Welcome to Offseason Financial

There is no shortage of personal finance content out there. Books, podcasts, Reddit threads, YouTube channels, all of them well meaning. The problem is not the quantity. It is that most of it stops sounding like English about three sentences in. Core concepts get filtered through decades of industry jargon until the people writing it forget what it felt like to not already know this stuff. Or the advice is broad enough to sound helpful at first glance but leaves you asking "okay great, but what do I actually do next?"

I grew up in Olympia watching money be a source of stress in my house. We were better off than some, less than others. I often joke I was reduced lunch poor, not free lunch poor. But I noticed early that money had a weight to it that I did not want to carry forever. So I got obsessed with figuring it out.

I spent my 20s in tech sales, lived well below my means, and quietly became fascinated by the mechanics of personal finance. Not the theory of it, the practical stuff. The order you invest in. How tax brackets actually work in real life. The small decisions that do not feel significant in the moment but compound into something real over time. At 31 I looked at my financial situation, and realized the obsession had worked. I was financially independent, meaning to support my current lifestyle I did not to earn an income from a job. That was equal parts relieving and disorienting.

What I realized sitting with that was I had spent nine years helping myself. It was time to do something useful with what I had learned.

I have worked in tech and dealt with RSUs, 401ks, and every flavor of IRA. I have bought and sold real estate. I have navigated uneven sales paychecks, layoffs, and side businesses. None of that makes me extraordinary. In fact, I pride myself on being incredibly normal. But it does mean that when someone in one of those situations comes to this site, I am not guessing at what their financial life looks like. I have lived versions of it.

This site is built around the people who actually live and work in Washington State. State employees navigating PERS and deferred comp. Nurses figuring out whether travel contracts make financial sense. Tech workers dealing with RSUs and concentrated stock. Real estate investors thinking through their next move. The content here is written for specific people in specific situations, because that is the only kind of financial content that I think actually helps anyone.

I am currently working toward my CFP certification to become a financial advisor. My goal is to provide planning assistance in my local community and the greater Thurston County area, with a fee structure that puts help within reach for people who historically have not had access to it. Given that, I am not a licensed financial advisor yet and nothing here should be taken as personalized advice. Think of it as a financially literate friend who has done a lot of the homework already and wants to share what he found.

If you find something useful here, great. If you have questions or want to talk through your situation, reach out anytime.