About

Forrukh Abdullah

Electrical engineering graduate, investor, trader, researcher, and the person behind Financially Free Folks.

My Journey Into Financial Blogging

I’m Forrukh Abdullah, a graduate in electrical engineering. My journey into financial blogging started unexpectedly back in 2016, one ordinary evening at a coffee shop. I was waiting for a friend when I overheard a young couple talking at the next table. The guy said something that immediately caught my attention:

“You know, I made about four thousand dollars trading forex last night.”

Those words, forex, profit, and dollars, stuck with me. I’d always wanted to reach financial freedom as early as possible, and that short conversation sparked something inside me. To be honest, I had no idea what forex trading even was back then, but I couldn’t get those words out of my head. Looking back now, that moment changed the way I started thinking about money.

That night, I went home curious and started reading everything I could find about forex trading. Within weeks, I opened an online brokerage account and started trading with zero strategy and far too much excitement.

At first, it felt thrilling. Some trades went well, others didn’t. I’d make a profit one day and lose it the next. I was drawn to fast-moving markets like crude oil and often found myself chasing quick wins. Before long, I realized I was spinning in circles. More than once, I wiped out my trading account completely. I also tried stock trading, but many of the same mistakes followed me there.

A Turning Point

Then came 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many people, I suddenly found myself living through a period when normal routines were disrupted and the world seemed to slow down. That gave me more space to think about my work, my habits, and the way I had been approaching trading.

By then, I knew I couldn’t keep relying on excitement, instinct, or scattered information. I needed a more structured way to learn. So I started over, spending much more time reading, studying markets, watching experienced traders, and trying to understand not just what people were doing, but why.

I’ve always had a habit of writing down what I read and research. It helps me process information, question it, connect different ideas, and eventually understand a subject in my own way. During this period, that habit became even more important. I filled notebooks with trading ideas, observations, rules, mistakes, and templates, mostly for myself.

Gradually, my focus began to shift. I became less interested in chasing quick profits and more interested in understanding the process behind better decisions. The more I learned, the more I realized how much there was still to understand, not only about trading, but about money, investing, risk, and financial freedom more broadly.

From Notes to Financially Free Folks

As my interests expanded beyond trading, I found myself researching a much wider range of subjects, including investing, personal finance, saving, building income, and the broader question that had interested me from the beginning: how do you build enough financial freedom to have more control over your life?

Over time, some of the material I was working through for myself became more structured. Notes turned into explanations, frameworks, calculations, charts, and step-by-step guides. I began to realize that something I had originally been doing simply to learn could also be useful to other people trying to understand the same subjects.

That idea gradually became Financially Free Folks.

I didn’t create the site because I believed I had personally experienced every financial situation or had all the answers. Some topics come from my own experience, while others come from research and study. I think it is important to be clear about that difference.

The goal is simple: take financial topics that can easily become confusing, dig into them carefully, and explain what I learn in a way that is practical, understandable, and genuinely useful.

About Me

I’m an electrical engineering graduate with a long-standing interest in markets, personal finance, investing, and financial independence. My professional background is not in finance, but engineering has shaped the way I tend to approach financial questions.

I like to understand how things work, break complicated subjects into smaller parts, compare different explanations, and look for the logic behind them. That same mindset carries into the way I approach money and markets.

Most of what I know about finance has been built gradually through reading, research, market experience, observation, and plenty of mistakes along the way.

I’m still learning, and I expect that to continue. Financial markets change, personal finance decisions depend heavily on circumstances, and even familiar ideas can look different when you examine them more closely.

What Financial Blogging Means to Me Today

Today, Financially Free Folks is both a learning project and a way to share what I discover along the way.

I try to approach financial topics with curiosity, skepticism, and enough patience to understand the important details before simplifying them for readers. Some subjects are straightforward. Others involve uncertainty, trade-offs, or different viewpoints, and I think those differences are worth showing rather than hiding.

My aim is not to have an opinion on everything. It is to create something that helps a reader understand a subject more clearly and make better-informed decisions.

Writing also keeps me learning, which is one of the reasons I still enjoy doing it.

Where I Am Now and What Lies Ahead

These days, I’m still actively involved in financial markets, particularly stocks and commodities, while continuing to study broader areas of investing, personal finance, and financial independence.

My own goal remains the same one that first pulled me toward finance years ago: to reach a point where money gives me more freedom rather than more pressure. For me, that means having greater control over my time, being able to travel more, explore new places, choose the work I want to do, and make life decisions without every choice being dictated by a paycheck.

That goal also influences the direction of Financially Free Folks. I don’t see financial freedom as simply reaching a particular number in a portfolio. It is about creating enough financial strength and flexibility to have more choices.

I’m still working toward that myself, which is part of why I continue to research, write, and learn. Financially Free Folks is a record of that process, but hopefully it can also become a useful resource for other people trying to build more financial freedom in their own way.