Welcome to Future Proof
Reading time: 8 minutes
I used to think financial independence had a formula.
I'd devoured every Making Sense of Cents post. Binged Dave Ramsey until my ears bled. Worshipped at the altar of Mr. Money Mustache. The FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) gospel was simple: work like a maniac, save everything, buy property (check—just bought one), snowball debt, dump money into index funds, and Warren Buffett my way to freedom.
The endgame? Grind for a few years, accumulate enough paper wealth, then vanish to some low-cost paradise. Thailand. Portugal. Mexico. Anywhere with cheap wine, decent Wi-Fi, and a cost of living that would make my savings feel infinite.
Then 2020 happened.
At first, my plan looked rocket-fueled. Growth stocks were printing money in the most euphoric bull market I'd ever seen. I was calculating possibilities—wildly optimistic possibilities—of earning millions while barely glancing at charts. Every trade turned money into more money. Penny stocks from WSB "DD" (Due Diligence). FAANG earnings plays. Everything worked.
I'd cracked the code! Freedom was within reach.
So naturally, I quit my job to focus on trading full-time. My calculations on the baby pink Casio calculator I loved posting on my FIRE-centric Instagram account said I'd be financially independent within the year.
That very week, GameStop imploded. The Nasdaq followed. Russia invaded Ukraine. The bull market was over, and I spent another year stubbornly trading my way deeper into the hole before finally admitting defeat and crawling back to employment.
I lost a lot of money. Broke my heart. If you want to hear more about it, you can watch my YouTube video all about it here.
But that's not the real story.
The REAL Problem
At the point that I was reselling my clothes on eBay, sports betting, manifesting, pumping our dollars into mortgages, peer-to-peer lending, microinvesting and index funds, something fundamental was breaking.
The US printed more dollars in 2020 than existed in most countries' entire money supply. "Transitory" inflation became a permanent tax on cash holders. Turns out my retirement timeline was evaporating faster than foam on my London Fog Latte, though I wouldn't realise how quickly for a while yet.
What I did notice first was that bananas cost more. Eggs cost more and suddenly were in short supply. Even the chocolate bars got smaller.
Saifedean Ammous calls this the 'Cantillon effect,' based on Richard Cantillon's 18th-century observation that new money doesn't affect everyone equally. It flows to asset holders first, workers last. I was watching this happen in real time: my index funds were rising not because companies were more productive, but because I was getting the new money before grocery stores raised prices.
But in reality, even my 'winning' investments were losing. Those 14% index fund returns? Subtract 8% real inflation, 25% capital gains tax, and suddenly my 'wealth building' was barely keeping pace with currency debasement. I realised I was running faster just to stay in the same place.
And a question began nibbling at the edges of my panicked mind: what if I'm not escaping the system—just finding new ways to be enslaved by it?
The Pattern Recognition Awakening
The deeper I dug, the clearer it became: traditional financial planning is built on assumptions that no longer hold. Ludwig von Mises warned about this exact scenario in Human Action 80 years ago—when governments manipulate money, they distort the entire economic calculation that makes wealth building possible.
Following the old authorities, whatever wealth I created somehow dissipated. But in 2025, I rediscovered Bitcoin—not as a get-rich-quick scheme or "digital gold," but as the first money in human history that no government can debase, no central bank can manipulate, and no system can corrupt.
I started noticing a pattern: every institution quietly accumulating Bitcoin was run by someone who understood monetary history. MicroStrategy. El Salvador. Now I'm watching Trump's team stack Bitcoin advocates in key positions. As Peter Thiel says, "The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself."
The convergence is accelerating: AI making everything more efficient while fiat makes everything more expensive. Jeff Booth's thesis in The Price of Tomorrow is playing out in real time—technology wants to make things cheaper, but monetary inflation makes everything more expensive. Something has to give.
More importantly: I realised something about myself.
Living off-grid once seemed like noble protest. Now it feels like running away.
Building Anti-Fragile Wealth
So I'm DONE escaping. I'm making a stand right here.
Instead of planning my exit from the system, I'm building sovereignty within it. As Nassim Taleb teaches, the goal isn't to predict the future—it's to build something anti-fragile that gets stronger when everything else falls apart.
This means in practice:
- Questioning current reality and testing boundaries
- Taking calculated risks for outsized rewards
- Building wealth that thrives in chaos
- Building MYSELF to be anti-fragile and as sovereign as possible
- Creating income streams that benefit from system failures
- Accumulating assets that strengthen while fiat currencies weaken
- Learning from both historical patterns and modern visionaries
This isn't about money anymore. It's about agency. It's about refusing to be a victim of systems I didn't choose and can't control.
What This Newsletter Is Really About
Sorry to disappoint, but this newsletter isn't about helping you escape to Thailand with a pile of depreciating dollars. I probably won't develop budget spreadsheets either (never say never, though).
Instead, this newsletter is about becoming the kind of person who doesn't need to escape from the world at all.
Here's what I've learned: the future doesn't belong to those planning perfect escapes. It belongs to those who make themselves future-proof.
Here's where we're going together:
Sovereignty Strategy: The mental model upgrades that separate dependent thinking from sovereign thinking. How to stop renting your life from systems you can't control and start building something that's truly yours. This isn't just about money—it's about agency, independence, and refusing to be a victim of systems you didn't choose.
Bitcoin vs. Everything Else: See what I did there? I'm already acting like a Bitcoin maximalist and differentiating the two. Bitcoin isn't crypto—it's the first genuinely sovereign money in human history. We'll explore why this distinction matters and how Bitcoin fits into building a sovereign life while everything else remains speculation.
Historical Pattern Recognition: We'll study what Rome teaches us about currency crises, what Weimar Germany shows us about monetary collapse, and what every empire's rise and fall reveals about our current moment. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes—and pattern recognition is the ultimate sovereignty skill.
Austrian Economics Applied: We'll take insights from Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard and apply them to today's economic reality—not as academic theory, but as practical frameworks for building real wealth and understanding why central planning always fails. This is the intellectual foundation for sovereign thinking.
Modern Visionary Synthesis: We'll connect dots between Peter Thiel's contrarian thinking, Naval Ravikant's wealth principles, Nassim Taleb's anti-fragility concepts, and Michael Saylor's Bitcoin strategy. These are the thinkers who understand sovereignty in the modern world.
Personal Journey Documentation: My real-time discoveries, mental model upgrades, strategy changes, and honest mistakes as I build sovereignty in my own life. You'll get the unfiltered insights from someone figuring this out alongside you, not lectures from someone pretending to have arrived.
Future Positioning: We'll use all of this to map what's coming next—and more importantly, how to position yourself to thrive regardless of which scenario emerges. Sovereignty means being anti-fragile: getting stronger from chaos rather than weaker from uncertainty.
Twice weekly, you'll get strategic intelligence and personal insights that help you see around corners and inspire your own sovereignty journey. Future Proof as it develops can be used as a blueprint for building a life where you own your future (instead of renting it from others).
What Has Me Curious
I keep noticing something. While I'm stacking Bitcoin and watching corporate treasuries do the same, central banks are hoarding gold like it's 1971. Dumping bonds. Building alternatives to the system they supposedly run.
Trump's team loading up on Bitcoin advocates while other nations race to launch CBDCs—everyone's building alternatives to the same system simultaneously. Ray Dalio calls it "the changing world order." I call it the most fascinating strategic positioning opportunity in our lifetimes.
Maybe it's coincidence. Maybe it's not.
What I'm Reading
The Bitcoin rabbit hole has done something to my brain, so my nightly reading includes:
- Human Action by Ludwig von Mises (dense but revelatory - look out for videos and articles referring to this material and attempting to understand it, haha)
- The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous (essential modern Austrian analysis)
- The Price of Tomorrow by Jeff Booth (technology vs. monetary policy)
- Everything Michael Saylor says about Bitcoin as corporate strategy
Plus whatever historical parallels help me understand where we're heading.
This newsletter is for people who refuse to play by broken rules.
If you're someone who sees patterns, learns quickly, takes calculated risks, and wants to build something anti-fragile for whatever comes next—welcome home.
Let's build the Age of Abundance, from the inside out.
Vive le You,
Aimee
Future Proof delivers strategic intelligence and personal sovereignty journey insights twice weekly. Join the community of sovereign builders, pattern-seekers, chaos alchemists and anti-fragilists building wealth for an uncertain world.
Thoughts? Things you'd like to see more of? Hit me up at: moneypowergloryofficial@gmail.com