Welcome to 2026! (flushes 2025 down toilet) I hope you had a happy and restful holiday season, and if you didn't, well, it's over now! 🎉

It's book launch week for ​MONEY PROUD​, so I've been going heavy on the socials, sending loads of texts, and amplifying the first press hits. Lots of new readers this week from a recent profile—welcome!

This is a sectioned, modular newsletter for easy browsing (and because gays love a modular moment). Peruse as you please. It normally goes out on Sundays; sending early this week to catch the wave.

In today's newsletter:

  • Behind the profile
  • Money Proud announcements
  • Mail bag
  • Hot links

If you enjoy today's email, consider forwarding it to a friend. And if someone forwarded this email to you, you can sign up for free ​by clicking here.​​

—Nick

Behind the profile

Screenshot from Out.com, December 30th, 2025.

Thank you Bernardo Sim for a lovely profile for Out.com earlier this week. The opening of the story references this newsletter, which is how a lot of you have arrived. Hi! 👋🏼

For others, ​the profile is here​ and included a batch of new headshots I did back in October.

The interview for this feature was about an hour long, and we dove into a lot, including my upbringing. (The ​About Me​ page on my website has the long version, drama, baby photos, the whole shabang, if you want that lore.)

I wanted to expand here on some of the Q&A in this profile.

On chapter 1 of Money Proud being about stress

Bernardo mentioned he was surprised to see the entire first chapter of Money Proud be about thought patterns.

Back in the summer of 2024, when we were outlining this book, I was really hesitant to do a whole chapter on mindset. It can feel like spiritual bypassing at times, or an avoidance to actual operations work.

But thought patterns are what drive your vision and goals. They shape how you work and play, and they also shape how you think about work and play even when you're not working or playing. This is 24/7. It applies to money, and it applies to many other aspects of life, too, making it great food for thought in the new year.

Notably, tracking thought patterns takes a lot of time and energy—much more than our societal constructs typically give us time for. My best advice is to take your time when doing mindset work, and to rest and reflect a lot. It cannot be rushed, and yet it is often the most important ingredient in behavior change.

I wanted to give this work the most breathing room and engagement I could, so I put it at the front of the book, before a lot of the numbers. We'll see what the critics think.

On consistency over perfection

My personal finance message is rooted in digestible consistency, not get-rich-quick messaging. You can pull lever X or press kill switch Y to get richer quicker, sure. But at what cost to other areas of your life? And will you be able to stomach that for months, or years, or longer?

I think this comes from my foray into personal finance writing and editing being about the ​FIRE movement​. All the technical components of FIRE make sense, and Money Proud is actually a book about financial independence at its core.

But I also remember researching the FIRE movement, digging around in various subreddits, and seeing story after story about extreme savers' spouses leaving them, or retiring at 40 and realizing they have no friends or hobbies, or missing critical moments of their kids' lives that they can never get back.

I want money to be less of a focus, not more. That means putting some things on autopilot and developing plans for others.

Plan development requires knowledge and learning, though. So we have to focus on personal finance a little more now if we want to focus on it less later.

On Rihanna being a personal finance baddie

I forgot to mention this when I was being interviewed, but I do think Rihanna's 2017 Fenty Beauty launch is some of the best pop entrepreneurship lore we have from the past decade.

Fenty launched with makeup products in 40 shades. And sure, it was disruptive to do this. But I think the real disruption was that it got people wondering why other much larger, more established companies hadn't bothered to do it yet. Consumer appetite changed.

This happened with TikTok as well. People didn't know they wanted a heavily behavior-driven algorithm. Now it's all they want.

In the wake of AI slop, I think this will happen with writing and storytelling, too. Once you give people a taste of what they actually want, they lose their appetite for what they've been consuming previously.

It takes time and practice to produce gourmet cuisine. But it tastes better. It's healthier and more satisfying. And it leaves your guests thinking and talking about you.

​Read the full Out interview here.

Money Proud press and announcements

Additionally, for my first live book event, I'll be popping up to Boise, Idaho for a fireside chat at Oldspeak on Tuesday, Jan. 13. If you're in the area, come! A friend of 15 years will be moderating; expect the banter to be on point.

​Details here, registration is free.

Mail bag: What you shared

Y'all reply to me with kind notes and really share yourselves. I just want you to know how much I appreciate that. This is why I fuck with newsletters.

This is my direct email address, so you can always reply to any issue when you want to share something with me. Alternatively, you can use the poll function at the bottom to submit comments anonymously.

Hope to hear from you soon.

--

"I’m intrigued to see what is in your articles. As a gay man I feel the community is very bad at supporting each other. I’m 61 years old, and I always feel alone in my struggles, despite being surrounded by gay men in my life."

  • First, hugs. Second, you are not the first or second or tenth or twentieth person to share this with me. The realization of how common these feelings of loneliness are have galvanized my reasons for doing what I do over the years.

"On a whim, I was using Gemini AI recently to ask some semi-related questions and in that conversation, it gave me the link to your interview with Jessica Moorhouse."

  • This is the first time someone has found me through an AI chatbot (that I know of). Lots of buzz in the SEO space right now about chatbot search.

"Been following and reading since you shared your link in Out magazine. A younger perspective on financial topics (I’m 74 by the way!). Good job. Thanks."

  • It's a deep privilege to write a column for a storied queer publication. And I love the challenge that it's an entertainment mag, so I often have to fit my nerdy money commentary between two... manspreads. 😜 It challenges me to share useful advice while also staying light and loose with the voice.

"You have become one of the joys in my life. I'm 83 with my novels being reprinted. I will boldly venture onto TikTok, taking your advice to keep it simple, briefly state my idea, and share my concerns about their literacy. I want to know what & how they read."

  • Y'all are gonna make me cry!

What happened this week

Disclosure: I work at Ziff Davis, the parent company of CNET, Mashable, PCMag, Lifehacker, and ZDNET, and equalpride, the parent company of Out magazine and The Advocate.

Money, economy, entrepreneurship

​Health subsidies expire, launching millions of Americans into 2026 with steep insurance hikes.​ For those outside the U.S., it's hard to understate the rage people have toward our healthcare system and the financial obstacles many families are now facing. (Ali Swenson | Associated Press)

​Zohran Mamdani promises to govern ‘expansively and audaciously’ in inaugural speech as NYC mayor.​ He was sworn in on Thursday, notably with his hand on a Quran. (Anthony Izaguirre | Associated Press)

​I Can’t Afford A House, So Why Don’t I Just Be Gorgeous?​ Part of a 17-story package from Bustle called ​The Vanity Project​ exploring the beauty industry. This story is one of my favorite editorial treatments, a roundup of varying lived experiences in which the quotes do most of the talking. (Hannah Orenstein | Bustle)

​Will Plastic Surgery Make You Richer? The Science of Attractiveness.​ From the same package. Kinda hate this message... but also acknowledge I'm a man and have different gender expectations from what women have to put up with. (Rachel Sugar | Bustle)

​Why America’s Fridges Are Overflowing With Sauce.​ In lighter news, here's a write-up about condiments; the sauce market is up an estimated 55% since 2019. Now—pass me the chili crisp. (Deena Shanker | Bloomberg Businessweek)

AI and future tech

​'Authenticity is becoming infinitely reproducible.'​ In this midform post on Threads, Instagram co-founder and CEO Adam Mosseri acknowledged that AI slop is moving too fast for platforms to keep up, and that the more viable future will be to give users ways to authenticate their posts instead. What a mess. (Adam Mosseri | Threads)

​The top science topics for 2026, according to Scientific American's editors.​ (Staff | Scientific American)

LGBTQ+

​A flood of Kennedy Center cancellations are ruining Ric Grenell's holiday season. ​Grenell is a gay Trump appointee, and the board illegally renamed the Washington, DC arts center after the current president. (John Gallagher | LGBTQ Nation)

​Confessions of a Queer Archivist.​ Lovely year-one retrospective from an LGBTQ historian navigating Substack. (Queer Archivist | Substack)

​New research shows coming out is still risky.​ Thoughts of self-harm increase immediately before, during, and immediately after the coming-out process. (Harry Barbee | The Washington Blade)

​Heated Rivalry rules Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen's 2026 NYE special.​ You know your gay hockey show has gone mainstream when it makes Stephen Colbert refer to himself as a bossy bottom on live national television. (Bernardo Sim | Out)

Media literacy and behavior

​Use the ‘One-Touch’ Rule to Manage Your Email Inbox​. This is the approach I use, it helps me destress about my inbox. (Lindsay Ellefson | Lifehacker)

​Bricking My iPhone Is My Tech 'Upgrade of the Year'.​ (Meredith Dietz | Lifehacker)

​That Grubhub Bitcoin Email Is a Scam.​ (Emily Long | Lifehacker)