  • Calculate based on the Kelly Criterion