About RefinedFI
The right map for every stage of your financial journey.
Why this exists
Recently, I sat down with a relative to review their retirement accounts. Smart person, decades of saving, working with a reputable advisor. And yet: no systematic framework for where the next dollar should go, no plan for what happens if the market drops 20% in year two of retirement, and no clear sense of whether the fees they were paying were buying anything useful.
Unfortunately, this is the norm.
I wanted to bottle that conversation for everyone to use. The same frameworks, tools and portfolios without needing to pay for mediocre advice.
Who writes this
24+ years in institutional investment research. Mechanical engineering degree. MBA in Finance. Currently Head of Investment Research at a bank — actively running a research desk and managing portfolios today.
Not consulting. Not on a career break. Not retired. This is the day job.
The families I manage money for professionally cannot afford catastrophic mistakes. They need income strategies that survive recessions, inflation spikes, rate cycles, and policy shocks — not just average-case projections.
The same frameworks I use for the families I manage professionally are the ones I publish here. The difference: here, they're translated for anyone who needs them.
Why anonymous
I publish anonymously because I still run a research desk at a bank. Leaving to put my name on this would mean losing the institutional tools, data access, and real-time market perspective that make the analysis worth reading.
The tradeoff is anonymity for quality. I think it's worth it.
The engineer's perspective
Most retirement income advice works backward from a rule of thumb. Start with 4%, adjust for comfort, hope it holds. That's not analysis — it's a guess wearing a spreadsheet.
Most retirement advice is built around sales workflows, not first-principles portfolio engineering.
An engineer doesn't ask "will this bridge hold on a sunny day?" They ask "will it hold in a hurricane?"
My engineering training taught me to test retirement plans the same way — not against average returns, but against the worst plausible sequence of events. Then build the income strategy to survive it.
What you'll find here
- Precise frameworks for saving, investing, and retirement income.
- Account-location guidance for making investments more tax-efficient.
- Specific portfolios for each stage of the investing journey: building wealth, preparing for retirement, and generating durable retirement income.
- Professional tools that help answer nagging financial questions with clearer, more useful outputs.
- An automated market-risk dashboard designed to reduce fear and improve decision-making.
How the maps are built
Start with the decision, not the product.
Every framework starts by identifying where you are, what your money needs to do next, and which risks matter at that stage. Only then do we evaluate the portfolio, tools, and playbook that fit the problem.
Built from primary analysis.
Institutional-level data, market structure observation, and real-world portfolio experience become practical frameworks for building wealth, preparing for retirement, and living off investments.
Independent by design.
No affiliate links. No sponsored content. No commissions for recommending a fund or product. The only incentive is building a map that helps you make better decisions.
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Full portfolio holdings, allocation frameworks, and ongoing research updates for members.