A few years ago I started reading about personal finance the way other people read mystery novels — late at night, one chapter leading into another, mildly addicted. Compound interest, index funds, tax wrappers, the dull magic of just leaving things alone for a long time. I expected it to be boring. It turned out to be one of the most interesting subjects I’d ever picked up.
Two things surprised me.
The first was how simple the core ideas are once someone explains them in plain words. The actual math fits on the back of a napkin: spend less than you earn, invest the difference in something boring and diversified, give it time. Almost every “advanced” topic is a footnote to that.
The second was how badly that simple message is communicated to most people. The personal finance content I found in Italian and Romanian was either dry textbook theory or thinly disguised advertising for a product nobody needs. The good stuff — the kind that respects your time and treats you like an adult — was almost all in English, and almost all aimed at an American audience with an American tax system.
That’s the gap I’d like to chip away at, in small pieces, on this site.
What you’ll find here
The plan, roughly:
- Concepts, explained the way I’d explain them to a friend over coffee. No “easy six-step system to become a millionaire”. Just the actual ideas, with enough context that you can argue with me.
- Calculators, because some things are easier to understand when you can move a slider and watch the chart change. The first one is a compound interest calculator, coming soon. More will follow.
- My own thinking out loud as I prepare to become a financial advisor in Italy. I’m not one yet — I’m a data engineer who reads too much. I’ll be honest about that the whole way through.
What you won’t find here
I won’t tell you which stocks to buy. I won’t sell you a course. I won’t promise you’ll be rich. If a page on this site ever does any of those things, please email me and tell me to stop.
What I’m aiming for is something closer to a relaxed lecture from a friend who happens to be obsessed with this stuff. Useful, interesting, and hopefully a little less intimidating than the textbook on your shelf.
A first toy to play with
Speaking of compound interest — I built a small calculator for it, and it lives in the new Tools section. You can open it directly here. Move the sliders, change the numbers, watch the chart redraw. The whole point is to feel, not just read, what happens when you leave money alone for a long time and let interest start earning interest of its own.
More tools will land there over time. For now, that one calculator is the entire collection — the first of what I hope becomes a small wall of them.