The Escape Manual is my detailed “how to” guide to personal finance and investing. It’s a private subscription website where I put my most valuable content.
So members get the best personal finance, investing and wealth-related content, updated and added to regularly. You can see the topics covered below 👇
Why should you subscribe?
The Escape Manual is a private website where I put all my most valuable content.
I write The Escape Manual so that intelligent people have an alternative to traditional (expensive) financial advice.
The Escape Manual will help you cut through the noise, make things simpler and help you stay on track.
It will help you avoid pitfalls and help you avoid the obscene costs that you may currently be getting charged.
I have a degree in economics, I’m a qualified chartered accountant and I worked at a senior level in corporate finance over 20 years (reaching partner / MD level)…whilst managing my own portfolio and finances to financial independence. I have been providing financial coaching for the last 10 years and have coached hundreds and hundreds of different people at all levels of wealth.
The Escape Manual will help you learn how to manage your own money. The Escape Manual is an information service and is not regulated financial advice. You stay in charge of your own money and make your own decisions.
What is the cost?
The cost is a £120 one-off joining fee plus £10 per month thereafter. Your subscription will continue each month until cancelled. There is no long-term contract and you can cancel the auto-renew yourself anytime via your Paypal account (or you can email me).
You can pay securely by Paypal. To pay, click here or on the Paypal button below 👇
Alternatively you can pay here via debit or credit card (processed via Stripe).
Once you have subscribed to The Escape Manual, this includes the option to add one off coaching time at £150 per hour.
Avoid future price rises
Your subscription will automatically continue at the same price at which you sign up. So by subscribing now you avoid future price rises. The sooner you join, the lower the price you lock in.
And the sooner you get started, the more value you will get from it over a lifetime of investing and compounding.
Introductory calls
If you would like to speak before signing up, you can choose a time for a free introductory video call on Gmeet here.
To join as a subscriber, please pay using the links above. If you have questions, email me on: barney.whiter@gmail.com
I look forward to speaking with you!
Barney Whiter
Important regulatory notice: I don’t give regulated investment, tax or legal advice. I never try to sell you anything. I don’t give product recommendations. You have to make your own decisions. In short, its about teaching people to “fish” rather than selling them fish.
Contents of The Escape Manual:
Wealth
- Investment update : Q4 2023
- The Principles of Lean Spending
- Getting Started With Investing (updated)
- Investment update : Q3 2023
- The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Living Off Capital
- The Housing Market Crashes S…L…O…W…L…Y
- A spreadsheet for calculating returns on Investment Properties
- UK state pension : filling gaps in National Insurance contributions
- How To Use A Low Cost Tracker Fund to Tilt Towards Tech
- The Differences Between Gambling and Investing
- The Essential Personal Finance Reading List
- How To Read An Equity Fund Fact Sheet
- How To Read A Bond Fact Sheet
- Tech/ VC fund update
- Deposit protection and the fragility of the banking system
- How to react when the stockmarket falls
- How To Crush Sequence of Returns Risk
- Investment Update Q1 2023
- Set It and Forget It: Automating your Finances
- Health is Wealth
- Crypto Portfolio Update
- Investment Update : Q4 2022
- Getting better with money is a process of long term behavioural change
- Starting a lifestyle businesses or side hustle
- Investing in The Exponential Age Hypothesis
- Transferring a pension (from defined benefit to defined contribution)
- Investment Update : Q3 2022
- The Lifetime Allowance explained (UK pensions)
- The Relationship between Risk and Reward
- Mortgage Stress Testing
- Crypto’s Lehman Moment
- How To Track Your Spending
- Why it’s hard to beat an index tracker (and why most active funds under-perform)
- The Ninja Reading List (for getting promoted, learning to sell and more)
- Investment Update : Q2 2022
- How to create a one page Financial Plan
- Planting Seeds, Cultivating Patience and Reducing Portfolio Churn
- How To Sell Your Business
- Before you buy your “dream home” you should at least read this
- Buy To Let property versus stockmarket investing
- How to earn interest on Crypto
- An Investors Strategy for Crypto
- My Crypto Portfolio : what I own and why
- Using Expected Value to make better decisions
- An Index Fund for Crypto?
- Is the stockmarket in a bubble? The bull case versus the bear case (August 2021)
- Is holiday property a good investment?
- The Importance of Lengthening Your Time Horizon
- What You Need to Know About Tax
- How Much Is Enough?
- How to get exposure to Silicon Valley venture capital
- How to gain diversified crypto exposure
- Alternative asset allocation models
- The Investment Case for Crypto
- Choosing a Bond Fund
- The True Cost of Inflation
- A Beginners Guide to Crypto
- The Two Models of Retirement Drawdown
- International investing for expats
- Getting started (when nervous about investing)
- 3 Important Ways to Analyse a Portfolio
- Investing via a Limited Company
- Making Money From Your House
- The Art of Wealth Preservation
- Choosing from the best Global Equity Index trackers
- The economics of car ownership
- Dividends and the differences between income and accumulation units
- How worried should you be when the stockmarket goes down?
- What if your broker / platform / fund manager goes bust?
- The Importance of % Savings Rate (includes interactive spreadsheet)
- Shock absorbers: cash, bonds, gold and more
- The balance between pensions, ISAs and other savings pots
- Employee Share Schemes
- Follow through = Clarity + Implementation + Accountability
- Everything you need to know about Self-Invested Personal Pensions (SIPPs)
- Investment platforms and transfers
- What you need to know about insurance
- Choosing your asset allocation
- How to save for a deposit on a house / flat
- Buy to let property versus stockmarket investing
- Exchange Traded Funds versus Traditional Funds
- The basics of your financial plan
- What to do with an inheritance, bonus or other windfall
- Measuring your financial progress (includes example spreadsheet)
- Mortgage paydown vs Investing
- Understanding your workplace pension
- Everything you need to know for your emergency fund
Health
- Leaky Gut Syndrome: One of the keys to fixing Chronic Diseases?
- How to Cure Depression
- From Dad to Chad: A Health Protocol for career change and confidence
- Supplements and other performance enhancing drugs
- The Alcohol-Free experiment
- Circadian rhythm (and why you should probably spend more time outdoors)
- How to break an addiction (or just a bad habit)
- The Essential Health Reading List
- The Inestimable Advantages of Lifting Weights
- The Fasting Experiment
- Nutrition, weight loss and finding the right fuel for your engine
- You Are The Chief Medical Officer of Your Own Life
- Health is Wealth
- You Can’t Cure Money Worries With Money Alone
Career
- How To Negotiate A Big Payrise
- Burnout, Workaholism and The Dopamine Pathway
- Career endurance and The Importance of Avoiding Burnout
- The Interview Toolkit
- Applying The Lean Startup methodology to lifestyle businesses and side hustles
- The Promotion Toolkit
- The Career Change Toolkit
Psychology
- The Trap of The Scarcity Mindset
- No One Said It Was Gonna Be Easy (Parts 1-4)
- The balance between Production and Consumption
- Some Thoughts on Parenting
- What to Expect When You’re Expecting
- How to Give Your Children An Elite Education (without the cost)
- What doesn’t Kill you Makes You Stronger
- Relationship & dating resources & reading list
- Headspace is the most scarce resource (esp. for high performers)
- If In Doubt, Keep It Simple
- The benefits of simplicity in investing
- The News is a waste of (head)space
- The Inestimable Advantages of Monk Mode
- Growth mindset, positive psychology and thinking bigger
- Understanding Your Money Blueprint
- Story, Strategy, State
- Immediate benefits and delayed gratification
- Doing The Work
The Escape Artist 
An amazing collection. Barney’s writing and work is insightful, memorable and enlightening teaching.
Before I signed up, I wondered whether it would be valuable enough to justify the investment.
Just a few weeks in, I have no doubt: it is fantastically useful to draw on Barney’s deep expertise and wisdom built up over decades in finance and a decade of financial independence. Amazing diagrams, amazing thinking. I’ve learned loads. The J-curve! Runway! The ice sculpture! North star asset allocation! Engines and shock absorbers! Harvesting! The meteorite test! Never leave free money on the table! Grow wealth while you sleep. Ditch martyr syndrome. Become financially bombproof!
I have been following Barney’s content for a while and been a paid member of the Escape Artist for over 18mths. His emails are on my must read list!
It’s great to have someone who has vast experience of the journey, for someone who is seeking to tread in similar footsteps.
Recently I had some big career decisions to make. Barney was on hand to provide his stewardship at a very important time. We engaged regularly and he was very generous with his time.
He ultimately helped me weight up the different options more objectively, make a better decision and take a big step forward in my career.
The return on investment of having someone like him part of your network is off the scale!
Keep up the content and support!
Thank you.
I have been following Barney for some time and subscribing to his newsletter; from there I took the decision to sign up for The Escape Manual which has been an incredibly worthwhile investment — a toolkit of considered article deep-dives covering core topics across personal finance, investing, career development as well as personal development. I look forward to each new article being published; the collection has been a helpful guide in helping to shape the strategy and thinking that I apply to my finance, investing and career decisions.
Having found so much value in The Escape Manual, when I recently reached a career junction and was uncertain on the path forward, I decided to upgrade my package to include coaching with Barney. I had high expectations given my experience with Barney’s content to date, but those were easily exceeded through the in-person interactions.
I arrived to meet Barney unclear about the direction of my career and left energised about the future with a renewed sense of clarity, purpose and direction. Being able to sit down and discuss my challenges with someone who has walked a similar path was invaluable to help strategise a few steps ahead — and something I would highly recommend to anyone who is in a similar position and wants to accelerate their career development.
It’s said that the best investment you can make is it yourself, and this certainly felt like that.
Thank you, Barney.
I am absolutely in debt to Barney over the amazing guidance he gave me and setting me on the right track to financial freedom.
The value that Barney provides goes way beyond the fees.
Do not think twice about either subscribing to the escape manual or having him as a coach. Brilliant!
Great to chat through our FIRE journey with Barney as he’s got so much experience in the field. We’re well on the way to FIRE but it’s hard because you can sometimes feel without anyone to discuss this with. Barney totally gets it and was able to have a really good conversation with where we at, some of the risks we have and what to do. I’ll be booking in again for another chat in 12 months and can imagine that this will be come an annual thing. Thanks again Barney (and for the great emails – one of the few newsletters that I have remained subscribed to!).
Excellent meeting with Barney once again, we have been members for a few years now enjoying the content, but also look forward to our regular chats. He has a very good way of explaining the more high level concepts, as in our experience it’s the mind shift that we need to get away from long held ideas about investing – such as buy to let properties. He is very flexible and happy to deep dive into certain areas, or gently coach you along the path. Highly recommended.
After reading your TEA blog and reading Mister Money Moustache and listening to the Meaningful Money podcast I followed through and signed up for your coaching.
I have found the coaching to be beneficial and this gave me the confidence to manage my own portfolio. I stopped paying my financial advisor two years ago. This felt like a large step.
Last month (after over 20 years at the same company) I resigned and as you have described in your blog was faced with my boss asking what did I want? He was open to any proposal that would keep me working beyond my 13 weeks notice.
I have read and heard that a glide path from full-time to part-time is healthy to transition to leaving corporate work and for me I prefer this option to a cliff edge stop. I proposed reduced hours for a fixed period and this has been agreed.
I was surprised when my boss was open to my proposal. You have written that at that moment the power moves from the employer to the employee and in my case you were 100% right. This gives me confidence that the other topics you right about will be correct.
I am looking forward to life outside of the camp, Barney thank you for your help showing the way.
Coaching with Barney has been highly beneficial for me. If I were to quantify the benefits, he quite literally has returned me more than 20x the value than he charges. I speak with Barney very occasionally (only 1-2 times per year) and every time he suggests something I had never even thought to ask about. After I do the necessary actions, I end up learning new things from the journey that then takes me to next level on my journey.
Some example topics we have spoken about over the years: Am I Financially Independent? How to think about having children (or not). Lifestyle design. Health optimisations including off-the-shelf tests. How to manage upwards at work. Compensation negotiations when changing jobs.
Thank you Barney for everything thus far!
I’ve had 2 coaching sessions with Barney … and have found them extremely helpful. So far i’ve just been addressing the basics of getting my house in order when it comes to my investment portfolio with a good spring clean of my ‘woolworths pick n mix’ portoflio. I find the sessions really good at challenging and stress testing my plan and approach. The content and core principles in the escape manual are very powerful.
If you are trying to work out if the coaching is worth it – it is. I had an initial session with Barney a couple of years ago which has repaid itself many, many times. A recent session focused more on career which was hugely inspiring and energising.
It is so rare we talk about money and it is very liberating to do so to a “stranger” as such, but one who gets it and also gets the all encompassing nature of professional life especially in the office. It’s astonishingly helpful to have this sounding board. Thank you Barney.
Had my first coaching session with Barney this week after reading his blog for the last few years and following him on various podcasts. A truly worthwhile investment. Barney has seen it and done it, but also thought about it and now applies it to the individual client’s situation. “It” being anything from career to finance to health to personal development to the journey to financial independence.
I was looking for a sounding board and advice / guidance I could actually do something with on career, personal finance and a bit on the wellness side of life too.
Barney was flexible on how and where we met and I’m glad we met face to face for the introductory session. We covered the background and then got on to discussing the issues and a range of different actions to help address them.
The conversation with Barney was excellent and I took so much from it. He then followed up, very swiftly, with an email that covered action points from our discussion. He also included further suggestions which ranged from books and blog posts to read, to TV shows to watch to exercises to complete. I will do all of them because I can see significant benefits of doing so. Looking forward to our next session.
The Escape Manual gives a great deal of value too and is well worth an extensive read. The whole package is highly recommended.