About Me

I’m Rob Berger — a recovering lawyer, full-time content creator, and someone who spends an unreasonable amount of time trying to understand retirement, investing, taxes, and all the decisions that come with managing money later in life.

Most people who find my work are asking some version of the same question:

Will I have enough?

And usually right behind that one are a few more:

When should I claim Social Security? Should I do Roth conversions? How much can I safely spend? What happens if the market falls? What if one of us needs long-term care? Am I missing something important? What finance apps should I use?

Those are not simple questions. They deserve better than slogans, scare tactics, or one-size-fits-all answers.

What I Do

I run robberger.com, a YouTube channel with more than 290,000 subscribers, and a weekly email newsletter called The Investor’s Newsletter.

Most of my work is for people approaching retirement or already in retirement. I focus on the financial decisions that matter most at this stage of life: retirement income, safe withdrawal strategies, Roth conversions, long-term tax planning, Social Security, Medicare, Medigap, portfolio construction, and the behavioral mistakes that can quietly undo an otherwise good plan.

How I Got Here

I did not start out intending to become a full-time personal finance writer and YouTuber. I started as a lawyer.

Practicing law taught me to be skeptical of easy answers. It also gave me the habit of reading carefully, following citations, and asking whether the evidence really supports the conclusion. Those habits turned out to be useful in personal finance, where a lot of advice sounds convincing until you look closely at the assumptions behind it.

Eventually, writing and teaching about money pulled me away from law altogether. What began as a side project became the work I cared about most. After years of articles, videos, newsletters, spreadsheets, reader emails, and more retirement calculators than I care to admit, I still wake up wanting to do the work.

That has to count for something.

What You Can Expect

You will not find much financial entertainment here.

I do not make videos about the coming crash. I do not believe there is one weird trick that will double your retirement income. No, “they” are not all lying to you about Roth conversions. And I try hard not to confuse confidence with being right.

What I try to do instead is look at the evidence, run the numbers, and explain the trade-offs as clearly as I can. Sometimes that means digging into academic research. Sometimes it means testing a strategy in a spreadsheet. Sometimes it means saying, “This depends,” and then doing the work to explain what it depends on.

I recommend tools and services I actually use, and I try to be clear when there is a financial relationship. More important, I try to separate what we know from what we merely hope is true.

Retirement planning is full of uncertainty. The goal is not to eliminate it. The goal is to make better decisions in spite of it.

A Little About the Person Behind the Channel

When I am not making videos or writing about tax-efficient withdrawal strategies, I am usually playing chess, working out, or reading something that has nothing to do with finance — theology, religious history, philosophy, technology, science or the occasional novel. I am also slowly trying to write a novel myself, which has been humbling in all the ways good writing tends to be.

I think reading outside of finance has made me a better investor. It reminds me that money is never really just about money. It is about time, family, work, fear, generosity, independence, and the kind of life we are trying to live.

That is easy to forget when we are staring at Roth conversion charts or Monte Carlo simulations. But behind every spreadsheet is a real person trying to make a good decision with incomplete information.

That is the part of this work I care about most.

Let’s Stay in Touch

The best way to follow my work is to subscribe to The Investor’s Newsletter and my YouTube channel.

The newsletter is a short, substantive email about what I am reading, thinking about, and working on. No hype. No noise. Just useful ideas for people trying to make better financial decisions.

And if you have a question, hit reply to any newsletter and let me know what’s on your mind.

I read everything.

— Rob