One night my parents had some friends over. One of them asked me “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I shrugged but some other guest chirped in “Independently wealthy?”
I didn’t know what that meant.
My dad was the first in his family to go to college. His dad was a butcher in Manchester NH who emigrated from Ukraine. My grandparents valued education above all else, my dad busted ass studying (and no doubt benefited from being a white man), and went to Brown University as an undergrad. He met my mom, whose family story should inspire a collaboration between Ken Burns and John Waters, and they fell in love. He went to medical school and then joined the Air Force. He was on the last plane out of Tripoli when Gaddafi took over Libya.
My dad went on to become one of the best eye surgeons in the world. He joined OCB when they were tiny and helped make them one of the best places to go if you were going blind.
All this to say I grew up not knowing much about money.
Fast forward to my third startup, BodesWell. I figured that software was the only way to get the benefits of financial planning to the 85 million US households who didn’t already have a planner.
Here are posts based on what I’ve learned about financial planning, budgeting and answering the question “How exactly is this all going to work out financially?”
In addition I want to write more about giving, generosity, or the feeling of having enough. This page is where I will post about those topics.
The first place to start whether you are just trying to figure out finances, or you want to hear a different perspective on familiar topics, is: