I spent years analyzing assets for insurance companies worth hundreds of millions.

It never occurred to me to do the same thing for myself.

I’m not being modest. I have a degree in econometrics. Stochastic differential equations. Ito’s lemma. I built risk models and analyzed balance sheets for a living. Capital markets and insurance were my subject matter from day one.

And yet, at 28, I had nothing invested. Not a single euro working for me while I slept.

Here’s what a financial education actually teaches you: how to analyze other people’s money.

You learn about equity markets, derivatives, asset allocation — all framed as objects of study. The professor doesn’t say “and by the way, this system also works for you personally.” That sentence never comes. You graduate knowing how the machine works, without ever being told you’re allowed to operate it.

Then you join a Big Four. Now you’re the advisor. The client has the capital. You have the expertise. That role becomes your identity faster than you think.

There’s also a subtler trap. When you know how to price an exotic derivative — when you’ve spent years with the sophisticated end of finance — buying a plain index ETF feels almost embarrassingly simple. Like a cardiologist taking aspirin for a headache. Surely that can’t be it.

It is it. That’s the trap.

I spent years standing next to serious wealth and somehow concluded that the system was for other people. Clients. Institutional investors. Not a 26-year-old consultant with a decent salary and nowhere near enough self-awareness.

Nobody gave me permission to participate. And I never thought to give it to myself.

A colleague mentioned, in passing, that he was investing in funds.

That was it. No masterclass. No book recommendation. Just a hallway conversation. I was 28, senior consultant, we had just moved into a new build. Whatever was left at the end of the month was doing nothing.

I opened a broker account that week. Bought a Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. Set up a €100 monthly transfer.

No FIRE number. No exit plan. No strategy beyond: keep going.

Then I started reading. The Magic of Thinking Big. Rich Dad Poor Dad. The Simple Path to Wealth. Each one dismantled something I thought I knew. I started tracking every euro in and out — not anxiously, just honestly. Once you do that, the surplus becomes impossible to ignore.

€100 became €400. Then €800. Then close to €1,000 a month going into the market.

The dividend payments started arriving. Small amounts. A few euros.

But they arrived without me doing anything. No deliverable. No client call. No invoice. Just money, quietly working while I was in back-to-back meetings.

Then came the months where market appreciation added more to my net worth than my gross salary.

Let that land: the market was paying me more than my employer. Without a single email sent.

I had spent years calculating that exact phenomenon for insurance companies. I just never thought it was meant for me.

Time in the market beats almost everything else. It beats picking the right ETF. It beats obsessing over your expense ratio. It beats knowing what Ito’s lemma is — which I did, for years, at zero personal benefit.

The only variable that truly compounds is when you started.

A childhood friend I hadn’t spoken to in nearly a decade met with me a few years ago. Normal job, no finance background. I told him what I was doing. He started the same week.

He’s sitting at almost €20,000 now.

We have a deal: when he hits €100,000, dinner is on him.

I’m looking forward to that dinner.

The system trained me to analyze wealth. It never told me I was allowed to build it. That’s the sentence I want every junior in my firm to read before they spend four years doing what I did.

Next week: what seven years of actually doing this looks like. The real numbers, year by year. The table I wasn’t sure I should publish.

Let’s go — if you want to see a Daddy On Fire.