Michael Azzolina
15+ years in corporate finance, across publicly traded companies, private family businesses, and venture-backed startups.
Why I built this
Most finance content exists to sell you something. The influencer on YouTube selling a $997 course on passive income makes their money from the course. The credit card comparison site is paid by the card companies. The retirement planning tool is owned by the brokerage. The incentives are almost never aligned with your interests.
I've spent 15 years inside companies: running financial models, managing P&Ls, and advising on decisions that required real understanding of the numbers. Along the way, I kept noticing how bad most publicly available financial information was. Not wrong, necessarily. Just optimized for clicks and affiliate commissions instead of accuracy and clarity.
"The boring path wins. Compound interest, consistent investing, avoided debt, and time. That's it. Everything else is noise designed to make someone else money."
What I actually do
I'm a Corporate Finance Executive. I've spent my career across publicly traded companies, private family businesses, and venture-backed startups: building financial models, running financial planning and analysis, managing cash flow, and making decisions around strategy. I've been in the room for fundraises, acquisitions, layoffs, and rapid growth. That context shapes how I think about personal finance.
Most financial decisions aren't complicated. They feel complicated because the industry profits from complexity. When something is simple, nobody needs to pay for help. So the incentive is always to add complexity, and with it, fees, commissions, and products.
My philosophy
The principles that run a healthy company's finances are the same ones that run a healthy personal balance sheet: spend less than you take in, build a cash reserve, invest systematically in appreciating assets, and avoid debt at high interest rates.
I have an MBA and a CPA. I understand the advanced tax strategies, the alternative investments, the estate planning structures. I also know that for most people, most of the time, those things don't matter yet. What matters is getting the basics right. The basics are simpler than the industry wants you to believe.
Simple Money Advice is my attempt to write the resource I wish had existed when I was starting out.
Outside of work, I live in New Jersey with my wife and two sons. When I'm not buried in a spreadsheet, I'm spending time with my family, traveling, or building something. Most of what shows up on my social media pages is footage from those trips.