Meet Ethan

The story behind SYNAPSE.

Ethan Mercer · Founder & Creator of SYNAPSE

Hi, I’m Ethan.

For a long time, I thought I was simply bad with my finances.

I worked. I paid my bills. I tried to save.

And yet, at the end of most months, I couldn’t really explain where everything had gone.

Ethan Mercer at his dining table with a laptop, a notebook full of arrows and a half-finished coffee
“This is how it started: trying to make sense of my own finances at the kitchen table.”Ethan Mercer
The same problem, every time

The explanations were written for people who already understood.

Whenever I decided to learn more about personal finance, I ran into the same wall. Every answer seemed to introduce five new questions.

So I stopped trying to learn everything at once.

And started with one question:

Where does it all actually go?

The vocabulary I kept running into
  • APR
  • Utilization
  • Compound interest
  • Asset allocation
  • ETFs
  • Emergency funds
  • Credit score
  • Diversification

None of it was impossible. It just never came with a starting point.

Month one · the notebook
  • HousingFixed
  • FoodWeekly
  • TransportWeekly
  • SubscriptionsCheck
  • Everything else?

→ so how much should I keep aside?

Where it began

One question became a system.

I began tracking my spending. Nothing sophisticated. At first, it was just categories in a notebook.

For the first time, I could actually see what was happening. And once I understood that, the next question became obvious: how much should I keep aside?

That led me into saving and emergency funds. Then credit. Then debt. And eventually investing.

Slowly, all of these subjects stopped looking like separate financial concepts. They started connecting.

Why the name

That connection became SYNAPSE.

I chose the name because a synapse is where information passes from one neuron to another. And that was exactly how learning about my finances began to feel: one concept connected to the next.

Budget

Your budget influences how much you can save.

Save

Your savings can reduce your dependence on debt.

Credit

The way you borrow shapes your financial options.

Invest

Understanding those foundations gives investing context.

Suddenly, personal finance wasn’t a pile of terminology anymore. It was a system.

The notes

I started writing things down.

Initially, the notes were for me. I simplified definitions. I drew diagrams. I created examples using normal monthly expenses. I wrote down the questions I wished somebody had answered when I was starting.

And eventually I realised something: I probably wasn’t the only person who found this confusing.

Most people aren’t taught how to manage their finances in school. Yet, almost immediately after entering adult life, we’re expected to understand bank accounts, loans, credit scores, interest rates, savings and investing.

That’s a strange gap. I wanted to help make it smaller.

That became the idea behind the Money Basics Collection.

The guides

Not textbooks. The guides I would have wanted.

Something visual. Something practical. Something you can understand without already knowing the vocabulary. That’s why every SYNAPSE guide focuses on one part of the foundation.

01 · Budget

The Personal Budgeting Guide

Understand what comes in, what goes out, and build a system around it.

 View guide 02 · Save

The Saving & Emergency Fund Guide

Learn why having a financial buffer matters and how to start building one.

 View guide 03 · Credit

The Credit & Debt Guide

Understand borrowing, APR, repayment and the fundamentals behind credit.

 View guide 04 · Invest

The Beginner's Investing Guide

Learn the vocabulary and basic principles before putting anything to work.

 View guide

You don’t have to learn everything today. You just need to understand the next piece.

No hacks. Just foundations.

The boring things are often the important things.

That’s one thing I learned while researching personal finance. None of these ideas sounds revolutionary. But together, they can create a much stronger foundation.

  • 01Knowing where it goes.
  • 02Planning before the month begins.
  • 03Saving consistently.
  • 04Understanding what borrowing actually costs.
  • 05Learning before investing.

That’s the philosophy behind SYNAPSE.

What I hope SYNAPSE gives you

One more connection.

I don’t expect one ebook to completely change the way you handle your finances overnight. That’s not the point.

But…

  • If one guide helps you understand where it’s all going…
  • If you finally understand what APR means…
  • If you build your first emergency fund…
  • Or if investing stops sounding like another language…

Then you’ve made another connection. And that’s exactly why I created SYNAPSE.

Thanks for being here.

Ethan Mercer

Founder & Creator of SYNAPSE

Understand the pieces. Connect the system.

Explore the Guides

Digital guides · Instant download · PDF, EPUB & MOBI