Welcome!

This is an email I send to keep in touch with people and share a bit about what I'm doing and thinking about.

This month, I'm:

• Thinking about how to shirk even more responsibility
• Building online tools
• Taking ChatGPT on a shopping trip

You're receiving this monthly email because you signed up for it at robdix.com, or you opted in after reading my books The Price Of Money or Seven Myths About Money, or I added you manually because we've spoken one-to-one.

If you don't enjoy it, feel free to unsubscribe at the bottom – I won't be notified and I'll never even know!

🌐 My life operating system

I've spent the last few years building my own "life operating system" by having someone own each important part of my life.

Not because I lack time – because I lack headspace. I'm very good at deep, focused work like writing a book, but I can only keep a few things in my mind at once. Without someone prodding me, whole (important) areas can completely fall by the wayside.

My first outside help came from Karen, who turned my property portfolio from a source of constant low-level anxiety into the occasional WhatsApp message.

Then came Talya, my Executive Assistant, who acts as a buffer between me and the rest of the world. She preps for meetings and presentations, maintains my content creation rhythm, and allows me to relax knowing she'll flag anything critical even if I don't look at emails for days.

Most recently, I added Hym as my online personal trainer. He tells me what to eat and what to do at the gym, so that's another part of my life I don't have to think about.

So what's missing? The next logical step for me is having someone to "own" my finances.

Imagine if someone could:

• Rebalance investments based on pre-agreed rules
• Sweep cash from my business to investment accounts
• Produce monthly reports
• Most importantly: actually DO the things I said I want to do, so I stick to the plan rather than finding reasons to second-guess it

Then as a next level, combine this with a "fractional CFO" to periodically look at the big picture and bounce ideas around.

Am I just describing what an IFA does? Partially... but I don't think they'd tick all those boxes, and they'd typically want more control than I'm willing to give up.

The super-wealthy have family offices to handle all this. But there must be some kind of "homebrew" solution that works for those of us a few rungs down.

Let me know if you have any thoughts on this, or you've found a system that works for you!

My book became a bestseller! Thank you if you bought it and helped make this happen

🦾 I guess I'm... a coder now?

A few weeks ago I discovered the new wave of AI-assisted coding tools that let non-technical people like me build custom software in hours.

Since then, I've built:

• A prototype of a journaling system that turns random voice notes into structured diary entries (then uses a chat interface to pull out insights)
• A property tool that handles specific calculations I always wanted but couldn't find elsewhere
• An app that generates short stories in Spanish and tracks my reading progress

Paul Graham said, "Whatever the geeks are doing on weekends now is what everyone else will be doing in 10 years."

And what the geeks are doing right now is building with these tools. In time, I can see this becoming as normal as using Excel or setting up a website on WordPress.

The time between "wouldn't it be cool if..." and "here it is" will virtually disappear... and will almost be quicker to build the perfect tool than to search around for one and adapt it for your use case.

I'm still at the beginning of exploring what's possible, but I'm already building tools I would have paid thousands to have someone else create. Wildly exciting.

My wife and I had a couple of days away in Mallorca. The great thing about travelling with kids is when you DON'T travel with kids, even an EasyJet flight feels like the most relaxing experience in the world.

🪴 Thinking differently about home (or: why I've developed a dangerous new eBay habit)

Yesterday I caught myself bidding on vintage teak bookends on eBay. Whatever happened to the minimalist digital nomad who used to own nothing but a backpack?

Maybe I'm just entering my boring forties, but I choose to blame our new rental agreement. 

For the first time ever, we've signed up for three years instead of the usual 12 months. And something unexpected has happened: even though rationally nothing has changed, the lack of a looming end date has completely shifted how I think about "home".

In the past, we always lived on year-to-year arrangements. Even when we stayed somewhere for years, there was always a deadline approaching that might bring it to an end. It never seemed worth making much effort – by the time I thought about making a room nicer, we might have had to move out in six months anyway.

This psychological shift has made me see a different side of the upcoming policy change in England where all tenancies will become "indefinite".

Landlords are (rightly) annoyed that they won't have enough protection against rogue tenants, and I think the initial implementation is likely to be messy in the extreme. 

But once some time has passed, the courts have adapted and maybe some details have been tweaked... there might be overall positive effects from both sides being psychologically nudged into taking a longer view: tenants investing more in properties, owners investing more in relationships, and everyone benefiting from greater stability.

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic. But my bookshelf is looking fabulous, so can you blame me?

🔗 Odds and ends

• I decided to up my style game, and found an unlikely personal shopper: ChatGPT. It helped me define my "look", built a capsule wardrobe list, and suggested where to shop. Then I took it into the changing room, where (based on photos) it gave feedback on style and fit. Highly impressive.

• If you're here for financial insights rather than me rambling about my personal life... err, sorry, this has been a self-indulgent one. But I published this piece about "stealth money printing" on LinkedIn which people seemed to enjoy.

• Our favourite guilty pleasure TV show was The Traitors, so instead of accepting that all good things must end when it finished... we started on the New Zealand version. NZ Season 2 is great, if you're wondering: it's not available on any of the streaming services, but for some reason the whole thing is on this random website.

That’s it for now! Feel free to write back and let me know what you've been up to.

Cheers!

Rob

p.s. You can also follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.