About Primitive Finance

WELCOME!

Primitive Finance is an independent personal finance site providing free advice for anyone who desires to save money, escape debt, retire early, and achieve greater financial freedom in the journey of building real wealth!

Core Values:

  • Encourage readers to have positive money mindset affirmations
  • Strive to provide honest and accurate information
  • The knowledge transfer of financial literacy should be simple & transparent
  • No one is perfect, mistakes can be fixed through proper informed decisions

Mission Statement:

Our mission is to transform lives through personal financial literacy education, products, services to become finically successful, and elements of simple living to empower the average person to pursue and achieve their dreams of financial wellness in order to live life to the fullest on their own terms.

About Arin K. Shaw, Founder and CEO

Hi! My name is Arin Shaw and I am a personal finance enthusiast, NYC law firm Technical IT Manager, and recently divorced (11/21) father of two young kids living in Long Island, NY.

I founded Primitive Finance in 2021 to initially share the story of my road to financial success and simple living. However, that story has since evolved a bit into something more mission critical to me in my passion to making financial freedom accessible to all.

I’ve always had an interest in pursuing financial freedom since graduating at age 20 from Fordham University in 2009 with $80,000 in debt. Knowing the prospects of finding a career position was limited in light of the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 I was fortunate to find a position at a successful law firm as a level 1 technician and worked my way up to persevere and dig myself out of debt in 4 years to attain a clean slate and build toward my future wealth and goal of retiring early at 40.

As the events of my life unfolded, I have since gotten married, purchased a house, had two beautiful kids, boy and girl, and built my 401K to nearly half a million dollars by the age of 31….everything seemed to be on track until the Covid-19 recession of 2020.

Separate from the plummeting finances, my personal life took a major hit when I was presented from left field by my wife with the decision of pursuing a divorce that was unavoidable. After a yearlong battle with lawyers, I was finally free of a toxic relationship! It was emotionally draining and an expensive experience that set me back on my wealth building journey and retirement goals.

As a result of the divorce, I faced a new financial squeeze to my budget through the additions of Child Support & Child Care while fighting to keep the house with a high mortgage on a tight budget. After doing the math, I found that if all went well on a given month, I would be living paycheck to paycheck taking home possibly $20-$40 a month, otherwise the potential existed for me to be in the negative should something unexpected come up! Having drained all my savings and significant portion of my 401K in the asset division of the divorce, I no longer had an adequate emergency savings fund and needed to borrow from my parents to stay afloat. This was a dark point in my life…

However, with my daughter approaching 2 years old and my son 3+ years old, I knew this wasn’t the end of my story as their father, I realized I needed to do something more to get my life back on track to regain that role model status for my kids and something I could be proud of once again. It may have been the end of my marital relationship, but a new beginning for me to start fresh again and help others that may have been impacted by an unprecedented event leaving a lasting financial impact.

Therefore, I hope this blog helps to inspire and educate those in difficult financial situations to follow along my journey as I navigate the road to rebuilding financial wealth.

Along the way, I aim to provide guidance via the knowledge of financial literacy, share advice of debt elimination, budgeting, generating income, saving money, realistic and practical investing, and early retirement planning for a brighter and wealthier future. You’ll find reviews of books, magazines, and software, along with the latest hand-picked personal finance articles and tools from legitimate sources. In addition, I’ll touch upon the importance of having a well-rounded personal growth mindset supported by simplicity, consistency, and personal development in other areas of your life. These are key elements to the growth of your success in order to improve financially.

Whether you are a scared and confused novice, eager modern millennial, aspiring entrepreneur looking for the next level, or approaching wind down to retirement, I’ll motivate and encourage your participation as I know you have what it takes to learn and succeed as we are all here to grow together!

As we embark on this journey, I wish you nothing but peace, prosperity, wealth, and happiness. I’m glad you’re here!

Let’s get started,

Arin