An Everyday Influence

5 Basics for Financial Freedom A Caveat:      I am no financial expert; I do not have a degree in finance, nor do I have a CFA. For legal reasons everything mentioned down below is the ramblings of a guy with a modest investment portfolio, a small list of alternative investments and a modest Roth IRA. If you are in dire financial straits, seek professional help, don't listen to the ramblings of random men on the internet. Money Made Simple     Many real financial experts will tell you that simplicity is key when delving into personal finance. Everything you need to know about money, should be easily summed up onto a notecard. With that in mind, I thought it a prudent action to list out the simple things I have learned in my own journey through personal  finance and explain the rationale behind it. Rule One: The Budget is the Backbone of Personal Finance.     Before stocks, bonds, ETFs, mutual funds, gold, silver, crypto, real estate, and...

Judge a Book by its Cover.      There is a growing generation of adults dressing in poor taste. They justify their excessively scantily clad attire and their messy, unkempt fashion with excuses like "Why do you care?", "Don't sexualize my body.", "Why does it matter?", and "It's my body, I will dress how I want." These excuses often leave the older generation exasperated without retort. It is my hope that I can shed some light-on why dressing like a hooker or a homeless POS is against your best interest. Heuristics, Hedonism and Egotism.     It takes exactly 0.4 seconds for someone to form an opinion on you. Before you open your mouth, you are filed away into some mental category. That snap judgement of your merit is quick, decisive and often reductive of one's identity. In 0.4 seconds, the opposite party will decide if you are a peer, an enemy, someone to take seriously or someone to blow off. The post-modern ideology is to blatantly...

 Crypto Makes Men Into Victims     There is a phenomenon YouTube channel called "Coffeezilla" dedicated to the uncovering of financial scams. The owner and sole proprietor of the channel makes his living by exposing fraud and interviewing the victims of these scams, in the hopes that we can learn how to better protect our wealth. From all of the scams that Coffeezilla has exposed, I have noticed that the great majority of the victims of these financial scams are young men. This begs the following questions: Why do men keep falling for crypto scams? Why is Crypto a terrible investment? How can we better protect our assets from fraud? Misguided Masculinity A Metaphysical Failing     Many men fall for these crypto scams because they have been fed the lies of modernity. Traditionally, the mark of a man was rooted in both the physical component of his wealth and ability, and the metaphysical component of his values, character and temperament. With the corruption of p...

 The Art of the EDC The Unintentional EDC      EDC or "Every Day Carry" refers to the list of items we pat our pockets for before we leave for work and head out the door. For example, many of us carry at the very least: a phone, a wallet, and our car keys. For most of us, an EDC consists of the daily items required to operate in our jobs or lives effectively. For some of us however, the EDC acts as a force multiplier and a lifeline should we find ourselves in an emergency situation. Styles of EDC      There are two types of EDC styles: on-body EDC and off-body EDC. In the military, the on-body gear is mission critical and important for survival and warfare. It is often called your first-line and second-line gear. Off-body EDC is gear that is still readily carried but is contained in a day bag or assault pack. On Body-EDC      Although many of us do not need to conduct ourselves in warfare and therefor lack the need for primary and second...

   "r/wallstreetbets": An Anecdote for Life      I have a friend who lost tens of thousands of dollars day trading. He would spend his days option trading at more than 2:1 leverage, shorting stocks, trading cryptocurrency and perusing through Forex. He found himself in the r/wallstreetbets lifestyle, attempting to gain financial independence through high-risk, high reward strategies.... only, they were not strategies. My friend would spend twenty minutes to an hour, combing through Reddit, TikTok, and various forums in search of the next meme stock, biotech lab to short, or altcoin that promised him outrageous returns. He fell prey to the venom that is self-pride and the confirmation bias of wealth influencers who "teach" trading courses. He would make thousands of dollars in the span of hours, and then subsequently lose all of his gain in the same day. Some days his portfolio would be up, but most days he would funnel money into his portfolio in an attempt to r...

Cigars 101 Cigar Knowledge Preface     I enjoy smoking cigars, if you do not smoke cigars, this is not me advocating nor pressuring you to smoke cigars. Whether you are a new smoker, or not a smoker, I think that in most cases, learning is edifying. I encourage you to stick around and browse the article, hopefully you'll learn something new and be better for it.   A Brief History      A cigar is a cylinder of tobacco that has been aged and seasoned to bring out unique characteristics held within the tobacco's leaves. Primitive cigars were originally smoked by the ancient Mayan people, who would roll tobacco in palm or plantain leaves before smoking it. Cigars and tobacco reached the Old World when Christopher Columbus brought tobacco back from the New World to Spain. The use of tobacco was quickly and widely adopted by Spain and Portugal. When the French Ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot, brought tobacco with him to France, the French quickly adopted the h...