Table of Contents
List of Blogs I follow
I’ve recorded a long video about the blogs I follow, on May 2021, in Italian Language:
Personal Finance / Financial Independence
PF / FIRE is the main dish of RetireInProgress. I got inspired by many other bloggers, and here I want to share with you a complete list.
Best Blogs
Most inspiring blog on FI ever. It’s a personal blog about a guy, his history, epiphany, retirement. Very long posts, but I can’t help myself but binge read all his blog. It could have been my story. I feel his story and his thoughts so close to mine. This blog started thanks to LivingaFI. He inspired me to start my own journey as a blogger. Some of my posts are clear tributes to his. My story post series is inspired to his The Job Experience series!
Sadly, Dr. Doom stopped blogging in November 2016 (Nope, he’s back!), few months after I started. Coincidence? 🙂
I discovered MMM too late, when the post frequency was already low. I binge read every single post in the archive since then and that was my FI Epiphany. Badassity is the keyword. Complainypants, go away! MMM’s message is that being frugal is cool and a demonstration of strength and being rich has nothing to do with money. You’re rich when your spending decisions are made as if the price were $0.00 and your work and income decisions are made as if the wage were $0.00. And always remember that Money and Confidence are interchangeable!
Jacob reached FI before turning 30 and with a modest salary via extreme frugality and insourcing. His blog (and his awesome book) expose the Reinassance Man model, where he blames specialization in favor of diversification of skills. His blog is the most philosophical one around Money, Time, Needs and Wants. A must.
A technical blog about Early Retirement. Check out The Ultimate Guide to Safe Withdrawal Rates!
Very pragmatic FI Blog, with focus on investments and early retirement psychology. His Podcast is also very good.
J.D. Roth is one of the personal finance figures that set the first stone on the FIRE community. He sold the site but then bought it back it’s awesome again! GRS was the first blog I stepped into that exposed a philosophy behind saving and becoming rich. Didn’t remember amazing posts about FI but this one was enlightening at that time. On GRS you can find things like Jacob Lund Fisker (ERE) 10 years Early Retirement update. Pure gold.
The Simple Dollar (now dead)
The Simple Dollar used to be, in my opinion, the single best blog on Personal Finance around.
I’m following it since 2007/2008, before Trent – the founder – quit his job to become a full time writer. At one point Trent sold the website and became simply one of the writers. I was selfishly disappointed and as reaction boycotted other writers on the blog. What an asshole I was! While Trent keeps up with writing awesome posts with more and more focus on ethical and psychological aspects of FI, other writers are good enough for starters. I bought Trent first book 365 Ways to Live Cheap back in the frugal days and it saved me at least 100 times its own cost! Thanks Trent for all you’ve written so far. One day we’ll play boardgames together 😉
Over time, TSD is slowly becoming less useful and more a loan / insurance / credit card recommendation company. Trent still writes posts, but even his quality is declining.
Brave New Life (now Dead)
Dead since Jan 2015, but worth digging. At least for the Core Principles series and the Income Thinking vs Expense Thinking (from web archive) concept.
A good italian (in italian language) blog that explains the basics of earning/saving/investing. Andrea is not posting much recently, but his podcast is pretty much regular.
Australian Semi Retired in London. Aesthetically beautiful, linguistically fascinating, captivating storytelling and scientifically sound! Best new blog of the year (2018)
He doesn’t write much these days, but when he does it’s always an amazing read. ERD is the one who first wrote about the history of FIRE.
The godfather of the FIRE movement, the author of the stock series, and the author also of The Simple Path to Wealth (that I didn’t read yet)
Tanja and Mark retired in 2017. Their blog is one of the best around. They write long form posts, with no ads, not trying to sell you anything, no bullshits. The quality of their content is top notch. Tanja wrote a book in 2019, Work Optional, which I didn’t read (yet) but whose philosophy resonates with mine.
Another very good blog that’s not active since mid 2019. Very sad, Joel’s posts were math intense and recreational. Come back, bro!
Index Fund (European) Investor
Màrio’s blog is the best one on investing in Index funds from Europe. Check out his book “Intro to Investing”
Discovered in October 2020, a personal finance blog by a software engineer, targeting Tech Workers. The quality of the posts is incredibly high, and you can play with numbers on their interactive graphs! I loved the post about compound interests.
I Soldi Degli Altri (Italian Language)
It reads like a book, in chapters. Mario Spizzi (pseudonym) runs a Trust in Lugano and handles other people money. Read this blog and you’ll never give your money to someone else to be managed.
PF senators
A list of blogs I used to follow but I don’t anymore. I loved them in the past. I’ve grown up past them. Still recommend you spend some time there.
RetireBy40, RootOfGood, Frugalwoods, AffordAnything, FinancialSamurai, ESI money (I got featured in his Millionaire Interview series), Budgetsaresexy (when JMoney owned it).
Swiss Made
A list of FIRE/PF blogs from Switzerland 🙂
My Personal finance (EN), MustachianPost (EN/DE/FR), ThePoorSwiss (EN), FondueBlog (EN), HippiesDeLandRover (ESP)
Finance / Investing
Here’s a list of blogs/websites in the field of investing. Investing is a core component of the Earn-Save-Invest trilogy. Investing, especially psychology of investing, is also becoming a side passion of mine. It’s helping me on my lifelong mission to get to know myself.
Before moving on: the blogs I’m sharing here are mostly focusing on the psychology of money, on behavioral economics. If you’re looking for an “investment guru” who will point at underrated shares… those are not the resources you’re looking for.
Best blogs
CF is a Venture Capital firm. They have a great collaborative blog as well. I don’t care much about articles NOT written by Morgan Housel. Morgan’s articles and essays are enlightening. He takes the psychology of money to the next level (he actually wrote a book with this very title!).
Ben Carlson’s blog. Another great one with regular daily posts. Ben touches a huge variety of topics, including frugality and good personal finance habits like spend less than you earn and invest for the long term. His technical posts are trying to explain (or show a different angle on) what’s happening on the stock market and why. Ben has been involuntary guest on the post Rip and Ben.
Michael Batnick is a colleague of Ben at Ritholtz Wealth Management (these guys are the best!). Reading his blog makes me feel of being teleported into another planet. Michael loves to see problems from unexpected angles, usually focusing on risk management, with a lot of data.
Yet another member of Ritholtz Wealth Management, Nick is a data analyst. His blog is probably the most popular among the RWM guys, and his data crunching skills overflow into Ben and Michael blogs.
Founded by Jonathan Clements, former Wall Street Journal columnist, this is more than a (collaborative) blog. Check out their immense money guide.
Not a blog, not about finance, but I guess it deserves to be here. Nice graphs and a lot of quality content.
Honorable Mentions
The others at RWM: The Reformed Broker, The Big Picture, A Teachable Moment
Personal Growth
Life is not only about personal finance, is it? I follow many blogs in various fields. Here’s a short list.
Best Blogs
Derek is the perfect compassionate leader and every post he writes is inspirational.
Personal growth is curiosity too. Tim’s mission is being curious and go deep on everything.
My 2020 love. I’ve devoured 90% of his posts and I fell in love with so many – so f***ing many – of them. What’s the blog about? Hard to tell. I’d say Self Awareness, but it’s much more. It’s hard to make a list, but let’s name a few: Money is the Megaphone of Identity, Travel is no cure for the mind (about hedonistic adaptation), The quest to the unlived life (re-read it 100 times), The Riddle of the Well-Paying, Pointless Job… ok stop me, please!
FS is the mental model blog. Decision Making, clarity of thinking and some philosophy as well. I’ve been part of the Learning Community for a year, and got a lot of value from it. Sadly, Shane Parrish stepped down and he’s no more the owner of the website. Quality is still very high, let’s hope it keeps rocking. Check out The Knowledge Project (Shane’s podcast) as well.
Ok, fine, it’s not a blog but a collection of essays. But Paul Graham is the best essayist in the world. No need to add more. Each one of his essays improved my critical thinking skills. Ok, some samples: The Top idea in your mind, the age of the essay (top!), The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius, What You’ll Wish You’d Known, Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule, How to make Wealth (in 2004!), You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss (awesome), Life is short, The Two Kinds of Moderate… ok stop me!
Co founder of the Andreessen-Horowitz VC firm, author of the famous blog pmarca. His posts now live into the pmarchive. Take a look at his one on personal productivity. It was written in 2007!
Ok, mainly judging Ribbon Farm, which is the main project by Venkatesh even though it’s a collaborative blog. I’ve taken few “sequences” on this blog, the most impactful of which have been The Gervais Principle and The Premium Mediocrity. RF is a blog about humans, brains, how we work, how we think. It’s not an easy read, you have to put the effort to get the fruits.
Eric Barker’s blog is the one with the best quality/clickbait ratio on the internet. His post titles call “run away from it, it’s obviously shit!” but you can’t be wronger! Very high quality material, usually in the field of psychology and sociology.
My blog is supposed to be about Earn, Save, and Invest, i.e. the three pillars of a successful financial life. Well, I do a bad job at all of them, and instead I focus on my thought process and life philosophy. Luckily there’s who can cover my gaps in the best way possible. Cal is the guy I’s send you when it comes to “Earn”. Follow his advices, and you’ll become So Good They Can’t Ignore You.
Dan is the funniest behavioral scientist ever. He doesn’t write much on his blog, but he’s published an amazing book (Predictably Irrational) and… just search for his videos and TED Talks on YouTube. You’ll thank me.
David Cain’s blog is mostly about self awareness, deep life, meditation, self reflection. It’s the deepest blog I read, I guess. No bullshit, a lot of great ideas and experiments, like the Soup-Port Group and the Depth Year… and an amazing interview with The Man, the guy we all work for.
Another great writer who made me re-discover Stoicism and fall in love with Personal Knowledge Management (the hard way, with notecards). I own 5 books written by Ryan, he had great impact on defining my life philosophy. I learned from him now NOT be a writer.
I’ve always had “read something about Tim Ferriss” in the back of my mind since The 4 Hours Workweek came out. Procrastinated on it for…ever. Then Tools of Titans came out, and I was exactly looking at how to get condensated snippets of good quality podcasts, and still procrastinating on exploring Tim Ferriss character. I bought the book and holy shit it hit me very hard! A change in perspective on so many fields, from working out to content creation, from meditation to entrepreneurship. I also bought Tribe of Mentors, but never read it so far.
Kevin Simler’s blog is the best one on social engineering. He’s a philosopher and a software developer. What a perfect mix! some of his posts are ingrained in my brain so deeply: take a look at crony belief and meaning for nihilists. Kevin co-wrote the book The Elephant in the Brain with Robin Hanson.
Robin is the go-to person in the field of Cognitive Bias. When Daniel Kahneman is busy 😀
Learning, thinking, reasoning, arguing… at a very high level.
Kieran’s blog is a pleasure to read. His tagline is “A Skeptic’s Search for Enlightment“. He talks about meditation, philosophy, learning, randomness, addiction. Take a look at his Manifesto.
Sarah Constantin’s blog. She’s a mathematician PhD who’s pretty famous in the Rationality circle. Her blog is mostly about learning, meta-learning and epistemology (how do we know what we think we know?). If you never asked this question, well, we don’t have much in common. Get away of my blog 🙂
Jacob Falkovich’s blog is a mix of math, probability theory, sociology, decision making, meaning of life, and fun. It’s hard to classify this blog, but if you have a curious mind you must stop here. He also wrote a couple of pieces about finances, that align with our values: Get Rich Slowly.
Nat is a machine. He can do so many things at the same time, and be extremely good at them. Sadly, his main business is SEO, which I consider it a net negative for society as a whole. Anyway, Nat is an avid learner who shares his book and articles notes with us, and a prolific Knowledge Worker. Check his posts on inputs/outputs, level 3 thinking, becoming a better writer, learn the right skills… and what about his Second-Degree dinners idea? Ah, I also purchased his Effortless Output with Roam course. 99 USD (that Conor White Sullivan accepted to convert in Roam credits).
David writes about writing.
Not only, he’s also produced several interesting long form essays.
Tiago wants to sell you stuff, at a high price. Like his Building a Second Brain course. Also his blog is only partially accessible for free. That sucks. But the idea behind Building a Second Brain is extremely good. You can find a lot on his blog, and get the fundamental ideas for free. Take a look at PARA, and Progressive Summarization.
Well, I could (and maybe I should) write a lot more about Rationality, Yudkowsky, the Sequences… But either you already know that, and it would be a waste of time, or you don’t know it yet. If you don’t know it yet, either you won’t care, so writing here would be a waste of time, or you would fall in love for it, so writing here would be a waste of time.
Same as above. By Scott Alexander. Sadly going thru bad times…
The most prolific blogger ever. Also rationalist, also a coder. Also interested in FIRE. One of us.
I discovered this guy because he wrote a post titled “I quit the tech industry” (also on Vox) that resonated so much with me back in 2015. I was beginning to dream about Early Retirement, and this guy did what I hadn’t had courage to do for many years. And his metaphor of the picnic stuck with me a lot. It seemed to align with Livingafi job experience, and it probably gave me a bit of motivation to pursue FIRE.
I don’t have a problem with trying to reinvent the wheel for its own sake, just to see if I can make a better wheel. But that’s not what we were doing. We were reinventing the wheel when the goal was to build a car, and the existing wheel was just too round or not round enough, and while we’re at it, let’s rethink that whole windshield idea, and I don’t know what a carburetor is so we probably don’t need it, and wow this is taking a long time so maybe we should hire a hundred more people? You don’t even get the satisfaction of tinkering with the wheel, because the car is so far behind schedule that your wheel will be considered finished as soon as it rolls well enough.
This is coding in modern times. True story
Scott is a master in the art of learning. He collaborates with Cal Newport on their Top Performer program. I’ve always wanted to be the guy who help kids becoming top performers. I envy you guys! Scott wrote three guides that are pure gems: self control, memory, and working memory. I don’t always like his writing style, but his content is practical, actionable, and… how the hell can he be so productive? He’s not yet 32 years old (May 2020), and he started his blog in.. 2006? 1300+ articles? No way…
A blog about simple living, happiness, spirituality. From Kyle Kowalski, an ex-workaholic who had existential crisis in 2015 and quit his corporate job in 2018 to slow down (to the speed of life). Purpose, meaning, ikigai… Design your ideal life today! As you can see I like those who quit corporate jobs 🙂
Blas Moros’ blog is about learning and curiosity. He’s addicted with it, and I’m at risk of being infected. Well, I’m already infected I guess… This guy wrote book notes for over 500 books. Plus many long form essays, like this one on Paul Graham.
It’s a blog. With only one post. From 2013. A post with few words and a link. And it’s amazing. Enjoy!
Zettelkasten is the notecards method I discovered thanks to Ryan Holiday’s notecard system. Invented by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann somewhere in the previous century, the method is the first PKM that we are aware of. This blog keeps the method alive.
Andy is – his own words – “a software engineer, designer, and researcher. I work on technologies that expand what people can think and do”. Do we need to add anything? Again, not strictly a blog, but a collection of essays and more (maybe you care about Quantum Computing and Quantum Mechanics?), mostly about learning. I discovered Any thanks to his provocative essay Why books don’t work. Think laterally, expand your brain… and check Andy’s working notes 😉
Honorable Mentions
James is a creative writer and “idea man”. Some of his posts on how to become an Idea Machine had a tremendous impact on my growth. He has a contrarian view that I love: don’t go to college, don’t buy a house, don’t get a job… he can write amazing material, but also quickly disappoint you with clear bullshit. It’s not easy to find his gems in the mud.
Recommended by me during FIWE 2018, I devoured the book “The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck“. I also devoured his blog during the summer of 2018. But it’s not a blog I come back often. Good material, ok, but nothing that left a visible trace on my identity. Avoidable? Still a lot of good material.
A nice entrepreneur’s documentation of his entrepreneurial life after he left a big corporation. Very technical, with few priceless guides like this one on how to hire content writers.
His series of posts about Coronavirus, and what we should do to prevent it and fight it are the best on the topic. I’m updating this resource page in end of May 2020, while the topic is still relevant. Maybe once the pandemic is over there will be not much content from this amazing author!
Fun
Because life is not only money and growth, is it?
Best Blogs
Do I need to add more? Check also out Scott Adams Says blog. Remarkable his Goals vs Principles post.
Again, do I need to add more? Check also out the What If blog.
Funny blog about puzzles and riddles, with a lot of math!
3+ posts each day on what’s amazing around the web. Essentially a link machine. Bring your discovery to the next level!
In Coma è Meglio (Italian)
Astutillo Smeriglia’s blog. About everything. Remarkable his La Buca Dell’Amore series on Ego and Wisdom. Awesome
Zero Calcare (Italian)
Italian cartoonist from Rome, actually from few km from where I grew up, with an incredible sense of humor.
Btw livingafi is back!
https://livingafi.com/2021/03/17/the-2021-early-retirement-update/
Bro, I’ve read this post 2 months before he published it 🙂
I’ve been exchanging mails with “the one” since last summer, and I know everything. I had to bite my fingers 10x than usual to keep this for myself!
Ciao, che ne dici di Banker on wheels? LGTM 😉
Yeah, that’s a good blog!