The 60-day stable release for engineers and PMs who earn well but invest nothing. We instrument your cash flow, surface the $2,000–5,000/mo you can't currently see, and automate it into the market before your brain gets to spend it.
You make $150K+/year but you're not investing any of it. Your net worth hasn't moved in 5 years. We show you why and how to fix it.
This document specifies a system for converting a high salary into actual net worth — the gap most well-paid engineers never close. The 60-day protocol exists to close it.
Long enough to stop being a side project and start being infrastructure. The transfer survives a bad month, a surprise bill, a chaotic quarter — because it never asked your discipline for permission.
Three failure modes filed against the current system. If your repro steps match, this protocol was written for you — not for someone with a trust fund and a finance degree.
You make good money but you don't know where it goes. Rent, food, crypto experiments, the occasional Amazon binge. At the end of the year you've spent it all and have nothing to show for it.
You know you *should* invest but index funds feel boring and crypto feels risky. You don't have the time to learn and you feel stupid for not knowing this already.
You see founders and senior engineers with real wealth and you wonder 'how did they do that?' while you're paycheck-to-paycheck on a $200K salary. The math doesn't add up and that's the problem.
No strategy, no philosophy — an architecture. Income flows in, the system instruments it, automates the surplus into the market, and a weekly retro tunes the one parameter that matters. You become the operator, not the bottleneck.
paycheck → checking
We audit your spending for the last 6 months. Most tech professionals have $2,000–5,000/month that could be invested but isn't. They just don't see it. Once you see it, it's hard to unsee.
in: 6-mo spend · out: investable surplus
Not a strategy, not a philosophy. A system: paycheck comes in, X amount goes to savings on day 1. Your brain doesn't get to decide. The money is invested before you notice it's gone.
in: surplus · out: transfer, fired on day 1
diversified index funds → net worth ↑
Friday morning: review last week's spending. Any surprises? Any patterns? Adjust next week. Like a sprint retro for your money.
reads: last week's spend · tunes: transfer amount
Defaults shown. Every parameter is calibrated to your numbers in the 2-minute intake — nothing here is one-size-fits-all.
Long enough for the system to compound quietly in the background while you ship your actual job.
You know where every dollar goes. You've found $2,500–3,500/month that could be invested. You've set up automatic transfers. You're not using that money anymore.
commit 7c1a · signed-off · the stable release
The transfer outlives a bad month, a surprise bill, a quarter of chaos. It never asked your willpower for permission, so the balance just compounds in the background.
commit 3f9e · signed-off · the stable release
You've invested $10,000+ at a consistent rate. Your net worth moved for the first time in years. The spreadsheet doesn't lie. You're on a path now.
commit b2d4 · signed-off · the stable release
Three operators, three different cycles, one protocol. Names rotated for privacy; roles and deltas are real. Cohort median, not best case — withdrawals included.
“I never needed motivation. I needed a transfer that tolerates a sev2 at 11 PM and a re-org in the same month. This is the first money system that did not fall apart in week two.”
“The surplus was always there. I just had never instrumented it. Once the audit shipped, I could not un-see the $3k a month I was leaking into nothing.”
“Calibrate, automate, retro. I run my org on that loop — turns out it runs my money too. The Friday review is the only ritual that survived a whole year.”
The objections every engineer raises in review. All pre-cached — we have heard each one before.
For this protocol: boring index funds. 85% of your portfolio. If you want to experiment with crypto/stocks, use 15% of the surplus. But the engine is boring diversification.
Depends on interest rate. <4% interest: invest while paying minimum. >6% interest: accelerate payoff. We calculate the math, not the emotions.
Depends on the strike price vs. current valuation. We run the numbers. But most engineers should. This is how founders build wealth.
No. Day 1 of investing beats day 1000 of thinking about it. The best time to start is now. The second best time was yesterday.
A 60-day protocol that keeps investing on the months motivation never shows up for. The intake takes two minutes, reads your real numbers, and returns a 60-day protocol calibrated to your cash flow — no card, no upsell mid-quiz, no shame copy.
$ git merge --no-ff wealth-protocol
Updating checking → diversified
Fast-forward
net_worth | compounding +
willpower | 0 required
status | stableno card · 2 min · no shame copy