I’m Michael, and I run budgets for a living.
Sixteen years in management and IT consulting, now at director level — enterprise contracts, pricing negotiations, delivery and growth for programs where the numbers have to hold up under audit. On the side I’m treasurer of my HOA, which means operating budgets, capital reserves, and the annual conversation about whether the roof fund is actually funded.
I have a finance degree and an MBA. I do not have a CFP, a CPA, or a Series 65, and I’m not going to write like I do. What I have is a career’s worth of operational finance and a household running three kids through full-time daycare simultaneously without pausing the 401(k), the HSA, or the 529s.
That’s the whole premise of this site. Not “here’s what the textbook says” — here’s the actual decision, the actual constraint, and the number I checked before I made the call.
The first thing my finance background got me was over-engineered spreadsheets. Hyper-detailed tracking, three tabs of scenario modeling, a dashboard nobody looked at twice. It took longer than I’d like to admit to accept that for a father of three, automated systems and boring broad-market compounding beat optimization every time. I call it the Finance Degree Fallacy, and I fell for it hard.
Why first name only? I write about my family’s money, and I’d rather be specific about the decisions than careful about them. Keeping my last name, my employer, and my kids off the page is what lets me publish real numbers and real mistakes. If that changes, I’ll say so here.
I’m not a licensed financial advisor. Everything here is what I’ve done or considered for my own family — not advice for yours.