The Why
I’m your principal investigator, Barry Beaker (not my real name, of course). I built the Financial Freedom Lab to catalog my experiments in personal finance. My goal is to give people who are looking to take their finances to the next level a totally honest, real-time look into my financial decision making process. I’ll be sharing all my potential investments, including the ones that don’t work out. I’ll include my analysis leading up to the decisions I make and will write postmortems for completed (or failed) investments.
I am not doing this because I claim to have all the answers. Quite the opposite in fact. I recognize that there is still so much I do not understand about personal finance. The Financial Freedom Lab is my way of sharing my victories and my failures so that others can learn along with me. Writing my “lab reports” will hold me accountable for really doing the analysis I should be for each investment. My hope is that this lab turns me into a much more prudent, responsible, and ultimately successful investor.
A Bit About Me
I’ve worked in the financial services industry for the better part of a decade. My career began at a major global bank and have worked the last several years at a large hedge fund in New York City (that’s why I have to use a pseudonym; I still work there). I passed the Series 7 and have been studying finance since my sophomore year of college. Even with all this experience, I am constantly reminded how much I don’t know about finance.
If I don’t understand it and my colleagues don’t seem to understand it, it seems a safe assumption that someone with no finance background probably won’t either. I’m here to figure out what I don’t know, share my experiences, and help explain the topics I encounter in a straightforward, easy to understand way.
What You Can Expect
I’m extremely systematic in my approach to basically everything, and the Financial Freedom Lab will be no different. Like any good scientist, I will break down the assumptions underlying each experiment, the tools required, and the hypothesis I have beforehand. As each experiment proceeds, I will share notes in real time as I gather data. And finally, I will write a conclusion to the lab report that either confirms or refutes my initial hypothesis.
Occasionally, an experiment may require me to build a tool in Excel. If I do, I’ll share it with you here so that you can do the same analysis in your own personal finances. The goal here is the highest degree of transparency possible.
If you’d like to know a bit more about me and my financial priorities, check out the About page. If you have feedback or suggestions for articles you’d like to see, definitely reach out on the Contact page. And finally, if you want to be notified when I post new content, please subscribe to my mailing list. For other places to follow me and see exclusive content, follow the FFL on Instagram and Facebook.
Happy experimenting!
