I teach people to reason with numbers. This site is that, applied to money.
Who I am, how I work, and what I will and won't do here.
I came to the United States from a small country and learned this financial system the hard way — by getting things wrong, asking questions that felt obvious, and slowly discovering that almost nobody explains the basics without wanting something in return.
My day job is teaching data analytics. I spend my working life showing students how to take a messy question, break it into parts, and reason toward an answer they can defend. That's a useful habit, and it turns out to transfer almost perfectly to personal finance — which is mostly arithmetic wearing a suit.
Nomad West Financial is where those two things meet. Everything published here — the guides, the tools, all of it — is free and open to anyone. The arithmetic doesn't care where you live, even where the examples use California numbers.
I'm also a licensed insurance advisor — currently licensed in California, and able to add other states when there's a reason to. So if you want to talk through your own situation, where you live isn't the obstacle it might sound like. Just ask. But the license isn't the point of this site. The explaining is.
Why this site exists
Most financial content on the internet is written to persuade. You can feel it: the number always comes out large, the urgency is always high, and the "calculator" always concludes that you need more than you thought. That's not analysis. That's a funnel with a math costume on.
I wanted to build the opposite: guides and tools that treat you as someone capable of understanding your own situation, and that stay honest even where honesty is less profitable. That's the standard everything here has to meet — the pieces published so far, and the ones I'm still working on.
The coverage estimator is the clearest example so far. It adjusts for present value, which lowers the number it gives you. Nearly every competing tool leaves that step out, because a bigger number sells better. I put it in because leaving it out would be wrong, and because a number you can trust is worth more than a number that flatters my business.
How I work
- Plain language, always. No acronyms, no industry shorthand. If a concept can't be explained in words a normal person understands, the explaining isn't finished — that's on me, not on you.
- Education before anything else. You learn how the numbers work first. What you do with that — if anything — is entirely your decision, on your own timeline. Nothing here is gated behind a phone call.
- No products named. The guides and tools here estimate a need. They deliberately don't tell you what to buy, what kind to buy, or who to buy it from. Those are separate decisions with real trade-offs, and they deserve a real conversation rather than a web page.
- Conservative math over impressive math. Where there's a judgment call, I take the option that produces the smaller, more defensible figure.
- No cold outreach. I don't buy lists, I don't cold-call, and giving me your email gets you what you asked for, not a sequence. If we ever talk, it'll be because you decided to.
What I'd tell you if you asked me directly: most people looking into this after buying a house don't need to be sold anything. They need someone to sit down with the actual numbers and tell them where they stand. That's usually a twenty-minute conversation, and it's free, and it frequently ends with "you're fine."
The honest limitations
I'm one person, not a firm. I'm not a tax professional, an attorney, or a securities-licensed advisor, and where a question crosses into those areas the right answer is to point you to someone who does that work properly, which I'll do rather than guess.
Everything published here is general education. It can't see your whole picture, and it isn't a substitute for advice tailored to your situation.
If you'd like to talk
Email is the best way: yertai@nomadwestfinancial.com. Tell me roughly where you are and what's on your mind. No pitch, no pressure, no obligation of any kind — and if the answer to your question is "you don't need anything," I'll tell you that.
Start here
This page is educational and general in nature. It is not financial, tax, or insurance advice, and it does not recommend any specific product or company. Individual situations vary; consult a licensed professional before making decisions.