General NJL Design Lab notes and uncategorized archive content.
Most FI conversations stop at the number. How much do you need? When can you stop? How do you know it is enough? That part matters. But it is not the whole transition. For many people, the harder shift comes after the money question is mostly solved. Work no longer runs the calendar. The old…
The 4% rule is the most cited number in the financial independence community. It is also the most misapplied. The original research was sound. The shorthand that emerged from it was not. When someone tells you “you need 25x your expenses to retire,” they are doing the math correctly but skipping the part where that…
A practical framework for auditing real spending, applying a value matrix, and using both to make cleaner financial-independence decisions.
