Gabriel Nussbaum
That Money Guy, Personal Finance Creator
I want to be average with my finances. It sounds backwards, but after years in personal finance, I’ve learned boring and average beats every clever strategy.
Everyone’s exhausted by money: the hacks, the hot takes, the endless debate over the “right” way to do things. I’ve reached my conclusion: I want to be average. Not exceptional, not optimised, just boringly, peacefully average. Because in personal finance, average done consistently beats exceptional done occasionally. And if that sounds dull, wait, there’s one magic ingredient that turns boring into exceptional.
Why average beats the experts
Roughly 85% of professional fund managers fail to beat the market over fifteen years.1 They have teams, algorithms and decades of experience, and still lose. Meanwhile, the person who automatically invests in a global index fund and ignores it quietly wins. Average isn’t settling. Average is succeeding in disguise.
The complexity crisis
Money has become a performance sport. People spend more time comparing spreadsheets than improving their balance. They won’t start saving because £5 feels too small. They delay paying debt because they’re still arguing about the “best” method. They ignore pensions because retirement feels too far away. Perfection paralysis is costing us progress.
in personal finance, average done consistently beats exceptional done occasionally.
What boring actually looks like
Being boringly average means doing the unsexy stuff everyone knows works and actually sticking to it. Budgeting? Look at your spending. Track it. Face it. Debt? Make next month’s balance smaller than this month’s. Spending? Pick one or two things you truly enjoy and be boring with the rest. There’s no hack, no trick, no shortcut, just awareness and repetition.
The magic ingredient
Remember that magic ingredient I mentioned earlier? Here it is: time. That’s what turns average into exceptional. Money isn’t complicated; it’s just slow. The hard part isn’t knowing what to do; it’s doing it for decades. Earn £1,000, spend less than that and do something smart with the difference. Repeat. Month after month. Year after year.
Boring plus time equals exceptional. Let’s make money boring again.
[1] Ganti, A., Di Gioia, D., & Didio, N. (2025). SPIVA® U.S. Scorecard. S&P Dow Jones Indices.
