About Rich

R

• Married
• Two Kids
• Finance, by Day
• Based in the U.S.
• Reading Since 2017

In 2026, I lost my dad.

I don’t think anyone has anything profound to say about grief, not in the moment. What I can tell you is that it changed how I thought about time. Not in a dramatic, life-flashing-before-your-eyes way. A quieter kind of doubt set in. I’d been assuming I was spending my time on the things I say matter most: being a better father, a better husband, a better friend, a better son, a better brother. Turns out I’d mostly just been assuming there was more time to get around to it.

I have two young kids and a full-time job in finance. I wasn’t short on responsibility. I was short on a system for actually getting better at the parts of life that don’t come with a performance review.

So I started reading. Not as an escape. The opposite of one. Somebody else has already lived through the hard version of almost every problem I’m facing, and written down what they learned. That’s about the best return on time I’ve ever found: a few hours of reading for years of somebody else’s trial and error.

I’m not trying to optimize my life. I’m trying to be a little better at the parts of it that actually matter, before I run out of time to.

The notes on this site are the part of that I kept. Partly because I’d forget the good ideas within a week otherwise. Two kids and a day job don’t leave much room for a memory palace. And partly because if a book helped me get even a little better at something, writing it down felt like the least I could do to pass it along.

I’m not a financial advisor, a therapist, or an expert in anything I write about here. I’m just someone trying to be better at the things that matter most, for my family and for myself, one book at a time. If something here helps you do the same, that’s the whole point.

It’s not the destination, but the journey. I didn’t used to believe that. I do now.