Left Wall Street career in early 30s to build an independent consulting/advisory/venture practice and spend some years in Europe @thejunteau @thegoodsletter
USA/EU
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So, I've been working on this for weeks now. I've built a system of rules and workflows that will not only build hyper-detailed financial models on any company based on my kickoff instructions, but will also complete a comprehensive research book based on what I find important for a sector/theme.
Phase 1 takes about 3-5 hours per company. That gets me to a baseline of model + research + context/history that would have once taken me at least 1-2 weeks working all day in a traditional seat.
A little bit later today, I'll publish a test primer on McDonald's in the Goodsletter which was built atop of this system.
Here are blurry screen grabs of the income statement and restaurant units/sales tabs in my McDonald's model now.
You are motivating me to go max aggro building the solo consumer equity research machine I’ve always envisioned.
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VEO retweeted
Just throwing this out there: leave NYC (or SF, LA) and stop competing for scarce space and lifestyle with global elites who out earn you 10x?
It’s a big country. NYC is a neighborhood you are simply priced out of.
Otherwise, it’s your choice to stay. Accept tradeoffs.
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An interesting theme lately in the American expat community in Western Europe, especially higher earning corporate types (e.g. €200-300K/year), is the feeling of being unable to move back home to the US.
Few reasons...
Many who moved in the years after COVID sold their homes when rates were closer to zero than the rates now. Now that same home is ~20% more expensive while mortgage rates are 2x higher. So the monthly cost of housing like-for-like went up literally 100% in just 3-5 years.
They've gotten used to the European way of life (e.g. no or maybe just one car, easy train and airport access) and its far less intense commercial and career culture... so fewer working hours and more vacations and significant employee protections (i.e. hard to be fired legally).
This is great while living in Europe... a €250K household income is massive even post-tax considering the low relative cost of health care, education, transport, housing, etc...
...but dropping themselves back into US society... especially in a major metro area like NY, SF, Chicago, even Miami now... at age 40-50 with kids... is largely impractical.
Many Europeans would be shocked to learn that ~$250K/year in the US is incomparable to that same level of earnings in a major Western European city like London or Amsterdam or Paris.
I'd estimate the income needed in the US to match the overall quality of life you'd enjoy in one of those European cities... is around $500-750K/year.
Wild.
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VEO retweeted
Underrated life advice: Keep your personal burn rate low. Cheaper car. Smaller house than the bank says you can afford. No payment you'd panic about if work got weird. Low expenses aren't about being cheap. Low expenses give you options. And options = freedom.
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Very cool but only because of the instantaneous of the code ideation and creation… all things a human can do and has done. Just 10000x faster.
New blogpost: Fable-5.1 can hide secret messages in benign images.
We gave the image to another Fable in a fresh session and simply asked: "Is there a hidden message in this image?"
It recovered the exact message without being told how it was hidden.
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I think $1-3MM is no man’s land.. a tighter band.
Level 4 (1M–10M) really is the no-man's-land of wealth.
For example, going from $100k to $300k can change your life. You can quit a job, move somewhere else, or take a chance on something of your own.
Going from $5M to $5.2M? You're richer, but you don't notice the increase anymore in the same way. This is where the diminishing returns start to show.
Back in 2021, when I went from $500k to $1m, I felt like on top of the world. It was a big change for me. A little backstory: in Feb 2021, I quit my 9-5 job with $500k NW, and it felt like a huge achievement. I knew it wasn’t enough to live off forever, but it was enough to dare to bet on myself.
During the years after 21’ there have been periods where my NW has increased a lot, and periods where it went a bit down or barely went up at all.
So I can very much relate to what Nick says: at some point, you could “work” twice as hard and barely notice the difference in your life. Your portfolio grows. But the extra money buys you less, while the time it costs you stays the same.
This is where I think a lot of people in crypto get stuck. You know how to make money. But unless you increase the risk, your NW will only go up linearly.
Because you might have to risk money you no longer want to lose. So you end up in the middle, the 7-figure hell (no man's land).
Imagine spending another year glued to crypto to make an extra $200k on a $5M portfolio (4% increase).
Don’t misunderstand me, that’s a lot of money, but many people don’t want to risk the big gains they’ve already earned, and since they don’t, their NW will barely move, and they’re forever trapped in the 7-fig hell.
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I have a friend who’s worked at a sort of IT consulting company for almost 10 years.
Makes almost $300K/year now.
But he doesn’t really do anything. Says he “manages clients” and “puts out fires” and is exceptionally good at it… that he’ll never be replaced by AI… that management just leaves him alone.
Gets 5-10% pay bump every year and works maybe 1-2 hours a day top. He’ll take vacation with his family and not even tell anyone at work… all remote now. Says he can handle any issue from his phone.
I fear the future of W2 / white collar employment is just going to be putting bodies in seats based on some combination of social currency or popularity, corporate inertia, and “culture”… basically a mass UBI scheme disguised as meritocracy.
Might be cooked. Not sure!
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Looking at houses for sale back in the states... NJ/NY/PA suburbs... and it's fascinating that homes are selling at all at these $1,000,000+ prices when they were $500-600K pre-COVID.
One one hand, you can just suck it up and pay 6-7% rates on a massive mortgage.
On the other hand, some folks seem resigned to the idea of just buying all-cash... being extremely house poor as a result... and betting/hoping that two things happen in their favor.... that the stock market stays sideways for longer (i.e. that they don't miss out on equity upside deploying all their liquidity into a house) and that rates will eventually fall back down to the 3-4% range and they'll quickly refinance.
Both strategies are painful.
Who is buying these properties? and which strategy?
Why not just rent instead until conditions improve? Because they won't?
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RT @Indian_Bronson: Very hard to see how even 50% of today’s 18 year olds create an independent economic existence for themselves by the ti…
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I'll be 39 imminently.
It's just a number, for sure, but then again... it's the last year you can ever do something "in your 30s."
Like telling someone.. "In my 30s I did XYZ."
If you're 40+... is there anything you wish you did in your 30s rather than in your 40s, 50s, 60s, etc?
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I still have a LinkedIn. On my desktop. Because people message me there. It's frustrating but necessary, sadly. But literally every single time I open it lately, the feed shows me people dying. Like a spouse sharing how his/her other half had a great career cut short and now has a terminal illness. Often there's a link to a gofundme page. Or someone's child who is sick. Or a friend posting on behalf of someone who has died. It's purely the algorithm because I have no idea who these people are.
Pure macabre.
Why is this happening?
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I find it interesting that nobody ever models their own financials as they would a business. At least I never hear about this.
You Inc.
You have your topline "gross" revenue, then "net sales" after income tax.
Then your COGS... the expenses required for you to generate those sales... like your commute, your clothes, maintaining your social and professional networks (i.e. memberships, dues), etc.
Then your fixed overhead costs.. your house, personal vehicles, insurance, property tax, etc.
Then you have your actual real "earnings."
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