What if just ten decisions—not your budget, not your habits, not your hustle—actually determine the wealth and life you build?

Most people obsess over the small stuff: productivity hacks, spending apps, and time management. Meanwhile the choices that truly shape a financial life—how you earn, what you own, whom you trust, and what stories about money you inherited without asking—get left to inertia, social pressure, and chance.

Ten Decisions flips that priority on its head. Drawing on decision science, behavioral economics, and the real stories of ordinary people who quietly built fortunes, it reveals the root decisions that separate a well-built life from a stuck one—and gives you a clear, humane path to making them well.



Inside, you'll discover:



- How the money story you absorbed in childhood silently drives your adult financial behavior—and how to rewrite it

- Why your paycheck will never make you wealthy, and how to build an income-producing engine instead

- The real difference between assets and liabilities—and the comfortable lies in between

- The five mental walls of fear, cynicism, and identity that keep money out of reach

- A practical 90-day blueprint to step off the earn-spend-adapt treadmill for good

- How to raise a financially literate family and pass on habits, not just money

Stop optimizing the trivial. Master the few decisions that actually build your life.



Ezra Tovell is a behavioral scientist and philosopher specializing in decision theory, well-being, and the architecture of life choices. Of British-Canadian background, he holds a dual education in philosophy and behavioral economics and earned a PhD in decision theory. For roughly twelve years he combined research into long-term life trajectories, systematic decision-making biases, and what distinguishes a well-lived life with teaching and consulting across the North America–U.K. axis. Analyzing biographical data on thousands of people across cultures and generations, Tovell found that the overwhelming majority of a person's life outcomes are determined by roughly ten root decisions. His Root Decisions Method teaches readers to recognize these choices, tell them apart from the noise, and treat them with the deliberation they deserve.



1. The Money Story You Inherited Without Asking

2. Two Mentors, Two Worldviews: A Tale of Conflicting Advice

3. Why Your Paycheck Will Never Make You Wealthy

4. Decoding the Language of Money: Assets, Liabilities, and the Lies in Between

5. The House Trap: Reframing What You Own

6. Building Your First Income-Producing Engine

7. Taxes, Corporations, and the Game the Wealthy Actually Play

8. Fear, Cynicism, and the Five Mental Walls Around Your Wallet

9. Training the Brain to See Deals Everywhere

10. Working to Learn Instead of Working to Earn

11. From Spectator to Operator: Your First Real Investment

12. Case Files: Ordinary People Who Engineered Financial Freedom

13. Building a Personal Wealth System in the Digital Age

14. A 90-Day Blueprint for Stepping Off the Treadmill

15. Passing It On: Raising a Financially Literate Family



Master the few money choices that truly matter