What if I told you…?

A man holding a red pill and a blue pill.
I loved the Matrix when I first saw it in university. I was studying in China at the time, it was cold, and I didn’t have much money or things to do. I ended up watching it over and over again.I’ve mentioned the Red Pill before on this site. I think it’s a great allegory for becoming aware that financial security and freedom is possible for normal people.

I read another version of it this morning in one of the Breaking Smart emails. Basically it talked about grey pills, which are small chances to reflect that you get when you encounter new information.

The Red Pill is the life-changing awakening, but the grey pills are the ones that reinforce and expand that knowledge.

For me, reading Your Money or Your Life was my Red Pill, and reading the blogs in the resources section has provided a drip feed of grey pills to keep me going.

The most important thing about personal finance is believing that it is relevant and important to your life. The next most important thing about personal finance is learning more about the nuts and bolts of it.

I hope this website can help you do both.

​Recently I’ve been getting lots of questions via email, Facebook, comments on the blog, or the contact form on this site. This is very much a good thing. Questions help me learn more about things I am not clear on, and get new ideas for posts.

If you have a question about personal finance, any question at all, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

2 Responses

  1. A grey pull: In the past two weeks, I’ve heard references to shale gas being the next dot-com-housing-bubble meltdown. It seems that there is a lot of private debt in the shale gas industry — including property owners who borrowed money based on income they thought they’d be getting from leasing their land for drilling. Only 20% of the many, many holes they’ve punched in the ground are economical. Supposedly, the low oil and gas prices (over supply) are partly due these companies pumping just to service their debt. Has anyone else heard this?

  2. I heard the low oil prices were due to Saudi Arabia (mainly) flooding the market to put the US producers into the red and kill off that industry. Seems to be working, but how long can they keep if up for?