Personal Finance & Market Insights] Updated - Why this space exists: Reflections on Crisis, Capital, and Continuity

Hi All,

It's been a while and I figured I'd share the updated intention for this section.

I want this space to serve as a place for thought exchange and archiving my reflections and what I'm learning as I go along. Over the past 15 years, I've worked across institutional investment—with global CIOs, investment banks, private equity, asset managers, sovereign wealth funds, insurers, university endowments, and religious institutions on everything from asset allocation and fintech to research and sustainable/impact investing around the world. I was lucky enough to work with investors/mentors/clients from North America, EMEA, Asia and Latin America.

Through these lucky experiences, I've accumulated stories, insights, and lessons. But here's the paradox: I've also realized how different the world of institutional capital is from the realities of personal finance. Part of my journey is about bridging those two domains—testing where institutional wisdom works for individuals, and where it doesn't.

Early Memories: Witnessing Financial Crises as a Child

My earliest encounters with finance weren't in a classroom, but as a child watching crises unfold.

In 1997, during the Asian Financial Crisis, South Korea was hit badly - requiring a bailout from the IMF. Once-mighty companies went bankrupt and CEOs suddenly became homeless on the streets. Divorce rates skyrocketed. I remember the collapse of the won against the dollar, the "금모으기 운동" (gold collection campaign), and in an attempt to save the country and pay back the debt to the IMF, families melted heirlooms and donated their own gold to help the nation. Then, later came the dot-com bubble, with its soaring optimism and sudden collapse. I didn't fully understand markets back then, but I carried with me a persistent question: why are things the way they are in the world?

University Years: Witnessing the Global Financial Crisis

By the time I entered university in New York City, I found myself witnessing another crisis unfold—the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. I was a student at NYU and also interning on Wall Street, watching events unfold from both perspectives. I was studying pre-law, international relations, and finance, torn between becoming a human rights lawyer at the UN, an urban planner, or working in finance. My ultimate goal was the same regardless: help people and make the world better, especially those in need.

What I witnessed wasn't just numbers flashing red on trading screens—it was human lives being overturned in real time. Young graduates, only weeks into their first jobs, lay passed out on subway benches in the middle of the day, bottles still in hand, their dreams already broken. Managing directors—men and women who once seemed untouchable—sat hunched over in cafés, face to face with old friends of twenty years, voices low and urgent as they asked for help. Their concerns weren't abstract: it was about making the mortgage, covering their children's tuition.

What struck me most was the absence of shame. These were high-flyers brought to their knees, yet there was no pretense left, no facade of invincibility. The fall had been too sudden, too universal. It was pure chaos.

Even years later, when I began my own career, I heard managing directors confess quietly to juniors like me: sometimes you take the job you don't want, the role that doesn't fit, simply to survive. You do what you must to stay in the game. That refrain stayed with me.

The aftershocks of 2008 lingered long after the headlines faded—reshaping careers, altering the texture of conversations in boardrooms, and redefining what it meant to build resilience and manage risk in finance. For me, as a student just coming of age in the epicenter of it all, it was more than a financial collapse—it was a human one.

But what I learned is that humans and systems are resilient. All these massive layoffs - people ended up finding better opportunities ultimately in the long term. The jobs and places better aligned with their true passion, purpose and talent.

Systems in Contrast

These experiences made me curious about capitalism itself. I still remember Professor Whitelaw at NYU Stern describing capitalism as "an experiment." The word stuck with me.

Years later, in 2016, I traveled to Cuba just as U.S. doors opened and coincidentally during Fidel Castro's funeral. There I saw the other side of the spectrum—the visible limitations of socialism. Empty shelves, ration books, scarcity of basic goods. Both systems carried their scars. Both revealed something about human resilience and human cost.

At the same time, I couldn’t ignore the hybrid experiments emerging elsewhere. China was rapidly evolving into what many called “socialism with Chinese characteristics”—a state-directed model that embraced capitalist dynamism while retaining centralized political control. Its rise showed how markets could be harnessed without conceding to Western-style liberalism, but also how much that balance relied on scale, governance, and discipline.

Meanwhile, the Nordic countries offered yet another variation: strong capitalist markets paired with high taxation, expansive welfare, and a social contract that emphasized equality and collective well-being. To many outsiders, they embodied the possibility of a “third way”—a system that sought to temper capitalism’s excesses without discarding its innovation.

Seeing these contrasts firsthand deepened my fascination with the question: is there an ideal system, or are all economies simply different experiments in balancing ambition, equity, and survival?

From Observation to Application

Today, I find myself weaving those early observations into my work. Since the 2020 pandemic, I’ve noticed a growing interest in wealth-building and investing among individuals. At the same time, we’re witnessing a massive wealth transfer from Boomers to Millennials and Gen Z, along with more women taking their place at the table. Crises taught me about fragility and resilience; travel showed me different models of survival and ambition. Over the years, I've had the privilege of learning directly from some of the world's top portfolio managers, allocators, and traders. I've also seen the blind spots—the areas where institutional frameworks don't serve individuals navigating uncertainty.

Recent conversations with my mentors and peers reminded me the importance of knowledge sharing for people and the next generations.

That's what this space is about: archiving thoughts on markets, mentors, and macro shifts, while experimenting with how those lessons can inform personal wealth-building in an age of rapid change—AI, geopolitics, stablecoins, and beyond.

In Closing...

This is a living notebook. My hope is that it sparks dialogue—across generations, across disciplines, across geographies. If anyone wants to collaborate or contribute, I'd love to hear from you.

I have a question for you: what got you interested in personal finance/investing?