About Selftaught Money

I'm Papa Kim — a husband, a dad, and the one in our family who ended up in charge of figuring out money. I didn't start out careful. Early on, I made expensive mistakes — jumping into investments I didn't understand, chasing bigger returns instead of understanding the ones I already had, learning the hard way that “trial and error” is a brutal, expensive teacher when the trials are your family's money. Losing money that way is a specific kind of painful: not just the number, but knowing it happened because I skipped the part where you actually learn the thing first.

That's the whole reason this site exists. I started writing the guides I wish I'd had before those mistakes: the actual math, the actual sources, checked against the real thing instead of repeated from another blog or chased from a hot tip.

That's also why every article here names its author, cites primary sources with dates (bank disclosures, FDIC and Federal Reserve data, official program rules), and carries a visible “last updated” date. Rates change. Pretending they don't is how people end up acting on stale advice — so I re-verify the numbers on a fixed cycle, not just when I feel like it.

What I hold myself to

• Statistics are cited to a named source with a date.
• Money topics are “Your Money or Your Life” content — I carry a clear not-financial-advice disclaimer and never promise outcomes.
• Rates and terms change; I date every figure and re-verify top pages on a roughly 30-day cycle.
• Ads are clearly labelled, never placed to be confused with content, and never cover what you came here to read.

Who writes Selftaught Money

Papa Kim

14 years in corporate tech (product management + software engineering), 10+ years hands-on stock investing, 3 years real estate investing — writing what I've had to learn myself to build financial stability for my family.

Papa Kim spent 14 years in corporate tech as a product manager and software engineer, building the discipline he now applies to money: research it properly, then act. Over 10+ years of hands-on stock investing and 3 years of real estate investing, he learned the hard way that most personal-finance advice online is either too generic or written to sell a product — not written for a working parent trying to build real, lasting stability for their family. Papa Kim writes the guides he wishes had existed when he started: dividend investing, low-maintenance real estate, and family tax strategy, sourced from primary documents (IRS rules, official program terms, brokerage disclosures) and dated so nothing goes stale. Behind the scenes, he's working hard alongside his wife — a CPA licensed in Washington with 15 years of accounting and finance experience across various corporations, sharing her own perspective as NextGen CPA on YouTube — to build a safe financial net for the Kim family.

Contact

Questions or corrections? Email papa-kim@selftaughtmoney.com or see the contact page — corrections are reviewed and, when confirmed, fixed with an updated “last updated” date.