The specific setups I use to earn rewards and stay private
15 years of testing financial products and security tools - distilled into guides that tell you exactly what to do, not just what to consider.
Wealth Optimization
Credit card strategy, savings accounts, and retirement math - the exact setups that work.
How to Manage Your Money: A Personal Finance Guide
A practical framework for cash reserves, debt prioritization, and automated investing.
Advanced Wealth Management: Strategy Guide
How to optimize tax-advantaged accounts, asset location, and risk mitigation tools.
Backdoor Roth IRA: A Step-by-Step Walkthrough
How to execute high-income Roth contributions while managing tax reporting and the Pro-Rata rule.
Roth vs. Pre-Tax 401k: How to Choose
A mathematical framework for choosing between tax-advantaged accounts based on your future tax bracket.
How to Choose the Best High-Yield Savings Account
Why APY is the wrong thing to optimize for, how instant liquidity changes everything, and the two-account setup that actually works.
Wealthfront Review: Automated Investing That Actually Works
A hands-on review of Wealthfront's investing platform - automated index funds, tax-loss harvesting, retirement accounts, and the Portfolio Line of Credit.
How to Win the Credit Card Game
Strategies for maximizing rewards and maintaining a top credit score without paying interest.
Bilt 2.0: Pay Your Mortgage with Points (2026)
How to use the Bilt Rewards ecosystem and Bilt Cash to offset your rent or mortgage.
How to Choose the Best Travel Credit Card (2026)
A comparison of cards optimized for flight redemptions, hotel transfers, and elite status.
Amex Platinum vs. Chase Sapphire Reserve
An analysis of the annual fees, redemption values, and ancillary benefits of two premium travel accounts.
How to Master the Chase 5/24 Rule
A guide to the application limits at Chase and how to sequence your cards for maximum yield.
Security, Privacy & AI
Protect your digital life and get ahead of AI - the same systems I run every day.
How to Secure Your Digital Life
A complete system for credential management, multi-factor authentication, and browser privacy configurations.
Advanced Privacy & Security
Advanced configurations for encrypted email, mobile device hardening, and automated data removal.
Passkeys: The Password Replacement That Actually Works
How passkeys eliminate phishing, credential stuffing, and password reuse - and how to set them up on every major platform.
LLMs & AI Privacy: What Every User Should Know
How ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and AI voice tools handle your data - and the specific prompting habits, settings, and alternatives that reduce your exposure.
Do You Need a Hardware Security Key? YubiKey Guide
Who should use a hardware security key, which YubiKey to buy, and how to set it up across Google, GitHub, and your password manager.
Privacy Emergency Guide: Compromised Account Response
Emergency protocols for account takeovers, unauthorized financial activity, and identity theft.
Featured Gear
Hand-picked products that genuinely improved my life.
Replaced a backpack for anything under a full-day trip. Phone, wallet, keys, earbuds - it holds more than it looks like it should.
The transparency mode is the real killer feature. I can hear a conversation without taking them out. Three years in and I'd buy them again.
The monitor goes on the top shelf, everything else finds a home underneath. Cleared more desk space than I expected and the solid wood doesn't feel cheap.
Sits on the lower shelf. Sunglasses, pen, chapstick - stops them from floating around the desk.
The switches feel noticeably better than any laptop keyboard. Compact enough that I use it everywhere - on the desk, in a café, on a flight. The 60% layout took a week to get used to, then became automatic.