The short version: I wrote a chapter for How I Invest My Money, Vol. 2, edited by Brian Portnoy and out on October 20th.

It’s got insights from a wide range of financial pros, and we all get pretty personal about not just what we do with our money, but how we think about it. My chapter is about compounding, but not the standard investment-math kind. It’s more about how everything compounds, for you or against you, and how I’ve climbed out of the hole across all five capitals, not just the financial one.

I’m very proud to be a part of this project, and if you grab a copy and read it, please let me know. This is a first for me. It’s also the second time I’ve seen my words in print like this (the first was writing the intro for Rule 62 by Jared Dillian), and, as a lover of books, I really could get used to this!

And now, the longer version.

When Brian Portnoy asked if I would contribute to a second volume back in 2025, I said “yes,” then went “oh s***,” then talked to my wife who said “you have to,” to which I replied, “I know, right - but s***,” and thus began the process of toiling over how I was supposed to write something about money next to Brian, and Morgan Housel, and - “who else is going to be in this with me?!”

The impostor syndrome kicked in. I accepted that between Ben Hunt, Kris Abdelmessih, and Daniel Crosby, along with the very long and very extremely accomplished list of co-authors, at least I’ve shared laughs with a bunch of them. I don’t know why that got me over the initial “they’ll discover I’m a fraud now” feeling, but it did. That’s the power of belly laughs. “Well, they’ve laughed with me, so I can probably survive if they laugh at me, too.”

Draft 7 (it definitely wasn’t draft 1) was probably around 3400 words. I had refined my idea to that. I was drawing on James E. Hughes “5 Capitals” framework that I use all of the time and trying to work it out for myself. It got really personal.

In writing that draft, I realized how I wasn’t going to have much in terms of financial capital insights. My chapter was going to be about the other capitals, and less about investing, and more about debt. I haven’t just had a negative financial net worth for most of my life, I’ve been behind the ol’ 8 ball in all the other capitals, too.

And if I’ve been that far behind and climbed back - I’m not the only one.

My chapter was going to be for me 5-10 years ago. I can’t Morgan Housel my way into the average airport passerby’s heart, so I figured I’d use my words to maybe reach a person like me, who was reading Volume 1 back in 2020.

I got pretty happy with my draft, clicked saved, and sent it off to Brian and Craig Pierce for review (I am shouting out Craig because - again, belly laughs are humanizing, he hung out on a Just Press Record with me a while back, too).

You pour your heart out. You discover deep truths about your psyche. You flip things in your mind that you never flip on yourself. You worry what the people you mention will say when they read it, and if they’ll cover their face and dodge you next time you see them in public, etc. etc.

And then Brian writes you back and basically says, “Dude, this is fine/great/solid, but the word count - if you’d read the assignment - is 1,500 words. If you can cut it, I can use it.”

I believe my direct quote under my breath was something like, “Well f*** me in the f***ing face with a brick.”

But I sharpened the proverbial pencil, broke the tip because that’s always what happens, and shrugged my shoulders because I only really needed the eraser, and - somehow, someway I chopped it down, pressed submit, got a gracious response as always (Brian Portnoy’s manners - IYKYK), and then nothing happened until the other week when the emails started coming in that the book is finally coming out.

I barely remembered my chapter. But I wrote it, and despite the feeling of panic about how much longer my draft was, and what will all these people think in this book I’m sharing pages with, I’m pretty happy with it. Not because I think it’s the best one, and not because I think I’ll get way more out of all the other insights in here, but because it sounds like me.

And now I have the professionally created marketing images to prove it.

If you’re curious, get a copy here (or wherever you get your books) and let me know what you think.