Every time I open up a blank google doc, I feel a spark of joy.

For the longest time (years!), whenever I sat down to write, I would fire up google and then change the font and size from the default Arial 11 to Nunito Sans 14. It took seconds and just a few keystrokes, but I did it Every. Single. Time. I opened a document.

It was The Groundhog Day of annoyances.

I’m 14 days into a 31-day Feng Shui Your Financial House email challenge. Every day I write about something useful for entering the New Year with anticipation.

If you signed up, hi! 👋 and congrats on taking control of your finances!

It warms the cockles of my heart to hear about your triumphs so far.

And…

I have hit what marketing guru Seth Godin calls The Dip and marathoners call The Wall.

I confess. I’m an agent of chaos. 🤦🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🙄

On December 1st, I decided to create a 31-day email advent calendar that would help you tidy up your financial house so you could enter the New Year on top of your money shit.

Do you also routinely set your hair on fire just for fun? Or is it just me?🤣

If you are suffering from a crypto hangover, my condolences.

I'm not going to pile on and make it worse. Losing money to fraud or bad investments in a moment of FOMO mob madness is as old as the hills and as common as dirt. It's when our fear of not having enough makes us vulnerable to cons, Ponzi schemes, and rampant speculation.

That's when we let our money have unsafe sex with dubious partners.

When befogged by lust, syphilis is not top of mind. In the middle of a financial feeding frenzy, neither is fraud.

If your BFF called you up to vent about their current squeeze “M” and said:

M is unreliable.

He’s never around when I need him.

M plays hard to get.

I have to chase and chase and still get ghosted.

M is complicated.

I don’t know what makes him happy.

M is seductive.

He’s flirtatious with everyone.

I’m not myself around M.

I’ve done crazy things because of him.

Yowza.

What could you possibly say?

“Congratulations! You found a keeper! So happy you found THE ONE at last!”

NOT.

I have a finely tuned bullshit detector, thanks to my years on Wall Street.

As a professional investor, listening to company management was like being a Kremlinologist decoding Soviet Cold War propaganda. I paid as much attention to what wasn’t being said, picked apart answers like a biologist sifting through owl droppings, asked weasel-proof questions, and read the energy behind the words.

In my experience, straight shooters made the best management teams.

In the space of 2 days I got three flyers inviting me to learn more about retirement financial strategies. These were advertised as workshops and educational opportunities.

My sudden popularity made me deeply suspicious.

A few days ago I opened a personal finance newsletter and read this:

💵 Today is a great day to rollover that old 401k you’ve been ignoring for 7 months, for FREEEEEEEEEEE

WTF?

Rolling your 401K into an IRA (Individual Retirement Account) is always free. The recipient of your IRA is thrilled to get their grubby little paws er…. hands on your money. They’re delighted to have you transfer funds from your company 401K plan into a newly opened or pre-existing IRA.

Killing a business is a lot harder than offing an inconvenient human, it seems.

The official death certificate for Daruma, my institutional money management firm took ~18 months after we shut our doors and gave back the last client dollar to arrive. Pandemic delays, bureaucratic snafus, and turf wars between Delaware and New York made for a slow and excruciating demise.

I’m a great loop opener and a terrible loop closer, so this limbo was agony.

I was whining yesterday to my wicked smart friend Mina Ratkalkar (sex therapist, forensic psychologist, and consent expert) that I had no newsletter ideas. She bailed me out by texting the following:

Mina’s suggestion came on the heels of being invited to speak at a Recession Rx Your Money event hosted by another buddy, medical money guru Latifat Akintade, MD.

It’s clearly time to tackle the scary financial headlines in everyone’s doomscrolling feed.

My friend Claudia Mott, a fee-only certified financial planner, former Wall Street strategist, and stellar human being told me something that had me falling out of my chair.

She said that the number two New Year's resolution, after getting fit, was getting one's money shit together. I had no idea so many of us feel so inadequate in the personal finance department, but it makes total sense.

Think of the witticism "You can never be too rich or too thin", attributed to various high society dames, but first mentioned in a 1963 Harper's Bazaar article titled "High Living on Low Calories" 🤦🏻‍♀️.

Did you hear about Jake Freeman, the 20-year-old who parlayed a $27 million investment in Bed Bath and Beyond (BBBY) into $110 million?

The news generated a lot of pearl-clutching, and for good reason.

For one, a twenty-year-old slinging that much money around is unusual.

For another, this was the ONLY position in the fund.

Yet another, Freeman happened to top-tick BBBY perfectly. (Translation: he sold at the top, right before the stock rolled over and died.)

And to top it all off, he made all this dough in a meme stock.

From our first cry to our last breath, we have targets on our backs.

New parents are given baby product samples at the hospital. Their 18-year spending spree has just begun. Our birth is not just recorded by the Bureau of Vital Records and Statistics but also cheered by the marketing databases, for a new consumer has been born.

There is no escape.

Unless it’s lying in vomit or dog poop, I will always pick up loose change.

The only other exception to that “if, then” rule (if I see a coin, I pick it up) was during rush hour at Grand Central Terminal in NYC. As I headed towards the corner exit at 42nd street and Vanderbilt, I spotted a suspiciously large number of coins strewn on the ground. A bunch of people with clipboards loitered nearby, trying to look nonchalant and failing.

I smelled a trap.

I grew up with a lot of stories about work.

I hung out in garages, airports, and hotels while my parents ran their rent-a-car business and learned how to deal with irate customers, flat tires, and accidents.

I listened to stories about my 8th-grade educated grandfather, a hayseed from Tennessee, who worked his way up from Wall Street messenger boy to owning a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

I posed a not-so-innocent question on social media:

“What's the one thing you hate most about financial advisors/financial educators/financial services?

Don't be shy. Let it rip.”

And boy, did you ever.

I count my blessings.

Among them, my grandparents paid for my Princeton degree, my dad having predeceased them when I was 15. They had the means to do so, and thankfully they valued education. And because I graduated in 1983, before college cost more than a small country’s GDP, money was leftover.

But at the age of 25, I treated that windfall like a hot potato.

I wasn’t ungrateful.

I was afraid.

I named my institutional money management after Daruma, the founder of Zen Buddhism. He’s my favorite Bodhisattva, mostly because he was a bad-ass.

A 6th-century Indian monk who introduced Buddhism to China, he became the stuff of legends:

He scolded the Shaolin monks for being book smart but real-world stupid and shooed them out from behind the monastery walls. But first, he taught them kung fu so they could defend themselves against bandits.

When I first learned about Buddhism, I thought it was bullshit.

“All suffering is due to the 3 poisons – anger, greed, and ignorance”. No way did I buy that when I was a kid. Greed and anger? Sure. But not ignorance. Just read books and poof! No more suffering.

I thought the antidote for ignorance was knowledge.

Jizo’s shaved head, monk robes and Mona Lisa smile is a familiar sight in Japan – if there were a Bodhisattva popularity contest in Japan, he would win hands down.

You’ll find Jizo, the Buddhist “patron saint” of children, travelers, pilgrims, and expectant mothers, nestled in roadside shrines and cemeteries, often wearing a red bib and cap, toys at his feet.

Jizo protects everyone in need but is especially beloved by mothers for keeping the spirits of children safe from demons. Mothers who have lost their children – born, unborn, aborted, miscarried, or stillborn – cherish him, and their gifts of clothes and toys are acts of devotion.

He is the perfect guide when you’re stuck, confused, or in an emotional shitstorm – that is, when you feel unsafe.