[Journey] Rebuilding my life and business after divorce

hi guys

this is a journey of my self-improvement to keep myself accountable and share what worked for me. maybe it will help someone in a tough spot.

about me:
I'm 40 years old this year

met my ex-wife about 9 years ago. 1 year after we got married we had my son.

I had a decent career in finance trading/risk modeling. when my son was 2-3 I saw a dual opportunity to move onto consulting which would sustain us financially and at the same time I discovered some financial Substacks and i tought to myself - damn if people pay to read this absolute horseshit then I'm going to make a killing on the platform.

2 years later I stopped consulting altogether and my network of financial substacks was sustaining us and the revenue was growing AF. I was incredibly successful on Substack. The fastest growing financial newsletter of 2024. I was analyzing the markets and writing a long-form post EVERY SINGLE DAY. When the market was closed i would write about geo-politics.

My main money maker then and this is just accounting for subscription revenue:


I got a buyout offer for my whole network. I was working 15 hour days, 7 days a week which was a big mistake on my part, for many reasons.

Then my wife filed for divorce. Long story short I was left with negative moneys 0 economic leverage out of the sudden which I wasn't ready for.

I can talk more about the divorce and why it turned out like this financially for me, if anyone is interested. I didn't even realize stuff works like this. basically ended up in family court fighting to be able to spend time with my son. I have 50% custody of my son now so that is everything.

A year ago I really hit my rock bottom mentally, something happened to my family member and I tried to kill myself, which changed everything and that was the point where i rebounded and paradoxically, stopped feeling like a victim and started improving my life.

I still feel extremely guilty because of this attempt and my son depending on me and I gave up on him but today I'm doing much better.

I tried almost everything that you can think of - gym, psychotherapy, cold showers, red light therapy, antidepressants, etc. Some things really helped me and others did nothing so I want to share what did and my routine. I hope that's ok here.

I'm on a journey to rebuild my wealth without working 15 hour days and trying to be a decent person and a father to my son.

I don't have any profitable substacks anymore, recently started building new ones but it takes TIME and WORK.
I'm doing it AGAIN!



So how is this related to IM journeys? Well I do IM (trying Substack again + other online stuff) and I think the biggest issue with making money online when you don't have a boss standing over your head with a bat is procrastination and I really struggled with it in the last year.

Respect for posting this. Most people wouldn't be this honest, especially about the low point.

i wish you much luck!

I think you have a 2nd success a head you. I do believe if you hit bottom hard next step is going up. Good luck with your journey and Gods of luck bring you happiness.

I I've been doing 3 things to get back on the money making track:

1. I started doing consulting again in finance but I'm hoping to end this very soon as I hate sitting in Zoom calls and finding clients is difficult. But this part keeps me afloat. I managed to put away almost $5k to start trading again and some money to start building new substacks.

2. I started building 2 new Substacks in the stock/crypto niches (more or less the most profitable niches on Substack). Ad arbitrage from Facebook + posting a ton on Twitter and 5-10 notes on Substack every day. today I have 2 Substacks with pretty big lists. I haven't turned paid subscription on yet because of the ad arbitrage I'm doing - higher risk of "report spam". I will explain in detail later.



3. I put over $4k in my brokerage account and started trading January 2nd. I'm trying to do 3-5 swing trades every day. Very high volatility trades, high risk + leverage because I'm not really interested in making pennies and my capital is tiny.


In January basically made nothing, but in February I took high risk trades and I was rewarded. Let's see if I can keep this up and if my new model really works long term.

trades: 80 winners: 45 losers: 31
trading on 3x leverage. margin call at 33.3%. That drop from $5.5k to $4.7k was definitely scary.

I'm not only trading stocks but also futures like UVXY which is an ultra high risk instrument used to bet on market volatility

Going to sleep, gym in the morning.

good luck to you guys!

Solid plan, good luck and following your journey to strength

That finance thing is something I don't really understand myself. However, I definitely believe in its potential. There should be a consultant like you, who is handed the money and then he invests the money, and then you take your own percentage of the profits in between.

Then, if we move on to those everyday life problems, then you and everyone here on the forum must remember that you are not alone! Even though you are alone with those thoughts, there are many similar people here who have similar problems. We all have our own sensitive moments in life; some have experienced them before, and some will experience it in the future.

I wish you a balanced life. Especially that gym training is one of the best. Because the human body needs physical stress. The metabolism starts to work differently, and then at the same time physical strength training releases something in the body. At the same time, the brain needs the same kind of stress every day so that its activity level remains high.

Lifeisnotgood said:

That finance thing is something I don't really understand myself. However, I definitely believe in its potential. There should be a consultant like you, who is handed the money and then he invests the money, and then you take your own percentage of the profits in between.

Then, if we move on to those everyday life problems, then you and everyone here on the forum must remember that you are not alone! Even though you are alone with those thoughts, there are many similar people here who have similar problems. We all have our own sensitive moments in life; some have experienced them before, and some will experience it in the future.

I wish you a balanced life. Especially that gym training is one of the best. Because the human body needs physical stress. The metabolism starts to work differently, and then at the same time physical strength training releases something in the body. At the same time, the brain needs the same kind of stress every day so that its activity level remains high.

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handling others money is difficult. either:

1. small returns
2. scams

Nobody will offer what im doing for myself to clients because the risk is insane. There is no market for this kind of service.


Gym is the thing that brings be the most pleasure and balance in life right now, outside of parenting. The problem is when i was really down I literally couldn't make myself to go to the gym. People who ever were clinically depressed will understand.

/im off

today Akamai's earning's call at 4:30 p.m. ET which will break my week's income or bring me a nice profit either way it's a number's game.

you're definitely in the right place anyways

this forum has a weird way of catching people that are trying

I'm a little surprised you are trading futures without a solid financial base.

Could you share your thinking there?

Heya , I went and going through much worse, keep the head down and continue grinding, what matters is the skill and willpower to pull it off again and again

BassTrackerBoats said:

I'm a little surprised you are trading futures without a solid financial base.

Could you share your thinking there?

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my risk of ruin is very high. but this is my philosophy. I'm only interested in building capital very fast. 1 year instead of 10 years. But there is a very high chance that i will lose my "seed" money multiple times.

to explain better:

a "solid financial base" is a retail concept for people optimizing for risk. when you have a mathematically proven edge like my 0.45 Kelly and 65% win rate not using leverage is a negative expected value decision because of the massive opportunity cost

I already lost millions in the divorce. my true financial base is my ability to write code, build models and funnel my income into this market.

if this portfolio hits zero I will make more money and restart to keep running the math again. eventually I will reach solid portfolio size and I will switch to conservative risk. unless my psychology fails - this is the biggest problem.

CPANathan said:

you're definitely in the right place anyways

this forum has a weird way of catching people that are trying

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this is why i came back to this forum. always thought about BHW as THE non-bullshit place on the internet. good memories. although i was always a lurker really.

Improving yourself is the greatest help.

Divorce can be hard. Hope you get new friends that help you move on.

johnhollowelll said:

I think the best will be to take a break get something solid like selling products or service before trading because is highly emotional especially if you dont have a past in trading

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I have a past career in trading though

The biggest money maker here will be Substack unless something changes with the platform

OMC (Omnicom Group): they just announced a massive $5 billion stock buyback program two days ago, creating immediate upward price pressure that i'm trying to front run

Q (Qnity Electronics): it was just spun off from DuPont a few months ago. it's experiencing wild price discovery volatility as Wall Street treats it as a backdoor bet on the AI boom

CEG (Constellation Energy): nuclear energy. surging because they are rapidly signing massive multi-decade contracts to use their legacy nuclear plants to power AI data centers for tech giants like Microsoft and Meta

PSKY (Paramount Skydance): this is the newly merged media and entertainment giant controlling Paramount Pictures, CBS and Skydance's content library. they are currently locked in a highly complex multi-billion-dollar bidding war involving Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix, with a critical 7-day negotiation window opening this week

HWM (Howmet Aerospace): they engineer advanced metal components and jet engine parts for commercial aviation and military. the stock just spiked 10% after crushing their earnings report last week and announcing a $1.8 billion acquisition. a textbook momentum play.


I think it's a better idea if I start a separate thread journey for my trades and post them right when I'm finished trading for the day

today morning will be gym 3rd day in a row. I know it's not optimal but I'm not exactly working out for hypertrophy. I do a quick 20 min HIIT run, 2 lifts, hydromassage and run home (gym is running distance from my apt)

for the first time in 3 years I made something truly new with SEO like in the good old days. vibe coded a website with over 1,200 simple calculators for long tail keywords while watching The Mentalist last night.

working on building a framework to be able to make a site like this every day, deployed to Cloudflare Workers edge network. the test site is running on Vercel, I have to optimize the framework for Isolated V8 to be able to run on CF Workers.

take a look at my mvp (there are plenty of mistakes there for sure):
calculatorcult(dot)com

I hope this is ok and doesn't come off as self promotion. This is just a test and I don't have ads there or anything. I just wanted to show that I'm not a bullshitter and I'm actually making stuff.

it's nothing crazy. I took 1,250 top keywords from omnicalculator(dot)com and dispatched a team of subagents to build the calculators. cost me about tree fiddy

Just to be clear about my trading:

Did gym for the last 3 days. today resting and will spend the weekend with my son.

hope you have a great weekend guys.

I am impressed with your positive attitude .
I wish you best of luck , stay motivated and consistent .

You will be able to reach your goal sooner than you think .

mrfaraz said:

I am impressed with your positive attitude .
I wish you best of luck , stay motivated and consistent .

You will be able to reach your goal sooner than you think .

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thanks a lot. I will get there for sure. working on exciting projects