At Cambridge, I studied how economies work — specifically how people and organisations make financial decisions. At McKinsey, I put that to work advising some of the largest companies in the world on where they were wasting money and how to stop. At Google, I moved into operations — overseeing large-scale procurement and spend across the business.
In every one of those roles, the job was the same: find the gap between what something costs and what it should cost. I built databases for it. I built frameworks for it. I was, professionally, very good at it.
And then I took unpaid leave — a planned decision, but one that came with a set of questions I had no good tools to answer.
Three questions I couldn't answer with anything I had:
- What do I cut?
- How hard do I cut if I'm not working for six months?
- How much should I start setting aside right now to minimize the hit when the income stops?
These aren't exotic questions. They're the questions anyone faces when life changes. A job loss. A career pivot. A baby. A health situation. A decision to take a risk you've been thinking about for years.
I had an advantage most people don't: I knew how to build the tools to answer them. So I did — for myself, to navigate that period. Tools that looked at what I was actually spending, compared it to what made sense for my situation, and told me specifically where I could cut, what I could switch, and what I could set aside. I found that a few changes meant I could keep my three kids in math academy and barely make a dent in my lifestyle.
Those tools became Artho. Built for myself when I needed it. Built for you now.
Questions you've probably asked too.