You know to understand your skin before you choose your products. Phase First teaches you to do the same with your money.
You already have the instinct. You just have not applied it yet.
New here? The full story and the framework live in the welcome →
Welcome to Phase First
I have a Sunday evening ritual. Cleanse, exfoliate, serum, moisturiser, tretinoin. It takes about seven minutes. I know exactly what each product does and why it is there. I did not always know that — I learned it gradually, through conversations, through reading, through paying attention to my own skin and what it responded to.
THE PHASE PULSE
You know how to protect your skin — what to do and when to do it. Why is that same education not matched when it comes to financial health?
There is a question I could not stop thinking about after I was made redundant in 2020.
I had spent years building a skincare routine I actually understood. Not just following instructions — understanding. I knew why vitamin C brightens. I knew why retinol needs to be introduced slowly. I knew that SPF is not optional, it is the foundation everything else builds on.
Nobody handed me that knowledge. I sought it out because my skin mattered to me and I wanted to look after it properly. Not outsource it entirely to a facialist and hope for the best. Actually understand it.
And yet there I was — Fellow Chartered Accountant, twenty-five years in finance — holding a lump sum and realising I had never applied that same curiosity to my money. The advice I had received my entire career was the financial equivalent of: just use this one moisturiser. Leave it. Do not overthink it.
We would never accept that for our skin. I decided I was not going to accept it for my finances either.
That is when I started learning. Really learning. And the first thing I discovered — the thing that changed everything — is that markets, like skin, work in cycles. There is a rhythm. A pattern. A framework underneath the advice everyone gave me.
In skincare, we understand our skin before we choose our products. We do not start with the retinol and hope for the best. We check what our skin actually needs first. In investing, the rule is exactly the same. We understand where the market sits before we choose our investments.
THIS WEEK’S LESSON
Here is the clearest way I can explain what Phase First actually means.
Skincare — Check your face first → then choose your products. Dry skin? Sensitive skin? Acne? Rosacea? Ageing? Then choose: Retinol. Hyaluronic acid. Vitamin C. Niacinamide. You don’t start with the product. You start with the face.
Investing — Check the phase first → then choose your investments. Reset? Build? Crowded? Breakdown? Then choose: Stocks. ETFs. Gold. Commodities. Cash. You don’t start with the investment. You start with the phase.
Understand first. Then choose. Same logic. Different canvas.
You do not need to know what Reset or Build or Crowded means yet. That is what the next few weeks are for. Right now I just want you to hold this one idea: there is a question you should be asking before you do anything else with your money. And almost nobody taught us to ask it.
That question is — what phase are we in?
And by the time we are done you will ask it automatically. The same way you check your skin before you choose your products.
THE AHA
You check your skin before you choose your products. I am going to teach you to check the phase before you choose your investments.
YOUR MONEY MOMENT
How much do you know about what goes on your skin compared to what is happening with your money right now?
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Next week — We are told the market is one thing that goes up or down. It is not. Next week I show you what it is actually made of — and why that single piece of knowledge changes everything.
Catherine x
Phase First is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing here constitutes financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. All investing involves risk. I am a Fellow Chartered Accountant, not a regulated financial adviser. You are responsible for your own financial decisions.