For most of my working life, what I knew stayed in the rooms I was in. In finance, it lived in spreadsheets, month-end closes and conversations with colleagues. In tutoring, it lived in a classroom. A student would finally see why a bank reconciliation balances, and then the lesson ended. It was useful work, but it went no further than the people in front of me.
This site is my attempt to change that. Since this is the first post, I want to explain how I got here.
The detour
Like a lot of people with a finance background, I was drawn to retail forex trading. It looked like a way to put what I knew about money to work. It wasn’t. Brokers in the UK and EU have to publish the share of their retail accounts that lose money, and the figure is usually well over half. I learned that the expensive way.
Walking away taught me the idea I now build everything around: trading moves money from one account to another, while skill and useful work add something that wasn’t there before. I later wrote a whole book about that decision.
Starting with what I had
So I started with what I actually had: an ACCA qualification, years of practical finance work, and a habit of explaining things plainly.
The first experiments were small. Sixty-second videos on TikTok, one idea each, with no face on screen. I wanted the idea to do the work. Then books: short, practical titles on money, mindset and discipline, published through Amazon. Then revision notes for O Level Accounting and Business Studies, written the way I wish my own notes had been written.
The friction nobody mentions
Doing this from the Maldives has its own problems. Stripe, the payment service most creator tools depend on, doesn’t operate here. A lot of the “just open a store” advice online simply doesn’t apply. I had to find platforms that could actually pay me, and build around them. It is slower. It also made me think carefully about every tool before I committed to it.
Why a website, and why now
Until now, my work was spread across other people’s platforms: a video app, a newsletter service, an online bookstore. I will keep using them. But none of them is mine, and one policy change can cut your reach overnight.
A website is different. It is the one place where everything sits together: the books, the revision packs, the weekly email, and this blog.
There is a simpler reason too. I believe knowledge comes with a responsibility. If something I learned the hard way can save a student a wasted term, or stop a small business owner running out of cash while the profit figure looks healthy, keeping it to myself would be a waste.
What you’ll find here
- Short essays on money, habits and disciplined living
- Practical notes for O Level Accounting (0452) and Business Studies (0450) students: how to read a question and plan the answer
- Lessons from travel and from the books I’m reading
- A note when a new book or revision pack is ready
If you want one of these each week, the newsletter is the easiest way to get it. One idea, explained properly.
Thank you for reading the first one. I ask Allah to make it of benefit.
— Ismail Hassan, ACCA
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