Colophon
Whose almanac is this?
How (and why) was it built?
I am Scott Bell. I live in Los Angeles. Reformed C+ financial blogger, class of 2008. It was called I Heart Wall Street. Don’t bother Googling it.
I’ve had failures, made mistakes, utterly humiliating (and publicly) at times. And I’m still here. I have nothing but gratitude, a solid 75–80% of the time. We’re all a work in progress.
In love with my wife, and our fourth kid is about to leave the nest. All of them on their way. Life is good.
Eighteen-year-old me would be blown away I’m still alive. Forty-year-old me is stoked about how great my life has turned out.
I’m 52 now. So I wake up every day keenly aware everything can change in a minute.
By day, I run GDP, inc. We’ve been helping kind people since 2008, making their lives easier and awesome.
I like building, analyzing, design and systems. AI is bananas. I also understand it, which is the only reason any of this exists. So, here we are. Now you know.
It’s called myAlmanac, but it can be yours, too.
Intentionally yours, Scott
The instruments
Most of it is self-explanatory or has instructions. Wealth Factors is the one to start with: signal pulled out of the noise across Purpose, People, Health, Time and Money. Some days it’s an absolute goldmine.
Those five keep showing up in my work, and they aren’t evenly weighted the way people assume. Enduring wealth takes all five. Money without the other four is a scoreboard.
Money is last on that list for a reason. Don’t get it mixed up: it’s important, but it’s also the one most likely to be a proxy for something further up the list. A person who says they need another two million usually means something else. Finding that something else is where I like to invest my time.
The instruments pull from free public sources on their own schedule. They run delayed, and they’re sometimes wrong. I’d rather say that plainly than dress them up. You’re welcome to read them over my shoulder.
More coming.
The writing
The Journal is mine. It goes up when there’s something to say. Hopefully you leave with a laugh and better for the experience. Results may vary.
No schedule. Been there, done that. No newsletter to feed, so there’s no incentive to publish filler, by design. More signal, less noise is much easier on the constitution.
Publishing. Intentionally Random.
Why any of this takes the shape of an almanac is its own story.
The standard
One bar, and everything here answers to it: is the underlying data worth the space it takes up? Most of it is not. Collection is easy. Curation is the work.
How it is built
Astro for the writing, AI + Scott for the dashboards, and a heaping cup of scripts that keep the data moving without me. I know enough to be dangerous, and I like it.
No newsletter, no comment section. Nothing here but curated data and some random posts from the guy who built it.
Off the clock
When I’m not building or writing, you’ll find me soaking up the LA sun, reading white papers on health, novel therapies and behavioral finance. Or headed down a dirt road with the truck packed, off on another adventure with my wife. My happy place is nature. It’s quiet out there, and quiet is what makes you pay attention. Same reason this site exists.
Not-so fine print
I am the principal of an SEC-registered investment adviser. Nothing on this site is investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer of any kind. It is a personal almanac, written in a personal capacity. Market data shown in the tools is delayed and occasionally wrong. Do not trade on it.