Philosophy

Evidence-based. Disciplined. Built for real lives.

I don’t make investment decisions based on hunches, headlines, or predictions. I use an evidence-based framework grounded in decades of peer-reviewed academic research.

My goal is simple: build plans that are diversified, resilient, tax-efficient, and designed for the long term — not market noise.

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1. Your Plan Serves Your Life

The plan is not the point.
Your life is the point.

The financial plan must support:

  • your work

  • your projects

  • your seasons

  • your goals

  • your time horizon

  • your tolerance for volatility

  • your need for freedom and flexibility

A plan is simply a tool to help you build the future you’ve chosen.

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2. Stability before Optimazation

Creators and entrepreneurs can have times of both consistent and irregular income. Their plan must reflect that reality.

So plan design always considers:

  • cash-flow volatility

  • emergency reserves

  • project-based spending cycles

  • the need for liquidity

  • uneven earning years

Plans don’t exist in a vacuum — they exist inside the rhythm of your actual life.

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3. Plan for the Unplanned

Protection is the part of planning most people skip, and it’s the part that prevents financial ruin.

What I mean by protection:

  • Life insurance: if you die early, it replaces income and protects your family’s plan.

  • Disability insurance: if you cannot work, it protects your income, which is usually your biggest asset.

  • Health coverage planning: making sure a medical event does not become a financial catastrophe.

  • Auto & Liability coverage: if you hurt someone, cause damage, or get sued, liability insurance and an umbrella policy help prevent one incident from wiping out years of savings.

  • Property coverage (renters, homeowners, equipment): protects what you own so you are not rebuilding from zero.

The point is not to insure everything. The point is to cover the risks you cannot afford to self-insure, so your plan can survive real life and you can stay invested through it.

Important: I don’t sell insurance and I don’t earn commissions on insurance products. When insurance comes up, my job is to help you choose the right type and amount of coverage in your best interest, and coordinate implementation through the appropriate channels as needed.

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4. Markets Work

I operate from a foundational belief supported by overwhelming empirical data:

Markets are broadly efficient.

Prices incorporate available information quickly and globally.

This means I don’t try to outguess the market, time the market, or chase the news cycle. The expected payoff for doing so is low, the behavioral risk is high, and the academic evidence is clear: discipline beats prediction.

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5. Diversification Is Non-Negotiable

Concentrated portfolios create unnecessary risk without additional expected return.

I use global diversification across:

  • U.S. equities

  • International developed equities

  • Emerging markets equities

  • A disciplined, transparent mix of high-quality fixed income

  • Commodities (if appropriate)

  • Cryptocurrency (if appropriate)

Diversification is the only free lunch in finance — it has the potential to reduce risk without reducing expected return.

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6. Take Compensated Risk

Decades of independent research show that certain systematic sources of return — known as factors — have historically generated higher expected returns.

The primary factors I consider are:

  • Market (stocks > bonds over long horizons)

  • Size

  • Value

  • Momentum (cross-sectional momentum)

  • Profitability/Quality

  • Term (longer-duration bonds, when appropriate)

Alternative style premia (factors):

  • Trend (time-series momentum)

  • Carry

  • Defensive

  • Merger Arbitrage

  • Reinsurance

  • Private Credit

I tilt portfolios toward factors with persistent, robust evidence.
Not to chase performance, but to improve expected long-term outcomes.

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7. Costs Matter

High fees compound in the wrong direction. But cost doesn’t matter in a vacuum — it matters per unit of value. Every investment decision should weigh what you’re paying against what the evidence says you’re likely to receive.

I prefer:

  • low, transparent costs

  • no hidden commissions or incentive structures

  • simple, scalable implementation

  • strategies with clear, evidence-backed expectations

Cost matters because every dollar you don’t hand over in unnecessary fees stays invested for your future — and the dollars you do pay should deliver real, measurable value.

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8. Respect Taxes

Tax management isn’t an afterthought — it’s part of the planning process.

I use:

  • intelligent asset location (placing tax-inefficient assets in tax-advantaged accounts)

  • tax-loss harvesting where appropriate

  • minimizing unnecessary turnover

  • long-term holding periods to capture favorable tax rates

Good tax strategy is worth as much as good investing.

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Short-term market movements are noise.
Long-term expected returns are signal.

Everything in my approach — diversification, factor tilts, cost control, tax strategy, rebalancing — is built to serve decades, not news cycles.

9. Play the Long Game

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10. Freedom is Currency

When people hear retirement planning, they picture golf. But golf is not the point. The point is turning your hard-earned savings into time and optionality.

Over time, we shift from:

  • accumulation (saving and investing), to

  • distribution (using what you built to fund life)

Distribution must be strategic. It’s about deciding how much to take, from which accounts, in what order, and how to adjust when markets are rough, so you’re not forced into bad decisions.

And because life is unpredictable, we also make sure the fundamentals are set: beneficiaries, account ownership, and estate documents that keep the plan intact even if you’re not around to explain it.