Ex Big4 Director — worked for all 4 (Deloitte. PwC. EY. KPMG) Building NobodyToldMike. Finance. Psychology. Philosophy. Figuring out the money lesson ... .
Bavaria, Germany
Joined June 2026
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Making money and keeping money require different ways of thinking, when you're building wealth, you focus on earning more, taking opportunities and growing your capital.
Once you have something to lose, the questions change ... how much risk am I taking? What would happen if my income disappeared? Am I building wealth or just getting better at maintaining an expensive life?
The goal isn't to become afraid of losing money
It's to build something that gives you more choices without constantly putting it all at risk
Two colleagues, same job. One can stop working today, the other cannot. The one who can was the quiet one. He lived simple, never bought expensive things, and slowly bought multi family houses while the people around him showed off.
New video coming on NobodyToldMike
I started writing about money because I was interested in the numbers, but the questions that keep me thinking are increasingly about the people behind those numbers.
Why do we keep chasing more even after we have enough?
Why do we make financial decisions we know are irrational?
Why can someone become wealthy without ever feeling financially secure?
I'm exploring these questions in the Modern Financial Philosophy Letter, where I have more room to think through the ideas than a single X post allows
Subscribe here: nobodytoldmike.com/#newslett…
I keep coming back to one question when I think about money: what is it actually for?
The answer isn't just a bigger portfolio or a higher salary, because those things matter mainly through the choices they create and the problems they help remove from our lives.
For me, the interesting part is the relationship between wealth, time and the freedom to decide how we want to spend our days.
That's the subject behind my longer essays on money and modern financial philosophy
Read more at MikePetryJournal.com
I've noticed that investors often spend more time trying to predict what the market will do next than deciding what they will do if they're wrong.
What happens if the stock you believe in falls 40%?
What happens if the bull market you expected never arrives?
What happens if you need the money earlier than planned?
I think a good financial plan isn't one that requires every prediction to be right, but one that gives you room to make mistakes without putting your whole future at risk
A higher salary can improve your life, or it can quietly make your life more expensive to maintain.
You get a raise, upgrade the car, move into a bigger house and become comfortable with expenses that once felt unnecessary.
None of those decisions has to be wrong, but when every increase in income creates a matching increase in spending, you're not necessarily getting closer to financial freedom.
Sometimes the most important financial decision after a pay rise is deciding how much of it you won't spend
Why do we often know exactly what we should do with money but struggle to do it when emotions get involved?
We know to think long term, yet market declines make us question our strategy.
We know lifestyle inflation can hold us back, yet every pay rise seems to bring another reason to spend.
That's why we're building What NTM Told Us, using visual explanations to explore the psychology behind investing and the financial decisions we make
Watch the latest video here: youtu.be/wxdnggzHtnA
How A Layoff Rumor Froze My Finances For 8 Months
A rumor went around my office that layoffs were coming. Nobody had a list, nobody had a number, and nobody told me my job was at risk. I still stopped investing for eight months. Nobody on our floor lost their job that year.
Reply: Full video: youtube.com/watch?v=w1PmKiAM…
Financial freedom can feel like a distant idea until you start putting numbers behind it.
How much do you spend each month?
How much do you invest?
How large would your portfolio need to be to support the life you want?
You don't need to predict the market to start answering those questions.
I've built free financial tools at NobodyToldMike.com to help you track your investments and explore your own path toward financial independence
Start with the numbers you have today, not the numbers you hope to have someday
A portfolio can deliver an excellent return and still be the wrong portfolio for you.
Maybe you took more risk than you understood, invested money you needed too soon or spent so much time watching the market that every decline affected your decisions.
I've started thinking that a good investment plan should be judged by more than its potential return.
It should also fit the life you're trying to build and the uncertainty you're prepared to live with
One of the strangest things about building wealth is that success can make you more afraid of losing it.
When you have very little, you focus on how to get ahead.
Once you've built something meaningful, you start thinking about everything that could go wrong.
The challenge is learning to protect what you've built without becoming so afraid of losing it that you stop enjoying the freedom it was supposed to give you
What's one money lesson you had to learn the hard way?
Not something you read in a book or heard from a financial expert
Something you only understood after making a mistake, watching someone else make one, or looking back at a decision you would handle differently today
For me, the most useful financial lessons are often the ones that change how you think, not just what you do
What's yours?
One of the most expensive habits is comparing your ordinary life with someone else's highlight reel
You see the car, the holidays, the house, the expensive dinner
You don't see the debt, the pressure, the trade-offs or the financial help that might be behind it
Building wealth becomes easier when you stop trying to look successful to people who don't know your circumstances
A good financial plan isn't one that only works when everything goes right, it still works when the car breaks down, the market falls, a bonus doesn't arrive, or you need to leave a job that is making you miserable.
The goal isn't to predict every problem
The goal is to make sure one unexpected problem doesn't destroy years of progress
Your biggest financial risk might not be the stock market
It might be depending on one employer for almost all your income, having monthly expenses that leave little room to breathe, and assuming your current situation will last
You don't need to be afraid of losing your job
You need to build a life that can handle the possibility
A question I've been thinking about lately
If your investments and passive income covered all your living costs tomorrow, what would you actually change about your life?
Would you stop working, work less, build something of your own or keep doing what you're doing?
I'm curious how many of us are working toward financial freedom without really defining what we want the freedom for
Fear Doesn't Ask Permission, It Just Acts
Fear doesn't wait for you to ask a direct question. During a layoff rumor I turned down a project with real upside, because staying quiet felt safer, and nobody had ever told me my job was at risk. Coworkers two desks away got promoted for raising their hands.
Reply: Full video: youtube.com/watch?v=w1PmKiAM…
I don't think financial freedom has to mean never working again
For me, the more interesting goal is reaching a point where work becomes a choice rather than something you have to keep doing because the bills are waiting
That changes how you think about saving, investing and what enough actually means
One of the hardest parts of investing is accepting that doing nothing can be the right decision. You can read more, watch more videos, check the market ten times a day and still end up worse off than someone who chose a sensible plan and left it alone
Sometimes the real skill is knowing when to stop interfering