Choose Your Own Finance

Choose Your Own Finance Personal Finance Educator and Coach based in Abu Dhabi.

25/09/2026

You might not need more money. You might need to look at what you have.

An old pension from a job in a country you left. A rollover that never got finished. An account you opened once and never picked a fund inside.

None of that is a discipline problem. Those are steps nobody walks you through.

Before you go looking for more to invest, check that what you already set aside is actually doing something.

Shame is why you haven't looked.Not laziness. Not being bad with money. Shame, which is a completely different animal, a...
23/09/2026

Shame is why you haven't looked.

Not laziness. Not being bad with money. Shame, which is a completely different animal, and it works by making a small thing feel like a verdict on who you are.

An unopened credit card balance. A pension from a job you left in 2007. A statement you've walked past for four months. Your brain turns it into a story about your entire character, so you avoid the room.

Numbers are neutral. They're not good or bad. Having debt doesn't make you a bad person, and not having a plan yet doesn't make you irresponsible.

The shame usually starts melting the second you actually look, because what's there is almost always smaller than the story about it.

What's the one you've been avoiding?

21/09/2026

If you don’t build your FI Life Skills alongside your portfolio, you won’t be able to enjoy that freedom when the numbers say its yours.

Separating your identity and sense of purpose from work and money is one of the most important FI Life Skills. Most people wait until they arrive at financial independence to even start thinking about it, and that's exactly when it becomes a crisis.

You're allowed to start that work now, messily, alongside the financial plan, not after it.

Almost nobody knows what they spend.That's the actual barrier. Not the math, not the multiplier, not picking investments...
16/09/2026

Almost nobody knows what they spend.

That's the actual barrier. Not the math, not the multiplier, not picking investments. People ask me how much they need in order to retire, and the honest answer is that I can't tell them until they can tell me what a year of their life costs.

Most can't. Including very senior, very numerate people. They can tell you their salary exactly. They can model a budget at work without blinking. Ask what last year cost them personally and you get a shrug and a guess, and the guess is nearly always off.

That isn't a character flaw. Nobody has ever asked them the question. Money going out doesn't arrive with a payslip attached.

Which is why the first thing I do with anyone is make it visible. All of it, in one place, in front of us. It's unglamorous, it takes about an hour, but it lays the foundation for everything we build afterwards.

You can't plan around a number you've never looked at.

14/09/2026

You don't need your life together to run this number.

This works whether you're mid-mess, between countries, between jobs, or still figuring out what you even want retirement to look like. The formula doesn't ask you to be sorted first.

It just asks for twelve months of bank statements and honesty about what you actually spent, not what you meant to spend.

Once you know your FI number, you can chart a timeline and adjust as needed to get there.

In 2006 I couldn't afford an onion.I was living in a clapboard house in the North Carolina mountains with a hole in the ...
11/09/2026

In 2006 I couldn't afford an onion.

I was living in a clapboard house in the North Carolina mountains with a hole in the bathroom wall you could see daylight through. No insulation. February. Bitterly cold.

Payday was a few days out and I had nothing. I opened the cupboard and found rice and a bag of red lentils, so I knew I'd eat. There just wasn't a dollar for an onion to cook them with.

That was the moment it turned. Not because I found some discipline I'd been missing. Because I finally understood the problem wasn't my spending. It was my income. And no amount of being careful was ever going to fix that.

So I went back to school, took on MORE debt, and started teaching that September. My income doubled.

Fast forward 20 years and now I’m a millionaire, living off my investment income, writing and running a business just because I want to.

Start from wherever you are. That's the most important step.

09/09/2026

Anyone else check their portfolio way more often when the market gets shaky?

I hear this constantly. The checking isn't the problem, it's just a sign that the volatility is doing exactly what volatility does. The question is what you do with that urge once you notice it.

What's your go-to move when the market news gets loud? Do you check more, or do you avoid it completely?

I left two pensions behind in a country I no longer lived in.I taught in Georgia before I moved abroad, and when I left,...
31/08/2026

I left two pensions behind in a country I no longer lived in.

I taught in Georgia before I moved abroad, and when I left, those accounts just stayed where they were. Not because I'm careless with money. Because there was never a moment where anyone sat me down and said, right, here's what happens to these now.

So they sat. For years. While I got on with a whole new life somewhere else.

When I finally went and looked, they turned out to be completely different animals. One was fine and doing its job. The other was never going to pay me anything unless I stayed 25 years, which I hadn't and was never going to.

I got that money out and put it somewhere it could actually work.

I'm telling you this because even though I do this for a living now, and I still spent years not looking. If you've got something parked in a country you left, you're not behind. You're normal.

Go find one of them this week.

Knowing it's a sale doesn't make it feel like one.I can explain this to someone, watch them nod, watch it genuinely land...
28/08/2026

Knowing it's a sale doesn't make it feel like one.

I can explain this to someone, watch them nod, watch it genuinely land, and three weeks later a headline drops and they stop their contributions anyway.

That's not stupidity. Your nervous system doesn't read carousels. It sees a number going down and files it under danger, and it does that at 11pm when there's nobody around to talk you out of it.

So the fix isn't more understanding. It's deciding now, while nothing is happening, what you'll do when it does. Write it somewhere you'll actually find it.

I'm not selling. I'm not stopping the transfer. I'll look again in three months.

Then when the day comes, you're not making a decision. You're following one you already made while you were calm.

That's the whole trick. It's boring, and it works.

Save this for the next red week.

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Abu Dhabi

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+971561073206

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