I'm Addicted to Cash & Here's What It Cost Me
My name is Ivan, and I have a personal finance problem: I’m addicted to cash.
I’m not saying that I hate money - quite the opposite.
Like most people who grew up without much, I was determined to claw my way out of never having enough to afford nice things. I scrimped, saved, and hustled at every opportunity to earn money. Part-time jobs, contract work, and various side gigs.
Life became a video game, and the number on my bank account statement represented the points I had to accumulate through fighting demons, and completing side quests.
When I turned thirty, I had about $300,000 in savings. My bank app’s calculator showed that I had over >99 months of emergency funds (it’s actually 7 years’ worth of monthly spending, but the app’s UI couldn’t go beyond double-digits).
Here’s the problem: most of my net worth sits in a bank account, generating less in interest earnings than I spend on subway rides in a year.
I missed out on (most of) the crypto bull run, DeFi summer, and the decade-long stock rally thanks to ZIRP.
Had I invested early, consistently, and aggressively as I should have, I would be retired many times over by now.
When I turned 30, I was burnt out from hustling, and disappointed with how far financial freedom seemed, despite how hard I worked on getting here.
I calculated that I didn’t even have enough to comfortably buy a house that I wanted.
You might be forgiven for thinking that my failure to invest owes itself to ignorance, but you’d be wrong.
I have been familiar with Bitcoin since 2016, and I majored in development economics at one of Asia’s top universities.
I helped professors edit books on macroeconomic history, research papers on credit ratings agencies, and I even co-ran an investor relations agency for listed companies on the local stock exchange.
See, the problem is that despite all that knowledge, I never had a way to visualize how much growth in my net worth I was missing out on, by not investing my savings.
I chased one singular metric, on the most convenient platform I had: my bank account.
The sheer thought of having to manage multiple apps, brokerages, etc. was so daunting I just defaulted to doing nothing.
I’m not alone in this struggle.
I’ve heard similar personal stories from people you wouldn’t believe:
partners at VC funds,
CEOs of boutique asset management firms, and
senior executives at Fortune 100 companies.
Behavioral and cognitive barriers to managing our personal finances are a tremendous blocker for many of us - regardless of education, experience, and even professional skill.
Tools like Notion or Excel templates help, but they don’t make it any more enjoyable or encouraging.
Contrast that with how Duolingo’s silly green owl, and game-like features have motivated me to do daily Korean lessons for over 1,500 days in a row.
I don’t know what the answer is, but all I know is that there remains a tremendous, underrated opportunity for fintech founders to solve this.
Asia's savings rate is extraordinarily high, at about 27.11% of gross domestic product (GDP), ranging from 40.24% in Singapore, 30.20% in India, 45.9% in China, and 33.40% in Korea.
But the problem with the $94.8 billion dollar financial advisory, or wealth planning industry is that nobody takes their advice seriously anymore.
It’s not hard to see why.
When someone earns money from taking commissions on selling cars, we call them car salesperson. When an influencer makes money from promoting brands online, we call them “affiliate marketers”.
But when a special breed of people makes money from selling financial products - we call them “advisors”.
There is an entire generation of digital natives who:
Hate being sold to,
Want to be entertained or motivated,
Expect everything to be served online and on-demand.
AI tools like custom GPTs, and AI agents could give you intelligent insights across your financial life.
Like your portfolio performance, asset allocation, or your progress towards financial goals like retirement.
Gamification features could help make users get smarter every day about various asset classes, or financial concepts.
Hopefully, fintech founders working on this problem will someday wean off our collective addiction to cash, and put our money to work for our benefit - not the salesmen in suits.