Money Mistakes & Hard Lessons — Oliver

Description

Oliver’s Note: The book I wish I’d been handed at 21

This isn’t a textbook. I didn’t write this because I’m a “guru” who has never failed—I wrote it because I failed more than most. A few years ago, I was the classic finance industry cliché: earning a great salary in London, wearing the right suits, but secretly living paycheck to paycheck because I had zero clue how to actually keep money.

In this book, I’ve laid out all my “financial scars.” I’m opening up my old bank statements and showing you exactly where I went wrong so you don’t have to do the same. If you’ve ever felt the shame of earning well but having nothing to show for it, I wrote this specifically for you. It’s the raw, unpolished truth about what happens when “making money” and “understanding money” are two different things.

What’s inside?

No complex formulas or 50-year projections. Just real-world lessons from the trenches of my own life:

• The “High-Earner, Low-Wealth” Trap: Why a bigger salary often just leads to bigger mistakes.

• Confessions of a Recovering Spender: Real stories of my worst financial decisions and how they almost wrecked my future.

• Budgeting for People Who Hate Budgeting: How I finally organized my life without using a single “motivational” Pinterest quote.

• The Debt Escape: A no-nonsense guide to handling credits, loans, and the impulse to buy things just to impress strangers.

• The “Hard Lessons” Framework: Simple rules for avoiding the traps that the financial industry sets for the uninformed.

The “No-BS” Verdict

• Tone: Brutally honest, conversational, and self-deprecating. Like having a pint with a friend who’s telling you how he messed up.

• Time to read: Short and punchy. Designed to be read in one sitting.

• Best for: Anyone who feels they “should” be doing better with money given what they earn.

“You don’t need more money to fix your life; you need a better relationship with the money you already have. I learned that the hard way. This is how you can learn it the easy way.” — Oliver