It has been three months since my last post.

In all that time I didn’t write a single word here. It wasn’t laziness. I crossed a few personal milestones I’d been waiting on for a long time, buried myself in the projects I was building, and honestly, I couldn’t find the hours to write.

But when I came back today, the first thing I did wasn’t write a new post.

The first thing I did was delete.

First, a Clean-Up: I Deleted Half of This Blog

After enough time away, I came back and read my own posts like a stranger would. I didn’t like what I saw. I had stuffed the blog full of posts about one Telegram tool I built. One tool. Dozens of posts.

What did a new reader actually land on? Not a journal about financial independence. A brochure for a single app.

I deleted all of it.

It reminded me of something I’ve been doing in my own portfolio for years: getting emotionally attached to an asset doesn’t mean that asset has earned its place in your portfolio. Holding something because you poured work into it is not the same as holding it because it pays. The same is true for a blog. Learn to prune.

The Telegram Tool Was Only the Starting Line

That deleted tool was a beginning, not an end. Behind the scenes I built three more applications and never released any of them publicly: ProductX, Sec-Analyzer and PersonalAdvisor.

None of them was the thing I actually wanted. One was too scattered, one was too narrow, one was never fast enough to be worth opening. But each of them left a piece behind for the next.

On the fourth attempt I got it right: Insider.

Insider is now my private financial command center. It started out analysing SEC filings and tracking a portfolio of US companies. Today it does considerably more:

  • Beyond NASDAQ and NYSE, it now covers XETRA, BIST and crypto.

  • It tracks not just official filings, but the social media chatter and sentiment around a name.

  • It follows the portfolio position by position, line by line.

  • It analyses historical bottoms and peaks, so today’s price sits in its proper historical context.

This is the system I actively use. And to be clear about what it does: this tool doesn’t make me money. It saves me time and it stops me making mistakes. Over a long enough horizon, both of those turn into money anyway.


The Second Door I Built Next to a Full-Time Job

Something else happened in these three months. Alongside my full-time job, I built a side business structure and made my first sale. Then another. Then another.

What I sold was a book. I melted three things into one pot: the technical knowledge I’ve picked up practising my profession, my formal education, and properly sourced, officially valid references. I designed it as an e-book, which meant printing, storage and shipping never appeared on my cost sheet at all.

The real lesson here is simple: the most valuable raw material you own is the knowledge you already have. Package it once and you no longer have to work from zero for every sale. I think of it as the knowledge version of compound interest.

But None of That Was My Best Return

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Over this period, my best return didn’t come from my full-time job, from Insider, or from the book.

Separately from this blog, I keep a monthly finance journal. The first line in it is dated 04/04/2025. When I read my worldview and my investor profile from that day, I barely recognize the person writing.

Back then I was an ordinary university student. I was living on the allowance my father sent me — and saving a slice out of that same allowance. I’d already been investing actively for three years.

At the end of those three years, on 04/04/2025, my total savings stood at $12,000.

As I write this post, that same number is $88,000.

Roughly 630% growth.

So Is All of That Profit? No.

And I’m not going to tell you to buy something and watch it moon.

That 630% is not all market gains. Part of it is profit, part is dividends, part is plain monthly contribution. Be suspicious of anyone who hides that distinction — hiding it means showing you the result while quietly skipping the hardest part of the work.

I’ll just tell you what I actually did:

  • Set aside every last coin. The amount doesn’t matter. The consistency does.

  • Cut the waste. You can’t grow what you earn if you don’t first keep what you earn.

  • Contribute every single month, whatever the amount. Putting aside $10, never touching it again and expecting $100 is absurd. What grows a snowball isn’t the slope — it’s every handful you throw on top.

  • Reinvest dividends and investment income. This is the only key that makes compounding actually turn.

  • Plan your buys. Random buying isn’t investing. It’s just an expensive habit.

I know this list sounds boring. It works precisely because it’s boring.

What Happens Next

As best I can, I’ll publish a new post every two weeks.

They’ll be a selection from the books I read, the content I watch, the podcasts I listen to, the things that happen to me and the experience I pick up along the way.

I won’t give you stock picks. I won’t give you magic formulas. I won’t hand you the absolute key to success. There are plenty of people doing that already, and their number grows every day.

I’m going to do something much simpler: share my own route in public. What I did, why I did it, where I got it wrong, and what’s actually behind the numbers.

The Short Version

  • Prune your blog the way you’d prune your portfolio. Not everything you worked on deserves the space.

  • Three failed projects are the raw material for the fourth. Insider was built on top of three “failures”.

  • The knowledge you already hold becomes an asset the moment you package it.

  • 630% growth didn’t come from a tip. It came from consistency, reinvestment and patience.

Try this: Start a finance journal today. Digital, paper, doesn’t matter. Just write down this month’s net worth, the contribution you made, and the reason behind the decisions you took. Come back to it in a year and you’ll have something no brokerage app can give you: a written record of your own decision-making.

If you’d like to join me on this route, consider yourself invited.

I’m Turkarius — and we’re picking up where we left off.