Category: Work related

The Top Ten Best Investments You Will Ever Make

The Top Ten Best Investments You Will Ever Make

An Essay on Wealth, Time, and the Architecture of a Life

We spend much of adulthood thinking about “investments” — the ones we should have made, the ones we regret, the ones we hope will finally deliver. But the truth is that the highest‑yield investments are rarely the ones your bank manager talks about. They are the ones that compound across decades, protect your future, and shape the lives of the people you love.

This is not a list of financial products. It is a list of the ten most powerful ways a human being can invest in their future — in money, in time, in health, and in eternity.

Most of these assume that you have cleared any interest-bearing debts, and that you want to create a store of wealth so that loved ones can have ongoing security after your own upgrade. Then the final, bonus one is about the actual upgrade.

None of this is personal financial advice and so you can’t sue me for anything. If you want some good advice, you should find a properly licensed accountant in each of the jurisdictions where you have a footprint. Usually that will be money well spent.

10. Your Home

A house is more than a structure. It is the anchor of your life: the place where your children grow, where your memories accumulate, where your identity settles. Financially, it is the quiet compounding engine that works even when you are not paying attention. Inflation lifts it. Scarcity protects it. And unlike most assets, you can live inside it.

A home that you love and a place you can feel safe and well is a baseline for many other of life’s good things.

A house is the first investment that teaches you the difference between price and value.

For most people, especially of an Anglo-Saxon mindset, the home is the biggest investment that they knowingly make, but in fact it is ony number ten on my list here today.

In many countries mortgage lending is the cheapest form of lending and also come with tax incentives, however one still has to avoid making basic errors around the mortgage loan. Such as, taking so-called “endowment” or “interest-only” mortgages, or mortgages framed in a currency which you have no natural hedge for, such as the Swiss franc mortgages that used to be popular in Poland.
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The Eye of the Bedlam Bride: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 6
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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Full-Cast Edition)
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Have you ever quit a job and walked out without giving any notice? What caused you to leave so urgently?

Have you ever quit a job and walked out without giving any notice? What caused you to leave so urgently?

Well I did one time, because the boss who was also a close friend (which can be complicated) got many months behind on paying me. This was “constructive dismissal” in the jurisdiction concerned so I could leave the moment I liked. I didn’t want any discussion so I just came in at a weekend, fished the fish out of my office fishtank and took them home, and took all my other personal belongings home. I took the computer and car from the company that I had been using as lien against the debt, and later we agreed on a payment plan which involved me taking ownership of those assets as part of paying off the debt to me and me forgiving part, and an instalment plan with interest for a third part, but already I had to work elsewhere. Obviously I had got the new role sorted prior to walking out the door.

I did not steal his clients or run on his business although some who wanted to come to me did come over and I declared these in every case.

Ten years down the line I am trying again with the same boss, as he seems to have learned his lesson and we both missed the good times we had working together. But he knows how I will react if he ever does that again, and so he will make every effort not to.

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This Inevitable Ruin: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 7
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Full-Cast Edition)
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Bratislava, Slovakia #2

Original YT playout date: 24 August 2010
Duration: 46:00

Bratislava, Slovakia next day. Hold onto your hats, the prices may astound you.
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Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage
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Theo of Golden: A Novel
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Fragment from my Lecture “Importance of Properly Prepared Assumptions in Business Modelling”

Fragment from my Lecture “Importance of Properly Prepared Assumptions in Business Modelling”

Original YT playout date: 21 August 2010
Duration: 1:01:41

What this lecture is for

This is the first hour of my lecturing this year (fourth year running) for the Cambridge Python project. It is an incubator scheme, which we do under the aegis of Cambridge University and the British Embassy in Poland. Students from all the Polish Universities can apply with a business idea. If they work hard they can take their idea through all the steps, and produce a business model using the method I teach them.  These are the finalists who’ve already whittled themselves down to a lecture-room-full, and these teams get to present their idea to a panel of real business angels. If they can convince them to invest, then their dreams of owning their own business will become a reality.

First they need to go through very intensive training from me and also from people from the global Management Consultancy firm McKinsey & Company and do homework to ensure that their projects are really state-of-the-art. Now I would be the first to admit that these days this modelling is nothing so impressive, but it was very good at the time. These young people, those who paid proper attention, learned some serious investing skills and what I tell about assumptions is a good mental model which is reasonably timeless.

Why Cambridge pythons?

Here the lecture is hosted by the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Mathematics. The hall seats about 120 and was packed with finalists some of whom had come from distant parts of the country, and the session lasted three hours with one break.

Cambridge Python is so called because the Pythons of comedy came from Cambridge, but so does the idea of “pythoning”. Pythons are the only snakes that look after their young rather than leave them to fate. Therefore, business pythons are people who break the mould of the uncaring business dog-eat-dog approach and are ready to nurture young entrepreneurs on a pro-bono basis.
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The Butcher's Masquerade: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 5
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The Gate of the Feral Gods: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 4
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How do I respond/acknowledge my boss for the task assignment in email? Is it fine to say “Thank you so much for sending the task. I will get back to you once I get questions?”

I don’t understand what “get questions” means. It’s not clear whether you meant that you would receive questions from someone else. I would also be unsure if you are actually doing the task yourself or subbing it out to some cheaper person.

The unthanked boss may become grumpy…

Initially I would respond to receiving a new project with something like, “looks like an interesting project, many thanks. I will now do some initial research and if need be I’ll follow up with some questions to make sure we’re on the same page with regard to scope, time frame and deliverables. Thanks again for assigning me to this task”.

People always want to hear thanks from their bosses for their work but not that many people are thankful to their bosses for giving them opportunities to do interesting projects. If you are, then that’s very good. We all want to receive some expressions of gratitude now and again. But if someone makes a business they hear very little thanks. I have yet to see the tax office send a thank-you note for the taxes this business owner pays into the economy, even though that’s the take home pay of all the tax office officials.

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Theo of Golden: A Novel
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The Gate of the Feral Gods: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 4
4.7 out of 5 stars(47544813)

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(as of 31/05/2026 00:38 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)