Introduction

The useless tree was a tree mentioned in the Taoist writing of Chuang Tzu. In the parable, the tree was so ugly and crooked that no one bothered to cut it down. Left alone by man, it grew into something huge, magnificient and near immortal. Part of my inspiration for choosing this name for a blog about personal finance is that it draws from my Tao-inspired school of thinking about the world.

By and large my life is not impressive from the outside-- I don't own a big house, fancy car or designer wardrobe. Hell I don't even really have furniture. What I do have is zero debt and a positive net worth that just hit eight grand. I try to live minimally and enjoy my life (and my remaining youth) as much as humanly possible. Again, it's not really that much but it's my hope that I will, in my own strange and crooked way, build something huge and inspiring.

The second reason is that when registering the account I had to cough up a name and invaraibly, no one ever decides to name anything after a useless tree.