Product-centric financial tools
Developing calculators, models, and interactive prototypes that make complex planning more approachable.
One has to keep a particular openness of mind. Solving a problem is like going to a strange place, not to subdue it, but simply to spend time there, to preserve one's openness, to wait for the signals, to wait for the strangeness to dissolve into sense.
In Short
The aim here is to find out what better models look like — most of them financial. Finance is where this starts, not where it stops. Anything I can model and put under stress tends to end up here — planning simulations, optimal design, monetary system, whatever I'm currently trying to understand well enough to build. The common thread is the method, not the subject.
Most of what's here is a first attempt — how a model breaks is usually more informative than the fact that it worked, and pensions and long-horizon risk are where I know the ground best, so that's where most experiments start. The blog derives each model and argues for it: the assumptions, why they were chosen, where they break. The playground is where it runs, so once you know what it's doing you can change the inputs and see for yourself. Nothing here asks to be taken on trust — the arithmetic is on the page, and the reasoning is yours to check.