Started with $50. Still going.
Nobody taught you this. That’s not your fault.
Real numbers, real mistakes, no finance degree, no Wall Street job. Start from the beginning.
The Compound Yourself framework
1
Compound your knowledge
Understand money before you touch it
2
Compound your foundation
Control spending, build the floor
3
Compound your money
First investments, making money work
4
Compound yourself
Skills, income growth, earning potential
5
Compound everything
Optimization, tax, advanced moves
Chapters
Chapter 1 – Published
The Origin: How I Lost Money Before I Made Any
All mistakes, all losses, and what they actually taught me about how markets work.
- I started investing by betting fake coins on currency pairs I didn’t understand. That was the best decision I made.
- The jobs report looked good. I still lost. Here’s why.
- I built a perfect spreadsheet for my crypto returns. I never asked if the company was real.
- My first real investment didn’t move for six months. I still made 25%.
Chapter 2 – Published
The Foundation: Why I Had to Fix My Spending Before Anything Else
Why budgeting comes before investing, and what happened when I finally looked at where my money was actually going.
- $4,500 in savings. $2,500 repair. I still had to stop investing.
- I had a budget. I still couldn’t find $300 a month.
- Why I keep my emergency fund in a HYSA and not a checking account
- I added one column to my spreadsheet and my budget finally made sense
- How I plan a road trip budget that matches what I actually spend
- I paid off my car loan early. Here’s what financing the car actually cost me.
Chapter 3 – In progress
The First Step: How to Actually Start Investing
From having a foundation to making your first real investment accounts, funds, and decisions nobody explains clearly.
Chapter 4 – coming soon
The Highest Return Investment You’re Probably Ignoring
Why the best investment before $100k-$150k income is in yourself and the math that proves it.
Who this is for
I was 21 when I understood what money actually is.
Not wealth. Not freedom. Not a number to flex. A buffer. The thing that stands between you and a car repair turning into a crisis. Between a health problem and a panic. Between losing a job and losing everything.
Nobody taught me that. I figured it out by looking at my own account and realizing that if anything went wrong tomorrow. Anything – I had nothing.
So I started there. Not with stocks. Not with crypto. With the question nobody asks first: where is my money actually going, and what happens if I need it?
I wish someone had written this without a paywall or an ad in every corner.
About the author
I’m Leo
Started with $50. Still going.
I started my journey with $50 and no idea what I was doing.
By 22 I was confident I knew how money worked. I had a job, a bank account, and a plan in my head. It turned out I actually had a car loan bigger than I could afford.
Before that, at 21, I bought a phone that cost more than double what was left in my bank account after I bought it. And before even that, I was betting on binary options with free coins from a platform I found on YouTube, thinking I understood how trading worked. No, I didn’t. Then I moved to crypto mining and built a two-year plan projecting every dollar I was going to make. The company behind it turned out to be a $577 million international fraud. My math was great, but I never asked if the company was real.
No financial degree. No inheritance. No six-figure job at a Silicon Valley company you will never be hired by. I started from the same place you’re probably at right now, with a little or no money and a lot of doubt.
At Not Your Finance Bro, I started to write what I actually learned, with real numbers, a real thinking process, and real mistakes behind it.
I’m not an advisor, and I’m not selling you anything. I’m describing my road and leaving notes.
New Every Week.
No jargon. No flexing.
Real numbers, real mistakes, new every week. No finance degree required.
No spam. Unsubscribe any time.