Notes on money, slowly

No schemes, no returns promised. Just the arithmetic of ordinary decisions, written out in full.

Money writing usually comes in two flavours. One sells you something. The other tells you to spend less on coffee. Neither does the thing that actually helps, which is to take a decision you are going to make anyway and work the numbers all the way through.

That is what these pages do. Each one takes a single ordinary decision — paying a debt early, keeping a reserve, lending to family — and follows it to the end, including the parts that are uncomfortable.

The expensive mistakes are rarely dramatic. They are small, repeated and never written down.

Nothing here is advice for your situation, because your situation is not in front of me. It is arithmetic you can redo with your own numbers, which is more useful anyway.

Last reviewed 2026-10-18.