Sound money · planning tools · applied AI · built in public
Money is being diluted. Work is being automated. Plan for both.
Modern Wealth Model is one operator’s practice built around those two shifts: free planning tools, plain-English sound money education, and hands-on AI and operations work for owner-run businesses and for operators at scale.
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Financial Planning
Sound money retirement tools and FIRE calculators built on conservative, transparent assumptions. Plan with clarity.
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Sound Money Education
Plain-English guides to money, inflation and hard assets. Understand the system before you plan around it.
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AI & Operations Consulting
AI training, agentic workflow builds and operations audits, for owner-run businesses and for operators evaluating systems at scale.
The short version
What Modern Wealth Model is
Modern Wealth Model started as a single retirement calculator. It is now a wider practice built on one argument: two forces are reshaping how people and businesses build wealth at the same time. Money loses purchasing power by design. And more of the work that earns it is being handed to software.
Most planning advice treats neither as real. This site starts from both.
That shows up in four places. Free planning tools for households and for owner-run businesses. An education library on money, inflation and Austrian economics. Consulting on AI and operations, from a two-person shop to a regional distributor. And a public record of what it takes to run a business this way: one person directing a team of AI agents, with the costs, the tools and the failures published as they happen.
We’re not a brokerage and we don’t sell financial products. The calculators run in your browser with no email gate, the assumptions are written down, and we don’t predict prices or recommend allocations. Where we have a strong view, we say so. Where the data is uncertain, we say that too.
Credentials and track record
Who built this
Modern Wealth Model is run by Colin Reed, MBA. He spent his career running distribution operations at the VP and GM level — broadline foodservice, airline catering and premium last-mile — and now advises on operations, supply chain and applied AI through expert networks and research firms. The site, its tools and its publishing schedule are run day to day by Colin and a team of AI agents he directs. The consulting practice operates as Modern Wealth Consulting.
Learn more about Colin Work with Colin
Start anywhere
Four ways in
Free planning tools
Retirement and FIRE calculators graded by complexity, from a five-asset quick look up to the Advanced FIRE model’s thirty-five asset classes, including 401(k), IRA, private real estate and annuities. A tax-aware guide points you at the right one. Every calculator runs in your browser with no email gate.
Sound money education
Halving House is the education library, organized into tracks: Austrian Economics and History of Money for first principles, Macro / Geopolitical for how central banking erodes savings, the Model Room for long-run models, and Explain It Like I’m 5 for kids and total beginners, plus a curated Card Catalog of outside books and podcasts. Start anywhere.
The Owner’s Desk
For owner-run businesses with two employees or fifty and no technical staff. Agentic workflow builds, on-site operations audits across North County San Diego, and sound money for a small balance sheet, plus free tools that price missed calls, automation savings and AI readiness.
The Operating Floor
For operators, investors and analysts evaluating systems at scale: distribution, warehousing, fleet and foodservice. Agentic AI in physical operations, cost to serve and deployment economics, written from the buying side of the table.
Built in public
No Agency Required
A field series on a live website run by one person and a team of AI agents: the org chart of a one-person company, what it costs, what broke, and the guardrail each failure produced.
Real screenshots of the live site, nothing mocked up. Every number shown with its source and the date it was read. A new episode every other week.
From every lane
Recent writing
Time Preference: The Idea Underneath Every Money Decision
Why you would rather have it now, why interest exists, and how the money itself shapes how patient a whole population can afford to be.
Retained Earnings Are Melting
Why a healthy margin and a shrinking business are entirely compatible, and what inflation does to the money you already earned.
Three Times a Day: The Small Business AI Gap Nobody Notices
Two owners can both say they use AI every day and mean completely different things. A four-rung ladder and a one-week test.
Perishable Imports Cannot Be Warehoused. That Is in the Statute.
A perishable food import carries four admissibility obligations. Two are clocks. The other two end on an accounting event and on an inspector’s judgment.
Everything is documented
On methodology
Every assumption built into the calculators is documented. The methodology page covers the real-return derivation, the Trinity Study background for the four percent rule, the inputs to the Power Law model, and the explicit list of what we don’t model (volatility distribution, sequence-of-returns risk, tax drag, healthcare inflation, Social Security). The data sources are FRED, BLS CPI, CoinGecko, and primary regulatory and academic publications. Where we cite something, we link to the original.